Jay Ruane  0:00  

Hello, hello. Welcome to this edition of the Law Firm Blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane, and with me, as always, is my man, Seth Price. Seth, what headquarters are you at today? It looks like…

Seth Price  0:16  

I’m at BluShark today. 

Jay Ruane  0:17  

Yeah, because at Price Benowitz I see, you know, I’ve been in your office. You got the, you know, the diplomas on the wall. 

Seth Price  0:24  

At BluShark, nobody cares about the diplomas. 

Jay Ruane  0:27  

That’s okay. So Seth, I want to talk to you about something that I experienced this week. A lot of us have, and if you haven’t, you’re going to, but I had to go for a colonoscopy this week, and I want to talk a little bit about the experience, because I think there’s a lot of parallels to what our clients go through. So let me set this up for you, and I want to get your feedback on it. So here’s what happens. So the doctor says in my new physical, hey, guess what? We can’t avoid it any longer. Time for you to do the colonoscopy. Here’s how I want you to do it, blah, blah, blah, set it up with this specialist. They’ll call you. So I go through the whole thing. A couple things jump out at me as being interesting as a service customer this time, rather than the one providing the service. number one, I filled out my stuff with my primary doctor, and then I had to go and do a consultation with the team. I think it was just a way to bill for another in office visit. But I had to give them all of my insurance information, my medical information, my you know, name of my kids, all that stuff. That’s fine. That was six weeks ago. I go to the hospital yesterday to do the procedure. I got to fill out all that stuff again. Now I’ve already given them that stuff, and they’re like, Well, when you get done with this, then we can take you in. Why am I doing that? Are you making your customers? Are you making your clients give information to multiple people again and again and again? I think that was a very frustrating for me, because I was like, Why do I got to fill this stuff out again? Because it’s all in the system already. You’re giving to me on a clipboard with a pen, and guess what, my insurance information. You already have it. You already have my name.

Seth Price  2:23  

All they really care. The idea is a pre meaning nonsense. Give me the pills, or give me the liquid. A big fan of pills, for anybody hasn’t done it pills.

Jay Ruane  2:31  

I had to do the gallon of liquid. It was not fun.

Seth Price  2:35  

There’s an alternative, which is a bunch of pills. Still I gotta poop, but at least you have to drink the crap. So anyway, I’m a big, big proponent of that. But, yeah, no, look, I see it all the time. And the ability, you know, I every interaction that we have, where somebody’s handing the clipboard, hopefully, is a thing of the past. Now, let me give you this is.

Jay Ruane  2:59  

Before you, before you talk. Let me, let me. Let me talk about so I’m at the hospital. I say to the guy at the front desk, hey, should my wife come in and sit here and wait? Should she leave? What’s the deal? How long does this take? He goes, Well, it’s nine o’clock. You’ll be done at 11. I said perfect. I’ll just tell my wife go get a Starbucks. Come back, hang out for a little while, and we’ll be ready to go. They take me in. They get me set up. They put me in a little room. They’re like, get dressed, put on the Johnny coat, put on the socks, get in the bed. So I’m like ooo, I got you. And I’m sitting there. And then it’s 10 o’clock. They come in. They try to stick me. They stick the right arm. They can’t get a vein. They go to the left arm, they finally get it. Okay, that’s fine. I understand there’s going to be some problems. I saw a nurse once between the 9:05 when I went in there, and 10 when they stuck me, and 11 o’clock. Now I’ve told my wife. They say two hours. The guy’s front desk told me two hours. Come back. It’s 11 o’clock. I haven’t gone anywhere. I haven’t spoken to anyone, the anesthesiologist, any other nurses, anything. I’m sitting there in a bed for now an hour and 55 minutes, just wondering what’s going on. What’s going on? Finally, a nurse comes in at 11, when I think I’m supposed to be done, and she says, hey, you know what? There have been some other things that have taken longer than expected, and that’s what the delay is for. We’ll get you in as soon as possible. That’s it. Not like, hey, we’ll get you in a half hour. we’ll get you in in an hour. you’ll be out of here by this time. Nothing’s very, very vague. Then I’m waiting. Anesthesiologist comes in, goes through the questions, that sort of thing. I still haven’t met the doctor yet, right? So then finally, the doctor comes in, it’s now noon, and the doctor’s like, yeah, there was a bit of a delay. Somebody came in with an emergency. We had to bump you back. Look, I’m okay with being bumped back, but you got a communicate with me, because I’m sitting there saying, What’s going on here? I was told one thing by somebody who clearly had no idea, like, oh, there’s more people that are added to the list. You know, the front receptionist didn’t have the knowledge and over promised something that they couldn’t deliver on. And I’m just saying, from a client perspective, I got soured on this whole operation, because it would have been very easy for them to come in and say, hey, look, somebody came in. It was an emergency. We got to push you back. Hey, I know you should have been out of here by now. Hey, this is what’s going on. The lack of communication was what really bothered me, and I think about that in terms of how many times are we like, let us do the job that you hired us for, when really the clients just want to know, hey, where am I in the process? That’s why something like, you know, Case Status maybe helps. But I think there’s needs to be effective communication right between the providers all levels, and the person who’s going through it. And I was, I got victimized yesterday. I felt that I wasn’t given adequate information while I’m sitting there. And I’m wondering what could be better.

Seth Price  6:13  

The medical system I did a post on LinkedIn about rehab centers. But I feel like, look, it is something within medical that I have seen. I hope we don’t do this illegal. We have to strive to do much, much better. But what you know, I how many times you’ve been in a doctor’s office with an appointment with multiple people running the doctor’s not even in yet? Oh, to me, so much of this comes from the top, if somebody cares and that look, that’s why, at least in my hood, they’re now surgery center. You’re not going to a hospital. You don’t want to worry about some emergency getting in your way. It’s a place where they line you up for the colonoscopies, they get you out. And I think that’s what we try to do as the law firm, is not have something where it’s multiple different large parts, small parts. If you’re doing DUIs, let’s get those done in a way. So the communication is done with the client. You’re in there. We know that bad reviews when they happen outside the crazies, outside of somebody doesn’t we can’t take the case. It’s lack of communication when they happen. That’s our issue. And so anything you can do, and look, my biggest pet peeve in life. we’ve talked about this over the years, is somebody who gives you information without knowing. How often do you ask somebody where something is and they tell you without really knowing what it is and you end up in the wrong direction? That’s it’s the same concept. And I think that as business owners, the more that we look client centric and make sure that our team is empowered to do that. If this guy had said, Hey, on a good day. You’re out at 11, but you never know that’s very different. 

Jay Ruane  7:43  

I would have loved that. 

Seth Price  7:44  

And, oh, you know what? And I’d like to land the plane with this. This is something that I think is, is one of the biggest lessons learned. In fact, it’s a future LinkedIn post for me, I remember when closing real estate deals. I did a bunch of real estate investing in the aughts, you know, and was up to 500 drawers at one point, and I would be sitting at a close I’d be trying to close a deal. And you know what the process is, it’s a lender, a there’s a mortgage banker, and there’s a agent, and there’s another side and but the key was, was money coming, right? And the agent, very often would tell you, we’re closing on Tuesday, right? Very confidently. They’re getting their percentage, they’re they’re all excited they come in there, you know, their nice outfit for the closing and commercial ones are a little more freer than the residential ones, because it’s repeat players. And to Monday would come. We’re nowhere close to closing, right? And if somebody said, if the agent says, rather than we’re closing on Tuesday, the mortgage broker tells me we’re closing on Tuesday. that is different than we’re clear to closing, we’re closing on Tuesday. and that all the difference is that is what’s happening. If somebody, and again, all you have to do is say, you know, if somebody says, generally, that’s when it happens. But to give you a definitive you’re taking that to the bank, versus, with some degree of certainty, understanding something good. The truth is, if we took this, this place you went to, I’m guessing, the average person comes out in four hours based on what you’re telling probably, and that, you know, again, anything we can do, I know that. You know, I’m a big fan of one medical it’s a poor man’s concierge at Bezos and Amazon bought and their goal is, when you come in for your appointment on the half hour, you’re taken within a minute. You know, it is all customer service centric. You then get your blood test done there. I mean, it is. I mean, it’s the future. And I think that as we talk about private equity coming to law firms, as people start having the resources to do stuff right, and have stuff stacked in a good way, and not sort of the old care, you know, not a Medicare way, where you’re sort of like, I get a finite amount. I’m not going to get any more. Or but rather, how do I exceed that service? I assure you, Bezos is making great money, and he’s doing it by being super efficient with great service, not by squeezing the arch.

Jay Ruane  10:11  

Well, and I also think there’s a level of training. And I mean, I think in my office, what I need to do is set one of my friends up or send up. I mean, I don’t know somebody and say, I want you to go through the entire client experience. Well, you know, like, let’s walk through that. Yeah, a secret shopper, but not just for the call for the intake and the clothes. I want to secret shop every step of the process and then give my people suggested language. Now I’m not going to dictate say this at this point, because then it becomes robotic, and that doesn’t necessarily work, but the idea of saying, on a good day it’s X, on a bad day, it’s y. I won’t know what it’s like until we get in and start working. That’s a lot better than saying, hey, it’s going to be excellent and not delivering. So I think you can. And here’s the part of the problem is, especially with frontline employees, lower level employees, they want to make the client happy, because they know that impacts a lot of things, and they are just willing to say whatever, to get off the phone too. Like, just like an agent will say, Oh yeah, we can fix that at closing. Yeah, we can fix that at closing. Oh yeah, we can make a deal on that in that real estate agent, you know, they’ll sell you that house because, you know, anything is fixable, right? Oh, we can make that happen. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gonna happen. And people are more inclined to promise the world and not deliver it, you know. But I think there is a sort of under promise, over deliver, perspective you have to have. And I think if we, if we could do that, and you got to experience it, or have somebody close to you experience your process, to get truthful feedback,

Seth Price  11:54  

well, you know, but one thing I have found, and I’ll add to this, you may not want your dear friend. I’ve had friends go through our firm and some of their pain in the ass, no, no meaning you might go get the barber. What are your four barbers to do it in the sense that we want as close to an avatar of a client. And look, I have found that, you know, our worst experiences, historically as a firm, have been from other lawyers who have been my clients. I mean, just craziness. So, you know, I very interesting, a lot to unpack. Look, I think the medical system is one that has a lot of improvement. So to look there, I hope that we are many steps above that and continue to strive. But I think that as we listen to more recorded calls, and we use AI to check the ones we can’t listen to and that we continue to put these best processes in place with training. We now have full time trainers on staff at the firm to try to get that consistency. And again, you could say you listen or you have recorded calls, but if you’re not listening to them, it’s not doing you any good if somebody had recorded that interaction with you and that front desk guy. They should not want that.

Jay Ruane  13:03  

So speaking of that, I’ll tell you something that I worked on last week, and I got it up and running, and I’m really happy with it. We created using a bunch of different web hooks and two AI platforms. These AI avatars, where my intake trainees will call in and AI will spin up a case, a name of a client, their email address, their phone number, the fax, what they’ve sent to the police and everything, and we have it now where they are able to train. And what’s amazing to me is I have a remote person who was in reception. We thought she had the right attitude for intake. And so we ran her through our, you know, 20 hour intake training classroom with videos and tests and all that stuff. She came out of that. But one of the challenges we have is actually, we don’t want to put her on live phone calls yet, because

Seth Price  13:55  

we always have Right, right? What is training and what you can make your own little videos. But that one goes so far, right?

Jay Ruane  14:02  

So what I did is I create this. It took me 60 hours. Now I can set it up in about three took me 60 hours to develop it between fits and starts and getting it wrong on the different platforms. But now she calls into a phone number, she gives her code, her trainee code, and then there’s another person on the other line, and then she can talk to that person. She can do a full intake. She can answer questions that they’re scripted to ask questions things that she can talk about, things that she has to defer to the lawyer on. she started. she’s now done 96 of the 100 avatars that we have in our system, she started averaging high 60s and talking to the people. Now she’s in the low 90s for being scored. So we’re at a point now where we’re like, she can go and start doing live calls. So she did some live calls today for the very first time. You. Listen to the calls. She knocked it out of the park because she had the proper training. How many of us? And think about, you know, 1520, years ago, Seth, where you didn’t really know how to train, and you just were like, here, pick up a phone.

Seth Price  15:13  

Managing. Couldn’t, could barely, didn’t. They have a process. So Mr. Process with AI now has training.

Seth Price  15:20  

I want to demonstrate it for you. I created a whole bunch of personal injury avatars, so I’m going to develop that.

Seth Price  15:34  

Now we got to get you with Logan. She’s she’s badass. So if you want somebody to beta tested, I wanted to talk Jim Collins. Let’s let that go to next week. Next week. Got to meet Jim Collins, and he has a new book, for those of you who are fans of Good to Great, seminal business book of the 90s, what to make of a life? And he goes and looks at pairs of people it. We’ll talk about it. But this new book is sort of the interpersonal version of Good to Great, and I think it may be sort of the next big thing.

Jay Ruane  16:01  

Is it out yet I’m heading off to a robot.

Seth Price  16:04  

It may be pre orders. I’m not sure I have a hard copy myself, but he sort of goes and looks at people and discusses, sort of how in life, there are points looking at like through a window, when you’re in frame. there are areas of life, reports of life when you’re in fog, and then frame and you may fall off a cliff. And he goes through this and has all like basically found several dozen case studies of people and compared and contrast different people like you compare and contrast different companies in Good to Great.

Jay Ruane  16:36  

Well, I love Good to Great. So what’s the name of this one?

Seth Price  16:39  

This is “What to make of a life”, and we’re going to dig into it next episode.

Jay Ruane  16:43  

Fantastic. I’m gonna try to pick it up, so if I can, I’ll read it as well, and we’ll be able to have an honest conversation about it. That sounds phenomenal. So Seth, I’m off to Aruba next week for a little spring break action. So maybe you’ll have somebody guest host with you, and then I’ll be back in two weeks, or maybe, if it gets a rainy day, and in Aruba, we can quickly jump on and do our show.

Seth Price  17:07  

Hope you enjoy Aruba.

Jay Ruane  17:11  

You know, I said it’s funny. I just told you I was gonna read a business book. I said to my wife, I was not gonna read any business books.

Seth Price  17:18  

 Look, this book is again, it was a fascinating conversation. It’s like, giving advice. Should you be taking advice from people because they’re not in your shoes? And the question that came up that was sort of the hot button question, is giving advice to our kids? And, like, it’s our perspective, not theirs. And like, you know, you asked the question, how many guys were in fog, you know, went through the fog in your 20s, like everybody in the place. So there’s a lot to unpack. We will get there. I think this book could, could, could be transcended from business to interpersonal, and I think you’ll be okay.

Jay Ruane  17:52  

Fantastic, folks. That’s going to do it for us this week on the Law Firm Blueprint. Thank you so much for being with us. Of course, you can take us anywhere you want to go by subscribing to the law firm blueprint podcast, and you want to catch us live. Catch us live. 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific, live on LinkedIn and live in our Facebook group, the law firm blueprint that’s gonna do it for us. I’m Jay Ruane. He is Seth Price. Thanks for being with us, and we’ll see you next time here on the Law Firm Blueprint. Bye for now.