Rose Rowland, Developer and Trainer for Basha Systems adds her thoughts on customer service in an interconnected world.
For several years now, I have gone to a drycleaners that is farther from my house than at least five others. This drycleaners is not particularly cheaper or even better in any appreciable way than the ones that are nearer to my house. And still, I make the extra trip for one reason – the lady behind the counter.
Her name is Maria and she is a lovely Hispanic woman with the warmest smile imaginable. From the first time I came into this drycleaners, she always gave me the friendliest and most concerned of service. When my children come in with me, she talks to them and sometimes gives them gum. When I have a problem, nothing is too much trouble for her. So, I return again and again.
Now, what does my drycleaners have to do with Time Matters, client service in law firms or really anything computer related? The point is, my drycleaner Maria has discovered something very important—the necessity of making a personal connection in an interconnected world.
Now, that last sentence sounded just a bit strange. After all, what could be more personal than interconnectedness? Frankly, a lot. As I sit at my desk in my office at Basha Systems, I receive many, many emails. Amongst the ads for Viagra and Florida vacations, there are quite a few that inquire about having Basha Systems do HotDocs or Time Matters customization for their firm. Now, I could shoot back a canned email response or possibly something even more detailed, but I usually pick up a phone. I make that more personal connection.
That personal connection is critical for us. For in that short phone call, I can determine what kind of software a client wants and really needs. Sometimes I’ll get an email from a client who THINKS he or she wants HotDocs but could really be serviced better with Time Matters merge templates. And, sometimes, none of the products we service are right for them and then I try my best to steer them to other providers who can better suit their needs.
To have a personal connection with someone, you must remember details about them. My drycleaner Maria remembers me, my children and different details about myself or others that I have dropped over the years.
I am not lucky enough to have Maria’s memory. We have dealt with thousands of emails over the 14 years we have been in business, and worked with hundreds of people in a substantive fashion. We have over 4,000 contacts in our Time Matters database. The feat of remembering everything about every one of those contacts would boggle the mind.
For that, we have Time Matters, and an add-on built by Basha Systems called the Basha Systems Office Management System for Time Matters (aka “OMS”). A couple of years ago, Basha Systems created two packages for Time Matters software to make it more powerful – EPMS (Estate Planning Management System) and OMS (Office Management System).
The most amazing part of these packages and the one that everyone is most impressed with are the Power Views created by Seth Rowland and Ian Burrows. They seem simple (despite the thousands of dollars of development time). They implement the 3-Click solution. And in so doing they unlock the true power of Time Matters.
By clicking on a Contact in Time Matters and clicking on the Power View list, I can see numerous details at a glance. One of the things I really love about our power views for Time Matters is the ability in a single click to see the data entered on ALL THREE tabs of the Contact record (or the Matter record) in a single view which can be printed. The second favorite Power View is call OMS Contact Note Phone List. Here, in a single power view is a list of all contacts (with their name, code, phone number, cell number, and email), the full text of ALL related notes, and the full text of ALL related phone calls.
With information like that at their fingertips, lawyers/professionals can treat each of their clients (whether they have 50 or 5,000 clients, and whether they are solo or work with a team of 20 people) like EACH one was the most memorable and important client they had. All this information, available in 3-clicks and quick perusal, gives YOU that personal connection. It is an interesting concept and one we believe in at Basha Systems.