Take employees on client visits. One of the main things that we try and do is constant reinforcement of the fact that we are advisers to our clients. It’s training by example, taking people with us as we go out to meet with clients and go to where their headquarters are or their factories are and trying to understand their business.
There’s training. There’s one-on-one development of those skills. There’s just the training that comes with participation with more senior people that they see how it’s done.
These are ad-hoc relationships, where you have the trust of the client and you’re bringing younger lawyers along to have them be involved in telephone calls and have them be involved in client meetings where it’s appropriate, so they can see the interaction and they can see and understand the questions that the clients are dealing with. It is not necessarily a formal program; it’s just the natural mentoring process that needs to occur for people to understand what our culture is.
Reinforce the importance of client interaction. You have to reinforce that both by example — how you interact with client relationships — and talking about how important that is. Reinforce that message in your daily interactions and our monthly meetings.
We have meetings in which we talk about the business and how we’re doing, and we reinforce the importance of the culture in terms of the success of our client relationships.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence from client feedback. I communicate with a number of our clients that I might not be involved [with]. I get involved in talking about how we’re doing.
What we tend to want to know is: Are we meeting their needs and expectations and making sure that we understand what their expectations are for the service that we deliver to them?
How to reach: Cohen & Grigsby PC, (412) 297-4900 or www.cohenlaw.com
