I’ve known Shirley for about 5 years now and she’s one of my dearest friends.  Shirley just celebrated her 85th birthday and she still runs circles around most people.  I stopped by her house today and she told me a story.  It was about 2 different department stores that we have all heard of.  She visited them both today and one provided great service and one was substandard service.  As she told me the stories I thought about it from a marketing perspective.  What makes this account especially fascinating to me is that Shirley is what I would call an “influential.”  Shirley is a “go to person” for many of her friends.  She is very bright, knowledgeable on numerous topics and has lots of life experience and common sense.  Besides all that she is absolutely delightful, entertaining and lovable!

So here’s the story.  Shirley happens to have a 55 year old handicapped son, Glenn.  She brings Glenn home every weekend.  Well, with summer approaching and Glenn’s birthday being in the summer, she was out shopping for an air conditioner for his room today.  She began the story by telling me this – “Target has so many helpful people all over the store that it’s just wonderful.”  As she began her shopping excursion in the store several employees were helpful right off the bat.  She was having trouble finding the air conditioners and so she asked for help.  A very pleasant employee told her to look just beyond where she was and pick up the phone.  He told her that somebody would then come to help her within 60 seconds!  Did you get that?  60 seconds.  Shirley’s next words to me were “58 seconds later, I had help.”  A woman arrived, she had a walkie talkie and she was heard saying – “I’ve got it, I’m here.”  It almost sounded as if a team of people were standing by to make sure Shirley got her help.

There’s more to the story than that but this struck me.  If I perceive this story correctly, I believe that Shirley was very pleased with the service but she was WOWED by one particular policy and that was the focus of her great “word of mouth advertising” on behalf of Target.  It was the “60 second rule.”

I can tell you that it is very likely that the Target experience and the 60 second rule will be repeated multiple times because Shirley is an influential and she talks to a lot of people.  It was a little thing, but I think that is a big part of her VERY favorable impression of the store.

What happened next was also fascinating from a marketing perspective.  Shirley then went to another department store that will remain nameless.  The first thing she said about it was this – “there was no one around anywhere to help me.”  For me as a listener, I immediately had a bad impression of the store.  But as she went on I learned that she got some great prices and some other very favorable things happened at that store.  She also said that she “finally found someone and she was very nice.”  But Shirley had already compared this store to Target and their 60 second rule.  Target won by a landslide.

Application for us?  What kind of word of mouth do you think your firm is getting?  What do your clients say about you?  They are probably not talking about your legal skills.  As I’ve said before, your competence as an attorney is assumed.  They are probably talking about service issues.  They may be saying – they’re a great firm, but it’s hard to get somebody to call you back.

Here’s my marketing recommendation for the day.  Put a system in place so that every client phone call – whether new or existing – is returned in 60 minutes or less.  That doesn’t mean that you need to have an attorney call back with an answer.  It means you need to have a knowledgeable and professional staff member call back to say – “we got your call and Mr. X will be following up with you tomorrow morning.  Is there a good time to reach you?”

How are you creating the WOW factor?  As I survey PI clients across the country I can tell you that the top 2 things that they consistently report as being most important to them as clients are:

1. Phone calls are returned promptly
2. Legal staff is knowledgeable

What are your “Shirley’s” saying about your firm?  If you instituted a one hour call back policy – I bet that would be part of what they’d be talking about…