#RichLifeLawyer Show 014: Estate Planning Phone Calls
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Most estate planning lawyers have a terrible reputation when it comes to returning phone calls.
It’s almost as though it’s a badge of honor that they are difficult to get in touch with.
As if that makes them important.
We, as you might guess, take a different approach to estate planning phone calls.
We believe in being diligent. We believe in reaching out. And we believe in returning calls promptly.
To learn how we handle our estate planning phone calls, click the play button above!
Cheers,
Christopher Small
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Christopher Small is a Seattle estate planning attorney who helps people get rich and live forever. He is also the owner of CMS Law Firm LLC.
Hey everybody this is Christopher Small and this episode fourteen of the Rich Life Lawyer Show. I am super excited to be here with you today I am outside walking around. It’s kind of the last day it’s actually been stormy and didn’t want to be cooped up in my office all day, so I thought I would walk out here and talk to you about my firm while walking the streets of Kirkland. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about today was a solution to the problem that many of you, if you have ever tried or had to use an attorney in the past probably have experienced. And that is communication. Attorneys are notoriously bad at communication. Not me by the way and not my firm to be clear. And there’s a reason for that which we will get to. But if it is your type that I think does hold some truth at least in the, a lot of the attorneys that I’ve seen in the way that their law firms are set up and their systems are set up. You see these avenues to have problems in communication and that’s the last thing I want.
My number one goal, you know, after really helping you meet your goals and giving you what want is to give you the ultimate experience. You know I want you to walk away from this feeling good. To walk away feeling like you have created a relationship that you want to go on for more than just the length of our engagement. You know, of me doing work for you. I want you to be excited and interested when I call because you feel like something good is going. So, we have created some systems and processes and things like that to help make sure that your call and your questions are answered promptly and efficiently. So these will be done. I want to talk about this little bit today because I want to just let you know that, that we are thinking about this stuff and working on this stuff and our number one goal is your satisfaction. So what we do is a couple different things. First things first, whenever you call, I am automatically set up to return phone calls between eleven and twelve and between, no I’m sorry, I apologize. Between ten and eleven and between three and four generally.
Unless something else pops up and gets in the way. Those are typically the two times that I have slot on my calendar to return phone calls and there’s a reason for that. The reason for that is that I want to have time to prepare for your call. I want to make sure that we set a time that we are both available. And so it’s like those times when you call and you talk to Emily, she will probably ask you what the call is regarding and if she can answer the question then she will. Again this is about efficiency and effectiveness. If you can have your phone call answered. It’s going to save you time and it’s going to get the job done. If she cannot answer your question, then she will ask you when you’re available to talk again between the time of ten eleven and three and four. And you pick a time, we’ll set the time and at that time I’ll call you back. That’s just how it goes. So that’s sort of stage one. We have this very set process and procedure for making sure that you know, you receive callbacks and get your questions answered very quickly. So that’s the first thing.
The second thing is that I don’t believe it’s your responsibility to always reach out to us. I want to be proactive in communicating with you and making sure that everything is going smoothly. So what we do is every Tuesday, I call you. If you are a current client, if we’re doing work for you every Tuesday, I’ll call you and just check in. If I have updates, I update. If there are no updates, then I just say you know, we’re progressing, we’re working on your stuff. We’re waiting to get some information back on you but in any event, how’s it going, right. Are there any questions, concerns, problems, anything else you wanna talk about. How’s life? How are the kids? How’s the family? How’s the job? You know are you going to vacation anywhere? Part of what I’m, my job is to just get to know you, you know. And I enjoy that. So that’s basically what we do.
That’s how we make sure that we are in constant communication with you. Alright, no one else, will not know that. I don’t, very few law firms I know do that because they don’t really place the emphasis on client service that we do but just a fact. So test it out. If you have a question, something, call (206) 659–1512. You will get walked through that exact same process. If you’re our client, been listening on Tuesdays or be ready, have your phone by you, phone will ring. It will be me, I will calling. Okay? That is it for today. Hope you’re having a great life. Hope you’re having a great day and I will catch up with you soon. Bye.
Originally published at cmslawfirm.com on July 25, 2016.
