Discovering What’s Important to Your Professional Services Business

In its most basic terms, your professional service firm requires a professional or consultant, a client, a means of external communication between the two, a contract or agreement and a place to meet. Of course, you also rely on the support of your team, the use of an IT system and a method for storing and retrieving contact details and original documentation. These key areas are what you need to protect through your BC.

More specifically, the fundamentals of your professional firm are based on providing a consistent and high level of guidance and building a strong working relationship between your staff and clients. The latter rely on you for professional guidance in the running of their business or an aspect of their personal life. Perhaps their own BC plan requires them to talk through, say, their accounts with a professional in order to better understand what they’re spending and where and how much money they can afford to put into contingency stock.

Providing this type of service to your customers relates to the reputation that forms around your business and determines the relationships that you have with your clients. The service extends beyond the time you spend with your clients in the office to maintaining client confidentiality and being available for clients to contact you when they need to.

We focus in this section on some specific aspects of concern to the professional service firm and show you how BC can help.

Considering staffing issues

Employees are vital to a professional firm. Their advice and guidance is the service you’re providing and it’s unique to each client. Although employees may follow a general business strategy or formalised advice system, such guidance is ultimately dependent on the client’s individual situation.

The nature of the professional firm means that staff and clients work closely with each other, and so you often try to match partnerships suitably when clients first approach your business. As a result, complications can arise when employees are unwell or on holiday. The loss of a key member through unplanned leave or long-term illness can have a huge effect on a small professional firm. When staff members leave unexpectedly and establish their own company or go to work for a competitor, you can face some sudden client retention challenges.

As part of your BC programme you need to consider whether clients are happy to deal with someone else in the firm and whether another member of staff is available with the expertise to deal with specifics of the client’s organisation or query.

Contractual agreements can even require that clients work with a specific member of staff and they may object to compromising on a one-off consultation with someone else, even if that person has similar experience and is from the same team.

To deal with such staff issues, consider temporarily contracting in someone of similar experience and expertise, or asking another professional for guidance on how to advise your client. Perhaps get in touch with a past employee or colleague who’s had experience in this area. Being on good terms with others in your line of expertise can be mutually beneficial in sharing contacts and experience.

Endeavour to retain ‘ownership’ of the relationship with the client, and don’t simply hand over a customer to a rival firm because a member of your staff is on leave.

Your BC plans need to include how you manage changes in staffing and ensure that you always maintain a professional and efficient client service. Think about the experience of your team and how you’re equipped to deal with different clients and situations. Try not to have all the most experienced members of staff on a fortnight’s holiday at the same time. If regular clients have a crisis and need expert advice during this period, they may not be satisfied with a temporary worker who’s helping out in your firm.

Backing up data

As with most businesses, IT is likely to form a key component of your firm. Whether you use it every day to update your company website and communicate with clients, or just now and again to update client records and check your accounts, continuing business as usual when your IT fails is going to be difficult. Make sure that you have a backup system for the contact details of your clients and know how you can get through to them if you’re unable to access email.

Your portfolio of information on clients – including contact details, certain personal details and perhaps information about their business or occupation – contains valuable material. Even if clients have since left you or seem to have been a one-off consultation, keep a record of your correspondence because it may prove useful if they return later for advice. An accountant, for example, may have a record of the progress and developments of a client’s accounts, and previous advice given along with any difficulties faced.

This information is confidential and sensitive and been entrusted to you, and it may not be easy to retrieve if lost. For example, a client with an ongoing mortgage application may store the original deeds in a legal firm to complete the transaction. Not only is the relationship between you and your client dependent on the safe-keeping of this information, but so is the status of your client’s mortgage.

You’re responsible for keeping this type of documentation safe and secure. Storing, say, contracts safely is a way of making sure that the payment of your fees remains according to the agreed arrangement. This type of original documentation is hugely important. Keep copies of originals and records of customer liaisons somewhere safe so that if a fire in the office destroys the cabinets filled with previous meeting actions, and reviews of the progress of a long-term customer, you have backups to refer to.

Even simple measures such as photocopying contracts and storing them at an alternative location is better than nothing, and provides some evidence of a formal agreement if you’re unfortunate enough to lose everything else.

Looking after your premises

The office or workspace is the hub of your professional firm – the engine that drives the services delivered to your clients. You file documents, base technology and keep resources at your premises. Here clients may arrange to meet you and potential customers discuss whether you’re suitable for providing the service they want. The space itself provides a visual representation of your business and what you do, often giving an invaluable first impression to visitors.

Your BC needs to include plans for how you continue time-critical activities without losing clients if you’re unable to access your workspace for whatever reason. You may need to arrange an alternative location to meet clients and/or a means of accessing details and information on your clients from outside the usual office.

Consider options such as additional virtual hubs through remote working, which enable the operations of the firm to continue as much as possible during the disruption. You can then work from alternative sites and access your IT system from outside the now inaccessible office.

Protecting your reputation

Ensuring client satisfaction is important for building a positive reputation in your local area and business sector. Where competition is fierce, clients are most likely to go with professional firms recommended by friends or businesses that are well known for being reputable and reliable. Your reputation is built on a combination of factors such as word of mouth, positive media and press releases, sponsorship from other companies and positive statements from your bank.

In today’s litigious world, the buck stops with you. Suffering an interruption is devastating enough for your business, but the effect that it can then have on your reputation is something from which you may never recover. A good reputation takes a long time and hard work to build, but a single off-day or mismanaged case can destroy it. You’re seen as the fulcrum and focus of the business, and in the event of the business failing to meet its clients’ demands, you’re the one who’s tarnished and identified with that failure.

This all sounds rather daunting, but fortunately having a firm BC plan in place helps to protect your reputation, by maintaining the continuity of your organisation and preparing it for any disruption.

Look at the practices of other small firms in your sector and learn from their success (and failure) stories. The understanding that you have of your staff, profession and business undoubtedly puts you in a position of power over your competitors. Understanding competitive rates for the local area, the job market and what the clients who come to you really need from your service means that you can appeal to the right people. Talk confidently to potential customers by addressing the right market for your capabilities.

Seek out the knowledge of experts and local authorities as well as other professional firms. You enrich your understanding of where your professional firm fits into the local business market, and form an effective and appropriate BC plan by comparing your programme to ones devised by similar businesses. Starting off with realistic goals and actions allows you to build and expand your BC programme progressively without becoming disheartened or uninterested. You then see immediate results and benefits, which helps to embed the culture firmly among your staff and within the organisation.

Maintaining your fees

The survival of your business relies upon the income it receives. When the business stops delivering services due to a disruption and has increased expenditure, it can suffer a decline in fee earning and collecting capability.

For some small businesses income is fairly steady and doesn’t vary particularly from month to month. For professional firms such as legal advisors, however, fees depend upon client numbers and the nature of the services that clients require. As a professional firm you strive to make sure that your fee income meets or exceeds your outgoings, which makes fees a key element to include in your BC plan.

The best way to protect your fees income is to maintain the services that are chargeable to clients. Clients pay for the service provided, and an indication that the quality, content and speed of the work has suffered may compromise the scale of the fees. Afterwards, restoring confidence in your firm is hard and so a downwards spiral can begin. Maintaining the quality of service your firm provides is the best measure to ensure continued deliverance of your fees.

Fulfilling your obligations

When you set up and run a professional firm you take on a number of obligations, including commitments to your profession, clients and staff. Your firm is likely to be governed by a professional body, which has expected standards that you’re obliged to meet and hopefully exceed. The ability to maintain your business to these professional standards is paramount in meeting quality requirements.

Your clients entrust you to deliver and provide a service, and you have an obligation to meet their demands and deliver what they require and expect. As a key aspect of your business, you want to make sure that clients are kept happy. Having a BC system in place provides clients with a sense of security and illustrates that you’ve thought about, prepared and tested a continuity system and are strengthening the resilience of your business. For instance, the potentially sensitive business or personal matters that you may be dealing with require your BC plan to ensure that client confidentiality is secure. Assess how you record and store your client’s details and make sure that they’re protected from theft or hacking.

You also hold a level of responsibility to your staff: you offer them a contract of employment and they expect to build a career and income upon what you provide for them. Maintain the integrity of this expectation and endeavour to provide them with continuous and rewarding work. In return they work consistently for you and provide the framework from which your business is built.