While we have our own opinions on lots of facets of legal technology, we don’t believe in shutting down debate or never giving air time to alternative viewpoints. So we’re delighted that Cloud9 Insight are here with their guest blog setting out a more positive case for CRM systems.
There’s no doubt that technology is reshaping the legal sector. The industry, which is generally known to be more traditional, has had to quickly adapt and digitally transform since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) could be used in the legal sector to manage client and referrer relationships, give greater insight into the relationships held across the firm to be able to better market all services that may be relevant to the client and ensure closer referrer relationships. A great CRM will improve the client experience of engaging with your practice as they are treated as a single customer with access to information regarding all historical communications, including event attendance and email engagement. An often overlooked consideration in the legal sector is managing the complexity of relationships of key stakeholders, such as influencers and referrers of new clients. Wouldn’t it be great to know where you get your business from and protect your future revenues!
Yet, many legal firms are still hesitating to embrace digital and have used many excuses to avoid implementing a new CRM. Here are our top 4 reasons why your legal firm needs to implement CRM now:
1. Manage client relationship interactions
Optimising the client’s experience should always be central to the services you provide. By having a greater visibility of their journey and their needs, your clients will feel understood. How often do legal firms engage with a client for them never to be a client again, due to a lost opportunity to continue a dialogue?
The support offered to client-facing employees by a CRM will enable them to cultivate relationships with clients who will in turn develop loyalty to your firm, increasing their life-time value for your firm.
Whilst for prospective clients, a CRM can be used to manage and nurture inbound enquiries. Visibility of all communications with a prospective client empowers lawyers with the information that they need to close more potential revenue opportunities.
2. Leveraging marketing capabilities
We are increasingly seeing more law firms taking steps towards making business development and marketing central to their firm. A CRM’s marketing capabilities offer insight and analysis into the most profitable clients for your practice and help to develop tailored methods of communication to support this.
By using criteria to develop profiles of your clients in CRM, they will receive relevant communication which will help your firm stay front of mind. This can be used for newsletters, which can be built and sent from within your CRM. Whilst afterwards you are offered in-depth analysis of how it was received, allowing you to tailor your newsletters over time.
Event management enabled by CRM means that events can be planned and promoted without the need for outside agencies.
Empowering your firm with information when networking with influencers and referring partners increases the likelihood of establishing strategic relationships at events, such as with a large estate agency.
Afterwards the insights offered, regarding attendees, will once again be recorded into the CRM. Yet, the connections established at such well-managed events are where you will see your ROI.
3. Reporting and visibility of client journeys
Law firms have a significant volume of valuable data and client information, so the prospect of transferring all this from existing systems into a new CRM could be daunting. Many lawyers who are already busy with case work will be reluctant to add to the workload, therefore a well-thought through CRM solution will ensure tight interfaces to other business applications to ensure no rekeying of information is required.
A well-functioning CRM offers greater internal visibility of your firm and trends will emerge which enables lawyers to examine data on a macro level to give greater visibility of key success indicators, which is invaluable. This makes it easier to identify the big clients and analyse the strategic importance of future clients by giving greater visibility into the typical trajectory of a client’s journey and analyse their life-time value.
Yet, the implementation of CRM should serve as a component of longer-term digital strategy. A good CRM has your unique firm at its heart. It’s critical that the solution supports your firm’s processes and therefore an understanding of these key functions and their current pain points is important when implementing CRM.
4. Staying ahead of new entrants into the market
Cloud9’s mission is to ‘create the future of work’, and we’re seeing a new breed of law firms emerging – firms that leverage technology to attract more opportunities and use data to optimise their resources. New entrants into the market are building their firm’s business model using cloud technology which gives a huge competitive advantage and makes them more agile to deliver services to their clients.
Unless your firm adapts now, they risk being left behind. Indeed, how easy was it for your firm to adapt during lockdown?
This crisis has served as a wake-up call for many firms that did not have the digital processes in place to support the rapidly changing landscape of the workplace. For potential clients making enquiries at this time it will also have been clear which firms are digitally prepared with processes which ensure stability and sustainability.
It’s time to challenge the outdated idea that the legal sector is not compatible with digital solutions, and instead embrace the modern workplace.
Cloud9 insight are forming alliances with other specialists within the legal sector to offer a new approach to using CRM that is relevant to the legal sector. If you are interested in participating in Cloud9 Law and want to be part of forging the path for the future of modern law firms, then we would love your expertise and input.
To begin your CRM journey then contact Cloud9 Insight to get started
