Is It Always the Client’s Fault?

This post was provided by Chris Mullins, The Phone Sales Doctor for Intake Specialists Worldwide. Contact Chris at phonesuccessdoctor@gmail.com or 603-249-5878. Chris would also love to review some of your real call recordings.

Did you ever notice that your team is always blaming the client when things go wrong? I mean always. If your firm has a high volume of client complaints because, for example, the attorneys are not returning phone calls or doing what they say they’re going to do, you likely have a team that’s always blaming the client.

Many of these team members have a sense of entitlement. If someone else is to blame for a problem, then they need to change, not us. The #1 bar complaint is and has consistently been a failure to communicate.

Do an informal survey with your team. Ask them to track how often they blame a client for something. See how often your team can catch themselves in the act.

Once you start to adopt this behavior you can’t stop. It becomes a new ongoing habit and behavior. Also, I believe that many team members don’t want to let the client down, so if they blame the client initially it’s a bit easier to take (although this is temporary relief).

If you feel like you have a toxic blame environment, start at the top. Do a survey of all the blaming you did in just one week. Write them down so you don’t forget. You might just get your answer on how this all started. You may not have had this issue before, but one day it did start with a couple of attorneys and before you knew it, most of the attorneys were also doing it too. It must be the fault of someone else if something goes wrong. Now you have a toxic blame environment that then spreads to other departments. Stop complaining about clients and start finding ways to make them happy.

RMFD – Record, Monitor, Feedback, Daily. Listening to call recordings is very difficult. Some people would say that it’s hard to hear your inner critique. This is true, but I believe it’s deeper than that.

Emotional baggage plays a role with regard to your team getting call audits, especially if you don’t know how to coach them. Before you speak to them about their call, make a list of what they did well. Then, make a list of what you want them to do differently. Make a list of why it’s important that they make the necessary changes.

If you follow these steps, it will be easier for the team to get call audit reviews. Just keep in mind any emotional baggage they have about not being good enough or if they have a history of being rejected or low self-confidence. You don’t want them shaking in their boots, afraid of the next round coming.

Why should you care? Because you want the Intake/Call Center team to get better with Conversion. Because you want to retain your team. Because you don’t want a revolving door of team members. Because you want them to feel good about what they do and proud of working at your firm.

What’s really cool about this is that it’s like sitting in on every customer interaction in real-time. This is a great way to help to find out what your prospects and clients are unhappy with and happy with so you can improve.

Fun Fact: In case you want to know why you sound so bizarre when you listen to your recorded voice. “The anatomy of the skull makes it so that if we are hearing our own voice live, we truly do hear it differently than a recording. The cognitive dissonance of hearing a voice that your conscious brain knows is yours but not automatically recognizing yourself is perfectly natural: but it makes us uncomfortable.”

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