If we are late, you can spray us with mustard.

A recent poll of several hundred CEOs found that mediocre service is the new standard in most customer service industries. It seems that there is a trend across industries that places more importance on getting customers to return than getting customers to leave happy. Said another way, many industries are focused on making sure that the customer is “satisfied” as opposed to “blown away”. Our concern is that court reporters have fallen into the same habit of delivering “satisfactory” rather than “excellent” service. Whether your practice is based in Cincinnati, Florence or Dry Ridge, we want to make sure that your experience with Northern Kentucky Court Reporters blows you away.

What Does It Mean To Provide Excellent Court Reporting Service?

Believe it or not, there is sometimes a disconnect between court reporters and attorneys as to what it means to provide excellent customer service. Our informal polling discovered that most court reporters believe that “delivery of an accurate transcript” is the most important part of their job. Attorneys, on the other hand, expect nothing less than an accurate transcript. In other words, attorneys are merely satisfied if they are provided with an accurate transcript. Of course, the attorneys are correct, an accurate transcript should be the minimum provided by court reporters. It takes more to deliver excellent customer service.

Your service is  either excellent or it is poor. Our court reporters want to be excellent.

Accessibility.

We have found that the accessibility of our court reporters is critical to providing exceptional customer service. Accessibility means that attorneys can call our office and speak directly to a scheduling coordinator, a court reporter or a production specialist. If an attorney needs a copy of a transcript, they need to be able to locate the transcript as quickly as possible. Leaving a message on an answering machine is not an acceptable option for an attorney facing a filing deadline. Imagine that you forgot to schedule a videographer for the deposition of a medical expert who is charging you several hundred dollars an hour for his attendance. You do not want to sit around waiting to find out if a videographer can be immediately scheduled. With Northern Kentucky Court Reporters, you will always be able to reach a real live person who will take your call and immediately get to work on any problem that arises.

10 out of 10 attorneys do NOT want to leave a message.

Many of our clients reside in California and occasionally travel to Covington KY, Cincinnati or Florence KY for depositions. Of course, California is three hours behind Kentucky. This means that an attorney from California who calls at 4:00 PST is actually calling at 7:00 EST. Due to the time differences, we make sure to have someone available to answer calls and emails 24 hours a day. Small firms often fail to have the staffing in place to answer after-hours calls. The last thing an attorney should have to worry about is whether their court reporter will actually be at their next deposition.

Flexibility.

Excellent customer service means being flexible. We have heard many attorneys complain that they have to schedule their depositions around their court reporter’s calendar! We have hired a large staff of court reporters who can cover depositions at any time, on any day and at any location in Kentucky. If the only time your expert is available is 10 pm on a Saturday night, we will be there (and have been there). Northern Kentucky Court Reporters believes that attorneys and their staff should be in charge of the deposition process. Just tell us when and where to go and we will be there!

OK, so maybe we aren’t this flexible but we will work around your schedule.

Promptness.

Whatever happened to the old-fashioned importance of being on time? We have heard of attorneys being forced to wait up to an hour for their court reporter to arrive. We know this is true because the attorneys eventually called us in as a replacement. We believe that being “on time” means arriving at a deposition at least 30 minutes early. Look, some experts charge upwards of $500 per hour. No matter how great your expert is, you do not want to pay $250 to drink coffee with them while waiting on a court reporter. Individually, our reporters are always on time. Moreover, we always have court reporters on standby in case you need to schedule a last minute deposition. The bottom line is that we make it our business to wait on you (not the other way around).

Technical Sophistication.

The days of going to trial with a white-board and a few blown-up medical illustrations seem to be gone. More and more often, attorneys are turning to sophisticated trial presentation services, playing synchronized video clips in their openings and closings, relying on iPad apps to help select jurors and displaying electronic exhibits on large screens to win their cases. When we produce a deposition transcript, we can produce it in any file format that an attorney may need. Whether you prefer PDF, ASCII, Etran, Sanction, Summation, Trial Director or Visionary – – we can accommodate your needs. We have invested heavily in trial presentation software, video editing equipment and transcript publishers. If your office is paperless, and you want to view every transcript on an iPad viewer, we should be your first choice in court reporting. Whatever your need, we can handle it.

At Northern Kentucky Court Reporters, we are striving to bring customer service back to the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky court reporting industry. When you schedule our court reporters, you can be sure that we will answer the phone, schedule the deposition around your schedule and show-up early. Give us a try and let us deliver excellent court reporting service.