When Nothing Happens: The Most Important Moments in Your Client Journey

How can law firms manage the moments where nothing appears to happen? Because in the client’s mind, that is often when everything is happening.

If you ask a lawyer to map a client journey, you’ll typically get a neat, logical sequence of “key moments.”

•    Instruction.
•    First meeting.
•    Exchange.
•    Completion.
•    Hearing.
•    Outcome.
 
It’s orderly. It makes sense. It reflects how we experience the work. There’s just one problem. It’s not how the client experiences it - from the client’s perspective, the moments that matter most are often the ones where nothing appears to be happening at all; it is the invisible moments that carry the most weight.
 
In most matters, particularly those that are complex, high value or emotionally charged, the client spends far more time waiting than they do actively engaging.
 
•    Waiting for an update.
•    Waiting for the other side.
•    Waiting for a decision.
•    Waiting for something, anything, to move.
 
This is where anxiety creeps in. This is where assumptions are made. This is where confidence, quietly and invisibly, starts to erode. And yet, when we map journeys, these moments barely register.
 
I believe that this is because lawyers are trained to focus on events, milestones and outputs. That’s entirely rational. These are the points at which value is created and risk is managed.
 
But clients don’t experience value in the same way. They experience:

•    Uncertainty (“Has anything happened?”)
•    Loss of control (“Am I being forgotten?”)
•    Fear of the unknown (“Is this normal?”)
 
In behavioural terms, we are dealing with a classic asymmetry. We understand the process; they experience the emotion.
 
And where there is a gap in information, people don’t remain neutral. They fill it, usually with the least reassuring explanation. Left unmanaged, clients will often interpret silence as:

•    Delay
•    Lack of progress
•    Lack of priority
•    Or, in the worst cases, lack of competence

None of which may be true, but all of which feel real.
Fortunately, a few simple shifts can make a disproportionate difference:
 
1. Make the implicit explicit
Don’t assume clients understand what’s happening in periods of inactivity.
A short update that says “there is no update, and here’s why” can be surprisingly powerful.
2. Set expectations early, and revisit them
If a stage is likely to take three weeks, say so. Better still, explain what is happening during those three weeks behind the scenes.
3. Pre-empt the emotional dip
If you know a delay is coming, get ahead of it. Silence feels very different when it has been anticipated.
4. Create “progress signals”

Even where there is no external movement, internal progress such as reviews, drafting or strategy can be shared in a way that reassures without overloading.
 
Final thought

We are very good at managing the moments where something happens. The opportunity, still largely untapped in most firms, is to manage the moments where nothing appears to happen. Because in the client’s mind, that is often when everything is happening.

David Price is Head of Client Experience, at Wolferstans Solicitors in Plymouth and LawNet's CX lead.