Marketing 101: How to Annoy Your Clients
By Michael Vitt

Reasons abound for keeping on clients’ good side:  reputation, pride, getting paid with less resistance, and avoiding malpractice claims, to name but a few. One strong reason is that current and past clients are the most likely source of future work — either directly or through referral.  So, make it a top priority to be aware of what your clients experience when they interact with you and your firm.

Do not presume that clients will speak up if something irks them.  Marketing researchers have learned that businesses can expect only 4 percent of their dissatisfied customers to complain — and that 91 percent of their dissatisfied customers will never return.

Also, do not underestimate the impact a peeved client can have.  Those marketing researchers also have learned that, on average, 80 percent of dissatisfied customers tell 10 people of their bad experience, and that 20 percent tell up to 20 people.

What if lawyers or firms actually wanted to annoy their clients? How would they behave? The MSBA's Practice Management & Marketing Section wondered, and so recently decided to ask practicing lawyers, paralegals and law marketing professionals to list some behaviors they have observed in lawyers who act as though annoying clients is a top priority.

Here is some of what they offered:

Don’t return client’s phone calls — ever, if possible, but certainly never in a timely fashion.  (This — or various versions of it — made up 50 of the Top 50 responses.)

Keep clients in the dark about the status of their cases.

Keep it firmly in mind that you are far smarter than your clients; talk down to them whenever possible.

Promise things you can’t deliver, then don’t deliver them.

Always tell clients, “No, you can’t do that,” but never follow up with “but here’s how you can do it.”

Provide no detail in invoices, so clients will have no idea what you’ve done on their behalf.

Always use terms of endearment, especially with women; never use a first or last name when you can use “honey,” “dear,” or “babe.”

Yell at your clients’ secretaries when you are having a bad day.

So clients will remember how busy and important you are, never send them anything when you say you will.

Install a response to emails saying you are on vacation for a month — and leave no other contact information.

Have paralegals do the work, then charge attorney rates.

Call clients to see how they’re doing — and then charge them.

Send your bills months after you complete your services, demonstrating your lack of efficiency and greatly hindering any billing review by clients.

Do not simply and clearly divulge your billing rate to clients, or explain other costs and expenses to them.

Make sure your receptionists, secretaries, paralegals or other support staffers never remember a client’s name.

Keep clients on hold for a long, long time.

Always tell clients that your department does not do what they want — and that’s that.

Have several people call clients and ask them for the same information several times — and bill them for all the time that takes.

Keep no good notes in clients’ files, thus enabling you to repeatedly have several people call clients and ask them for the same information.

Misspell clients’ names.

Call them by the wrong names.

Mispronounce their names.

Be rude or apathetic when they call.

Let them know you are “too busy” to talk with them, and do not return their calls later.

When talking with them, confuse the facts of their cases with those of other clients.

Cancel appointments when you find something “better” to do — even at the last minute.

Take other clients’ phone calls while clients are sitting in your office discussing their own cases.

Keep clients waiting as long as possible.

Refuse to acknowledge that you don’t know an answer, but will try to find out.

Promise work to clients without checking with your support staff to determine whether the deadline you’ve set is reasonable or even possible.

Be late to court for clients’ business.

Make derogatory comments about clients within earshot of a phone that has not been put on hold.

Direct a secretary or paralegal to inform clients that you are “not in,” then make plenty of noise within earshot of the phone to make it clear that you just didn’t want to take the call.

Answer your own phone, pretend to be someone else, deny that you are in the office — and then tell the client that the file you need is in your office, where your paralegal is meeting with another client.

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MICHAEL VITT, JD, cochairs the MSBA’s Practice Management & Marketing Section. After 20 years of daily newspaper work, he now offers writing, editing and other law marketing communications services through Vitt Communications.