Number of words: 598

In a large-scale study I supervised for a major international professional service firm, corporate purchasers of a broad range of professional services (including audit, actuarial, consulting, legal, and marketing communications services) were asked, among other things, to rate their experience with professional firms on two key dimensions.

First, we asked them to evaluate their satisfaction with the technical quality of the work done for them. Satisfaction levels were consistently high. Clients, it seems, do not have too much difficulty in finding technically competent people to help them.

We then asked about the clients’ level of satisfaction with the way they were dealt with by the professionals involved during the course of the engagement, transaction, matter, or deal. Satisfaction levels were low, and complaints numerous.

That this should not be surprising can be tested against your own experience as a purchaser of professional services. Think back to your own use of outside professionals (you’ve probably used one or more of the following professionals recently, a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, an actuary, a consultant, an interior designer, a public relations counselor). Did the professionals you dealt with:

• Make it their business to understand what was special and unique about you and your company?
• Listen carefully to what you had to say and what you wanted, rather than substitute their own judgment for yours on what needed to be done and how it should be done?
• Give good explanations of what they were doing and why?
• Let you know in advance what they were going to do?
• Help you understand what was going on and help you reach your own conclusion, rather than tell you their conclusion?
• Keep you sufficiently informed on progress?
• Document their work activities well?
• Avoid confusing jargon?
• Make sure they were accessible and available when you needed them?
• Notify you promptly of changes in scope, and seek your approval? Keep their promises on deadlines?
• Involve you at major points in the engagement?
• Make you feel as if you were important to them?
• Show an interest in you beyond the specifics of their tasks?
• Make an attempt to be helpful to you beyond the specifics of their project?

My own experiences (and those of the clients I have surveyed) suggest that it is extraordinarily rare to find a professional who is consistently good at these things, and even rarer to find a whole firm that can be relied upon to act in this fashion.

Few of us have trouble citing real examples, not caricatures, adverse behaviors that we encounter routinely in our dealings with t other professionals we use. We have no problem reporting what we hate about having to deal with “those guys.”

As it turns out, accountants, consultants, and public relations people complain about the same things when talking about lawyers actuaries that lawyers and actuaries complain about when referring to accountants, consultants, and public relations people. What we hate about having to deal with “those guys” is a very good predictor of what our clients hate about having to deal with us.

What this reveals is that what clients seek from their professionals has nothing to do with “being nice to the client,” “shmoozing,” “stroking,” or “hand holding”. Rather, what we are talking about is finding ways to make client assignments substantially more valuable to clients by changing the way professionals interact with their clients during the project. Client service is not a “frill”: How a professional deals with us is an essential determinant of our judgment of value received.

Excerpted from ‘Managing the Professional Service Firm’ by David Maister, pages 79 to 81