There were red faces at Norton Rose this week when clients who had turned up for a training session were left waiting around before finally being sent home.

It seems no one had told the firm's admin staff that the event had been cancelled before Christmas. So they had sent emails to the clients reminding them to come along, and a group of around 20 of them arrived at the firm's London Bridge offices on Tuesday morning, looking forward to a briefing on contract terms.

Usually clients would be ushered into a swish conference room and fed coffee and bacon rolls before a sales pitch masquerading as a training session. But instead they were left waiting for half an hour until a shame-faced member of security staff finally ushered them out.

    Norton Rose, Tuesday morning

A spokeswoman for the firm told RollOnFriday that "In years of offering free client training sessions, and several of them a week, this is the first time something like this has happened. We did of course call all of the clients affected and have apologised for the mistake. We have taken steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again."
 
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Comments

Anonymous 27 January 12 11:12

Most client's (lay and professional) are intelligent enough to recognise that the training session is part of an overall marketing strtegy. But unless the training is proper training, they won't show up simply to be sold to.

So I don't recognise the "sales pitch masquerading as a training session". Trainiung sessions may be good for client retention and profile raising, but they have to have meat as well (and not simply in the rolls, either!)

Anonymous 27 January 12 14:34

I was there, and I don't think it was the end of the world. I feel more sorry for the admin person who cancelled everything else (internal people, trainer, room, catering, IT...) other than clients!

I got a personal call from a partner apologising which I was impressed with. I was more disappointed that they had also cancelled the breakfast, as NR training session breakfasts are great...