Starting a Professional Services Firm: Service Quality

Professionals are rightly very concerned with the quality of their work. Their qualifications and expertise are among the things that differentiate them. I often hear firm leaders brag about just how good their organizations are at delivering high quality work product for clients. The attitude seems to be, “do great work and the rest will take care of itself.”

I am not so sure that is true.

There is an important distinction to be made between the technical quality of the services we deliver and the quality of the service our clients receive. It is the difference between “how good was the work” and “how good was the experience of working with the firm.”

Good service is every bit as important as good work.

When Good Work Meets Poor Service Quality

I went to the eye doctor earlier this week. She is an excellent doctor that I have seen for a decade. She delivers high quality work as evidenced by the fact that I see perfectly after two eye surgeries. She scores very high on technical competence.

A trip to her office, on the other hand, leaves a lot to be desired. Making an appointment is difficult and requires multiple phone calls during their business hours. Upon arrival they make me fill out multiple forms, often repeating the same information from form to form – even though I filled out those same damn forms six months ago. When I’m done with the documents I wait. Her time is apparently much more valuable than my time.

There are many other doctors that would be just fine, maybe even ones with online scheduling and forms that don’t waste their patients’ time. The service quality in her office is horrible. She practically begs patients to look for an alternative. I probably will.

This may sound extreme, but this is how most professionals think about the value they provide clients. We invest heavily in ensuring that we provide quality work. In fact, that attitude is so prevalent that it is not difficult for clients to find other technically competent people.

That means that quality work isn’t always the competitive advantage that we think it is. 

Understanding Service Quality

We should balance our focus on technical quality with an emphasis on service quality.

• Are we easy to do business with?

• Do we take the time to get to know our clients and their businesses?

• Do we show any interest in items that are beyond the scope of the engagement?

• How difficult do we make scheduling, contracting, and invoicing?

• How good are we at listening?

• Do we communicate effectively around work activities, expectations, problems, and changes?

• Do our clients feel valued?

• Do they think that they are important to us?

These are questions about the quality of our service, not our work.

When I talk to professionals about service quality, they too often equate it with developing a personal relationship with the client, as if taking someone to a baseball game can make up for all the bullshit we put them through.

Service quality is not about an insincere attempt at relationship management. It is about an attitude that should be built into our culture.

We love to tout our reference clients, but how many of those clients are making unsolicited referrals? References are almost always about technical competence and quality of work. Referrals, however, come as a result of real service quality.

The path to success is not in doing better work. You are likely already providing quality work. The key to success is in providing better service.

Attitude, Empathy, and Putting Clients First

Service quality cannot be taught and there is no grand gesture that checks the box. It is in the details. The little things that we do and don’t do in the course of our daily work with clients. It is an attitude. It requires rethinking how we work with clients even during the sales cycle and contracting process.

Remember that in most cases, our clients would rather not have to hire us. They come to us in times of need, trouble, and stress. They are often in a vulnerable position feeling both pain and fear. People do not wake up in the morning and think, “I really want to hire a management consultant today and pay them obscene amounts of money.” Their career is probably on the line when they make the call. We need to learn to think empathically and make working with our firms as easy and stress-free as possible.  

I believe that providing quality service and putting clients first is an essential core value of a successful professional services firm.

The good news is that the competition is generally pretty bad. If you can build a culture that values quality service as highly as quality work, you will be well on your way to success.