Building client relationships and the use of digital media

Guy Shone: So the world of business is changing and here in the City the way that consultancies and law firms and technology businesses all interact together is changing very dramatically. How do you see behaviour changing going forward when it comes to partnering and doing business with your clients?

Alexandra Brodie: Well I think there is an enormous investment in new media, social media and channels of communication with clients which is really important and brave. You have to speak to clients in the way they wish to be spoken to, but the underlying theory is exactly the same. The client is key. The clients you are trying to help, you want them to do better as a result of your involvement with them and consequently you need to build a relationship and however you are going to communicate most effectively is important. So if your client wants to hear from you via Twitter or via a social media, that's what you need to do and you need to be good at it and you need to take the time to be good at it. If they want to see you face-to-face, then you need to move yourself and go and be there because they are who you are trying to help.

Guy: It's interesting, there is a lot of talk about Twitter and about social media and how it's the future and seemingly every conference platform has somebody talking about using Twitter, but is the reality any different? How do you see the importance of social media? Is it something that you think is important to invest in more going forward? What's the reality of how businesses feed into that going forward?

Alexandra: I think if everyone else is using it within your client community you need to invest in it and you need to be good at it. You need to be relevant to your client and communicate in a way that they wish to be communicated with, but ultimately you have still got to come back to client relationships. You've got to help them in a way that's going to be easy for them. You are there to get out of the way and facilitate great results and that's the whole end game.

Guy: Does it feel different doing business with partners now and building relationships than it did five or ten years ago?

Alexandra: I think social media gives you the chance to be more relevant more quickly with a client and therefore, the relationship feels more tied together which can only be a good thing and obviously business is international - it doesn’t stop so methods of communication that are quick, instantaneous and not time reliant in terms of time zone are invaluable. But ultimately, this is still all just a tool to enable the greater good which is enhanced business for your client and a better relationship with your client and the more you take time to get to know somebody and what they want and how they want it, it's all to the good.

Guy: So new media for the sake of it really is not where we're going and what we're talking about is is it's a platform, an infrastructure to do business more effectively?

Alexandra: Absolutely. I think you are completely right. It's a tool to enable the same result that has ever been there, which is to deliver a time relevant, commercially helpful, cost efficient service to your client and the more you can get to know them, speak their language, deliver things they want delivering, the better you will be.

Guy: Law firms like lots of other firms are using social media more and more now going forward. Can you tell us a bit about your approach to social media?

Alexandra: Yes. We are very lucky, the firm is quite forward thinking and so has invested a great deal of time and expertise drawing in talented people to look at new platforms of communication and make sure we are using them effectively. So everyone is encouraged to have their own Twitter feed but everyone has been given training on how to use it effectively within a business context, also looking at the way we use our website and microsite to deliver contents to our client base in a way that they would find helpful and useful. So, for example, these days you would be quite often providing free documentation to start-up companies and that's something we are very keen to do within the tech space because we want to help that community when it's nascent because we are genuinely passionate about this and in London at the moment it's an amazing place, it's a hotbed of opportunities and new technology-based businesses and we are very lucky to be in the middle of it to be honest.

Guy: Do you think it's changing the way that businesses are partnering with each other? Is it more about collaborating now, you know, more than perhaps it was five or ten years ago?

Alexandra: Yes. Law firms like anything else, we are a service provider. We're part of the client's team and that's where we want to be. We want to know our clients really well, understand what their business opportunities are and we take great pride as well in building our own networks so that when a client comes to us and says they are thinking of moving into a space and seeking funding for something, or they just really need to get hold of somebody in a particular enterprise, then we can mine our network that goes across the entire partnership and find those connections and help to do that for our client. So I think, you know, the idea of just providing a legal service is no longer good enough. That's kind of the baseline of what you are trying to do. You want to be a commercial partner with a client, with your legal specialism adding value to what they are trying to achieve.