In the latest instalment of a continuing series on law firm marketing, Sebastian Fox discusses the most effective methods of communicating with clients

How well do you manage your relationships with your law firm's key clients? Providing technically excellent advice is no longer sufficient to ensure your firm retains clients' loyalty.

As important in our service-focused world is how that advice is delivered.

How many times will you return to a shop where the service is poor, even if the product you bought was good?

Or how much more likely are you to return to a shop that takes time and trouble to understand of what you want, and give you that every time?

Client relationship management (CRM) is about developing this understanding of clients' needs, and meeting them better than the competition.

Why has CRM become such a common refrain in the legal profession? Relatively speaking, it is only recently that clients - commercial or individual - have realised that they have a huge choice of potential suppliers.

With clients more informed, more able and more willing to change between law firms, the crucial difference is the level of service received - in other words, how a law firm manages its relationships with clients.

Clients generally assume that all lawyers are of equal technical competence.

So how does a client choose one law firm over another? Essentially, reputation drives the decision.

The most powerful way to win new work is through personal recommendation, since this gives tremendous reassurance to potential clients.

So, make sure your existing clients are sufficiently delighted with your service to recommend you to a friend or colleague.

There is a big difference between clients being happy and being delighted.

As is often said, you are only as good as your last job.

You cannot rely on delighting your clients once; it is an on-going process.

You have to work at it all the time.

You need to deliver consistently excellent service.

What does this mean in practice? Firstly, you must understand - or set - your client's expectations.

Some of this is done already; the practice rule 15 letter essentially sets out the terms and conditions under which solicitors work for clients.

But rule 15 should be the minimum standard to which you aspire.

After all, every other firm will be bound to the same standards, so the firm that exceeds these will stand out.

How you manage expectations is very much down to how you decide to deliver your service, but some of the things to think about are:

- Committing to maximum turnaround times for correspondence;

- Answering telephone calls within a specified number of rings;

- Conducting a client service review meeting at regular intervals;

- Developing small teams to look after important clients to ensure there are a number of contact points and broad expertise to manage the client's needs.

Whatever expectations you choose to set, the crucial thing is to live by the promises.

From the clients' point of view there is nothing worse than being told they will receive a draft document within three days and it takes a week.

Better to promise it will take a week, and deliver.

Managing expectations is about setting achievable goals and consistently achieving them.

Certainly, there may be occasions when standards fall short of the ideal, but provided these are rare and you keep the client informed of the reasons, most will understand.

Easier said than done, perhaps.

The key requirement is that there is a will within the firm to implement a CRM programme.

In practice, this means that the most senior members of the partnership must be committed to the principle.

There must also be a person of sufficient seniority in the firm running the programme to make sure it happens.

Once that is in place, the next steps can be taken.

There is no ideal CRM programme; it depends entirely on the needs of the clients and the resources your firm wishes to devote.

Of course, this may seem daunting if your firm is starting from scratch.

However, by setting clear objectives, perhaps with a limited scope at first, most firms will be able to implement CRM.

IT programmes are available to provide support if necessary.

In practical terms, the common elements of most successful CRM programmes can be distilled to:

- Identification and recognition of which clients are most important to the firm, looking at both current business and future potential (key accounts or key clients);

- Development of a clear set of objectives for each key client;

- Formulation of a plan to meet those objectives;

- Sharing of knowledge and information about the client such as through a common database, accessible to all, incorporating the agreed data for each client;

- Putting in place a method for receiving feedback from clients and implementing any changes arising from that feedback.

This need not be complicated.

A key client plan may be as simple as saying: 'We will grow our fee income from client X from 10,000 to 20,000 by the end of 2004 through introducing other fee earners who currently do no work for that client.' Your detailed plan would then set out who does what, by when, to achieve this.

Quite clearly, none of this can be achieved without the client, who is not likely to increase his spend with you unless he is happier with your level of service than with that of your competitors.

CRM will work best only when all partners and staff are committed to it and want to make it work.

But many of the little service touches that will distinguish your firm from the competition are in the hands of others - for example, support staff and more junior fee earners.

Of decisive importance in making CRM work well is to ensure that everyone within the firm - many of whom are dealing with the client on a frequent basis - understands what the CRM programme is trying to achieve and their part in it.

A secretary who knows the clients well and is able to make them feel special and important may well comprise a far more influential element of the clients' experience of dealing with your firm than all the brilliant legal expertise that was applied in the matter.

There is no point in committing to certain service standards that are then disregarded by everyone else; successful CRM requires commitment and enthusiasm from top to bottom.

Although many people talk about CRM, few companies and even fewer professional service firms actually do it well.

Those who succeed are securing their long term future and profitability.

Sebastian Fox is a marketing consultant and is a former marketing director at national law firm Eversheds