Client Advisor, Laura Wood, provides a solution to the age old problem of finding the balance between client communication, tedious admin tasks and how to improve business profitability and client satisfaction for the better.
In a world where communication is constant – ensure your client satisfaction is too!
In the legal world, regular communication, to both clients and other third parties, is non-negotiable. Now, the term ‘regular’ can have different interpretations – with no definitive time limit, its unapologetic vagueness has, admittedly, in the past, gifted a little bit of breathing space for most of us in the legal industry.
However, with growing client demands and expectant requests for regular updates, what once was an interpretation of ‘regular’ being a ‘non-committal every couple of weeks’ update, or a more politely phrased, ‘when significant changes have happened within a case’ update, we are now seeing a shift in consensus around client expectations where ‘regular communication’ is concerned.
Nowadays, both on a professional and personal level, people are in constant communication, and expectations of response times have changed from days to minutes. Whether it be via social channels, WhatsApp, telephone or email, regular updates often mean ‘real-time’ (or as feasibly close to). As a result, Law firms’ standard practice has changed to meet such demands to ensure efficient client correspondence is prioritised and in keeping with client expectations.
The trials and tribulations of email filing
When you’re a solicitor, case handler or fee earner in general, the balancing act between keeping clients up to date and ensuring you’re delivering the specialist service you are being attributed to can be difficult – especially when the task at hand that’s causing the headache is not writing the emails but the filing of them.
Take any case and the email admin that comes with it - multiple emails are received from multiple clients/ third parties every day. Once opened and acted upon, it is a necessity to file emails against the correct case to ensure your case management system is visible, accurate and well maintained. If not, and no official procedure is in place, a missed email due to absence or a failure in process can resultantly compromise the chronology and accuracy of a case history. This combination alone puts you at risk of an inaccurate case history to report back to an avoidable, unhappy client. Not to mention the risk associated with completely missing specified deadlines, dates and correspondence of a case.
However, this scenario is avoidable – as a law firm you can choose to ensure your processes are fulfilled without wasting your fee earners’ time completing necessary, but nonetheless, tedious admin tasks.
Address the problem with a solution that not only benefits your client but your legal practice
There are a lot of helpful email management guides out there offering best practice solutions, but none more effective, in my opinion, than the suggestion of investing in legal technology solutions that work with your case management system. Such solutions can help you make time and efficiency savings whilst maintaining your processes and improving the profitability of your business.
What if I told you that we can provide you with a solution to this age-old problem? Would you be interested in knowing how technology can help you increase the profitability of your business? Let me introduce MailSmart…
MailSmart
Imagine a situation where a case handler is off unexpectedly, and yet emails are still scanned, key information found, and the email is saved into your Visualfiles system, triggering various workflows to not only move the case forward, but also alert those who need to know about an important change. This is a reality using MailSmart.
How it works
MailSmart consists of two components, an Outlook Add-in and the MailSmart App which are coordinated to work in conjunction with one another. The Outlook Add-in works by automatically scanning your emails as they’re received and filing into your system accordingly, as you work. Whereas the MailSmart app recognises if a user has not opened outlook; due to absence for instance, and allows the system to takeover and automatically file the email - with no user involvement, ensuring their outlook account is flagged so it is known which emails have been saved to the system.
It cohesively works with your Visualfiles system, using the help of an algorithm to search for the likes of matter references, matter descriptions and the sender’s email address whilst you determine when the MailSmart app will takeover, setting rules to ensure how emails are filed against particular cases.
The benefits of such a solution means you can dramatically improve response times and almost instantly increase client satisfaction, across the board, whilst substantially reducing risk. Moreover, with an average email taking around two minutes to file manually, you could save up to 8% of your fee earners’ time spent on email filing alone!
If you value fee earners’ time, client satisfaction and want to reduce risk, speak to your LexisNexis Account Manager today to find out more.