by Robin Dicks | Sep 20, 2023 | Uncategorized
It’s very noticeable that we’re seeing some increasingly common and important themes from feedback given by clients of professional services firms. Hugely abbreviated, the key needs are these: Better project management Better communication of progress and status More use of technology to allow self service and ‘close to real-time’ information updates Client contacts of firms are under pressure to achieve speed, and efficiency. Firms that don’t get this are going to lose...
by Robin Dicks | Jul 17, 2023 | Uncategorized
My article on how law firms can ask the right questions of clients, in order to boost their performance and the health of the firm, has just been published in the Law Society’s magazine, “Managing for Success”. Take a look at the...
by Robin Dicks | Jun 30, 2023 | Robin's Blog
Normally, of course I’d say yes. However… In my (driving) life I’ve had more cars from one marque/brand than any other – five in fact. Bit of an advocate really. Until a recent experience. Won’t bore you with the detail, but for the best part of 2 months I was unable to use the car for anything more than a short trip. It’s cost me a fair bit, and mistakes at the dealer, misdiagnosis of the fault, and delay in getting parts have made me, to use a technical term, grumpy. The brand has sent me an online survey after each experience at the dealer. The emails are headed “we care about you.” They’ve also called to ask for my feedback. So far so good. I’ve responded to the survey giving pretty poor scores and explaining my experience, and spent 10-15 minutes answering a call (in a separate process) giving more detail, and noting the impact on how I felt about the brand. I said that my faith in the brand had been shaken and the person on the phone promised to escalate it, and promised a customer services person would call me back. One month later, guess what has happened. Nothing. This strikes me as a situation where ‘doing the process’ – i.e. getting the feedback, getting some scores, ticking the boxes – is seen as achieving the aim. But the whole point is to enable you to resolve customer issues. They have signally failed to do that. Nobody is accountable for the follow-up. So, its worth just thinking again about ‘how do we USE the information we...
by Robin Dicks | Jan 10, 2023 | Robin's Blog, Uncategorized
The events of the last few years have made many of us think about improving work-life balance and our wellbeing. Some research we did last year flagged up the widespread risk of ‘burn-out’ amongst staff in professional services. So this link includes our thoughts on some New Year resolutions worth considering for those managing firms or wanting to reduce the risk of...
by Robin Dicks | Nov 21, 2022 | Uncategorized
“GDP” is back in the headlines again after the news that the UK is (probably) in recession, and ex PM Liz Truss’s comments about wanting to “grow the pie”, irrespective of how it is distributed. I have a couple of problems with GDP as the “be all and end all” measure, being: Growing it is all well and good, but what if huge swathes of the population don’t gain a share of that growth? Study after study suggests that, after a certain point, more wealth doesn’t mean more happiness. Does any country look at it differently? Yes, they do. Bhutan doesn’t focus as much on Gross Domestic Product as it does on GNH. Gross National Happiness. Not a bad idea. See more about it here. ...
