How to deliver world-class client experiences

  • Agile Working
  • Client Experience
  • Outsourcing
How to deliver world-class client experiences

According to the Solicitors Regulation Authority there are 9,465 solicitors offices in the UK, of which 71% are incorporated companies or LLPs. The UK legal market is one of the largest in the world, with the majority of prominent global law firms maintaining London offices, alongside prestigious Magic Circle firms.

While there are definitely benefits to being part of an ecosystem of world-class firms – from market stability to regulatory relationships to innovation – it’s undeniable that competition is stiff. Since the rapid digital transformations of the pandemic years, law firms must contend with changing client expectations, the demand for higher productivity and growing competition. In a competitive marketplace, client loyalty isn’t a given – so how can companies make sure clients keep coming back, or better still, that they refer your services to their contacts?

Defining outstanding client experiences

Law firms have a commercial imperative to deliver the best client experience possible. Of course, nobody sets out to provide bad customer experiences – so what are the key factors that define excellent service? How do you make sure you’re keeping clients happy and giving them what they’re looking for?

Here’s a few ways you can be sure you’re delivering the best possible service for your clients.

First impressions matter

Great customer service is all about attention. When new clients walk through the door of your offices, they’re often greeted by a receptionist, and subtly reassured by the professionalism of their surroundings. But how can you replicate that experience in a post-pandemic world, when many first impressions will be via telephone or email? Every point of contact could be your client’s first impression of your practice. You wouldn’t dream of leaving a client waiting in your reception area – nor should they be left on hold for long periods, or being passed around between departments, or having their calls ring out. Attention to every client – whether they contact your business in person, via phone, or by another channel – should be prompt, professional and consistent.

Clear communication

People don’t usually turn to law firms unless they have a problem – something that could be affecting their relationship, their livelihood, their business operations, or even their freedom. Whether your client is a legal department or an individual, it’s important that they receive regular updates, and that any potential issues are flagged in advance. Good business communication is both proactive and reactive, of course – as well as providing updates, you need to be ready to receive and return client calls and emails when they ask for an update. That means ensuring you have enough resource to take calls and return messages. Some legal firms even use outsourced switchboard services to make sure there’s always someone there to pick up the phone, even during busy periods or out of hours.

People value the personal touch

There is a time and a place for self-service portals. Few clients prefer to wait on the phone to find information they could access much more quickly online, or to provide a piece of documentation they could easily upload via your website. In other words, self-service is great for efficiency. But many of your potential clients will be seeking assistance for complex, urgent, or personal matters. Your team must be ready to demonstrate understanding, empathy and professionalism when assisting with difficult cases, and that means ensuring clients can always get through to a real human – someone who can instil a sense of confidence and reassure them of your ongoing support. Leaving them chasing an elusive team member when they need an urgent update is unlikely to leave a favourable impression.

Success can – and should – be measured

When a customer calls you, their experience on the phone can be measured in terms of “call quality”. High-quality calls are polite, professional, prompt, personable, and problem-solving (although every business might have its own KPIs). The quality of calls matters. Historical research suggests that 50% of clients consider “poor communication” a key source of dissatisfaction in their working relationship. Research from the 2019 Legal Trends report bears this out, finding that responsiveness has a “strong impact” on a client’s decision to hire a firm, and that while 79% of clients expect a response within 24 hours, most law firms fall “far below” these expectations. Responsiveness has an impact on a firm’s Net Promoter Score, too. In today’s competitive commercial environment, poor communication standards can easily mean losing a referral, or even a client’s business, to a more attentive competitor.

Your firm can benefit from monitoring the quality of your calls and implementing Service Level Agreements to ensure that customers who try to reach you on the phone always have the best possible experience – getting through to you quickly and receiving a high standard of service when they do.

Setting yourself up for success

Using an outsourced switchboard service to unify communications across your business can benefit you in a number of different ways. From ensuring there’s always a human available when they pick up the phone – even out of hours – to helping you communicate case progress to managing high call-loads professionally and empathetically, the right switchboard solution provides the attention to detail that defines truly outstanding service. In a competitive market – where a missed call could mean another client for your competitor – a central switchboard team that understands your business could be the difference between unsatisfactory and outstanding in your client’s eyes.

How ComXo can help

ComXo are industry-leaders in transformational switchboard and business support services, committed to redefining the switchboard for law firms. With a combination of technology and great people, we aim to help you deliver exceptional experiences during every call and communication you receive. Our 24-hour switchboard service offers industry-leading service-level agreements – 95% of our inbound call traffic is answered within 3 rings. We act as an extension of your team to provide knowledegable, empathetic and professional service from a real human. Ideal for making a perfect first impression.

Talk to our team today about how our specialist service can enhance your client experience.

Written by
Amanda

Why call data should be every legal firm’s secret weapon in 2023

  • Data
  • Outsourcing
  • Productivity
Why call data should be every legal firm’s secret weapon in 2023

It’s no secret that LegalTech generates a lot of excitement and conversation for law firms looking to gain a commercial edge in a competitive market. By some estimates, as many as 50% of UK law companies are already using some form of AI, according to Oxford University research. But before you start considering swapping out paralegals for ChatGPT, or another ‘silver bullet’ technology, are you confident you’re making the most of your existing tech – like capturing in-bound call data?

If you want to gather more valuable insights, make better-informed strategic decisions and enhance overall customer experience, you definitely shouldn’t overlook the value of a powerful outsourced switchboard service. The right switchboard technology can help your business identify areas for growth, maximise your efficiency, and generate more leads – as well as ensuring a seamless experience for your callers.

Here’s how to use your call data to your advantage and help stand out in a competitive commercial landscape.

Inbound call data helps YOU make better calls

When making decisions for your business, it goes without saying that you want as much information as possible to help decide the right course of action. The more information you have access to, the more you’re able to focus on the important aspects of strategic decision-making – risk assessment, precedent analysis, resource allocation.

Inbound call data tells you more than you might think: where and when do you field most of your new business calls? How do customers and suppliers feel about contacting your office? How productive are your teams in terms of handling inbound calls? How much of your new business comes from cold calls, versus warm leads or referrals? What’s your overall call volume, and are you staffed for out of hours call handling? (Our data shows that 6.7% of calls to legal firms come in outside of standard office hours.) Data drives decisions, so it’s prudent to harness as much of it as possible.

It also makes measuring your marketing much easier

Offline marketing activity can be difficult to measure. But monitoring your inbound calls can help get a better understanding of your campaign’s ROI. By performing conversion tracking and cost analysis on your call data, you can attain a more granular understanding and more control over your marketing activity, letting you fine-tune your marketing for maximum impact and efficiency.

Phone is still the most popular channel for UK consumers

According to Capterra, the majority of UK customers (42%) generally prefer to get in touch with companies by phone. And while that figure is likely to vary across specialised industries, it does underline the fact that most people, when they have a problem that needs solving, want to speak to a real person about it – often urgently.

Calls may be emotionally complex – for example, a call from a potential client who needs to draft a loved one’s will requires a high level of empathy and understanding from the receiver. Giving customers a positive initial impression of your company – including quickly getting through to a real person – is an important first step. Monitoring and analysing how calls come into your business, how well they’re handled, how often they go to the right place, and how satisfied your clients and customers feel afterwards is vital if you’re going to provide continuous improvement to your customer experience metrics. As well as benefitting your business in other ways, such as…

Helping you prepare for busy periods

Unsurprisingly, most businesses want to be sure that they’re allocating their teams correctly, especially during busy periods when finding spare resource can be difficult. And the modern challenges of remote work and hybrid working have added even more complexity to firms’ resource management ability. Analysing call data helps you clearly understand the ebb and flow of your resource requirements. Especially in larger firms, it can be difficult to co-ordinate resource management across departments without having data to describe fluctuations in demand.

The last thing a business wants is to find that the majority of lead-bearing client calls tend to arrive on, for example, a Thursday afternoon during a weekly team meeting, or that a significant portion of calls come in after 6pm on a Friday, when there are fewer staff to help them. Monitoring your call data to find out who contacts you and when will help you know what to expect and how to prepare for the true volume of calls you receive – and helps guarantee a seamless experience for callers.

Allowing you to break down your time more accurately

How much of your firm’s time is spent paying invoices? Or on the phone to suppliers? Or soliciting new business? You may have a time management system in place already, like Clio or ProLaw, but with hybrid offices making things more complicated, it’s helpful to have as much hard data as possible to underwrite the accuracy of your time-tracking. Inbound call data allows you to get clearer breakdowns of how time is being spent across departments. You can use it to get accurate, granular breakdowns of how your teams operate, in order to encourage efficiency and improve overall time management.

Adapting and adjusting your business strategy

Of course, business strategy must adapt to meet changing customer needs, fluctuations in demand, and shifting market conditions. And inbound data provides various valuable indicators that can help inform the best direction for your strategy. For example, call data allows you to monitor the types of enquiry you’re receiving, and in what volume compared to previous quarters. If you need to reallocate resource, make new hires or even make large decisions such as rebranding or developing a new product or service, your call data can provide a useful bellwether for changing customer demand.

Driving change internally

Organisation-wide changes can be hard to implement, especially for larger firms. Since it requires the buy-in of numerous senior stakeholders, it can be difficult for teams to prove the business value of a proposal in a way that gains real traction. Measuring and analysing your call data can help you source the hard data you need to back up your case – making it easier to present findings to senior management.

Staying on top of potential new business leads

Letting phone calls go to voicemail isn’t just bad customer experience – it’s potentially letting new business leads fall through your fingertips at the same time. Even if you’re diligent about returning messages, potential clients have many options available to them and could easily have contacted a competitor before you have the chance to get back to them. With an outsourced switchboard service you can be confident that someone is on hand at all times to field calls, so you never miss a lead.

How ComXo can help

ComXo are industry-leaders in transformational switchboard and business support services, committed to redefining the switchboard for law firms. With a combination of technology and great people, we aim to help you deliver exceptional experiences during every call and communication you receive. We provide innovative 24-hour switchboard services to deliver outstanding customer experience, as well as automatically monitoring inbound call data to generate detailed strategic intelligence for your business. Switchboard data is the key to unlocking continuous improvement across your whole business – from helping you identify efficiencies to boosting new business to analysing customer experience to giving you the data you need to make informed decisions.

Written by
Amanda

Ask Andrew: Recession, how real are the risks?

  • Business Continuity
  • Outsourcing
  • Solution
  • The Office
Ask Andrew: Recession, how real are the risks?

Recession and the risk of ongoing uncertainty is high on the list of business challenges right now. 

The last recession in 2008 saw a calamitous and sudden capitulation of capital markets; was a disaster akin to a tornado … sudden and unplanned.  The aftermath saw business cut hard and fast in reaction to it.  This time things feel more like a drought.  We know we are already in it, and we can feel the economic cogs moving slowly but with potentially devastating consequences.  

The headwinds are many: higher prices, supply problems, war, post-pandemic malaise.  Businesses however will be asking the same questions:  how do I cut costs, become more efficient, become less people dependent, how do I remain good value for my customers… how do I protect my stakeholders? How do I keep my job?

In 2008 ComXo experienced the first wave of office support outsourcing in professional services.  We saw the demand for our technologies and managed services increase, as we pivoted to meet demand for business transformation, helping to drive down costs. 

This time we expect even greater demand. 

 The combination of Brexit and the pandemic have changed so many contributing factors that this upcoming financial period is far harder to predict, with risks across a number of areas. The physical office is being used differently, hybrid work has evolved, data is more abundant and the balance in employee engagement has shifted.  The new corporate world is driven by business service personalisation, on demand access 24/7 to integrated services, insight-driven facilities management, self-service, intelligent triage, and outcome driven KPI’s.  Those that have not yet benefited from the technology dividend and business continuity benefits of support solutions, are likely to embrace it, or risk being out-manoeuvred by their competitors. 

Our professional service customers such as PWC are using ComXo outsourced business services to lead the charge of reimagined client experience, cost rationalisation and new generation business continuity.  Our legal and financial customers are following service roadmaps to do the same.  It is clear to see from our clients’ financial results that this approach works now, and for the future of a successfully functioning enterprise.

 Want to find out more? Talk to our team for insights and case studies that might help your planning.

Andrew Try, Founder & Managing Director

Written by
Andrew Try

Maintaining business continuity during a cyber attack

  • Business Continuity
  • Outsourcing
  • Solution
  • The Office
Maintaining business continuity during a cyber attack

CYBER ATTACKS - FIGHTING THE INVISIBLE ENEMY

When it comes to Risk and Business Continuity the traditional focus on fire, flood and theft has now been replaced with a less visible, but highly destructive threat in the form of cyber-crime, viruses and attacks on business's data and I.T. environments.

Five years ago almost every business had their traditional IT systems and programs sitting separately from their communication technologies - such as their PBX's, conference calls, outbound and inbound phone lines. Today it is more likely that these services sit within the traditional IT infrastructure. On paper this offers huge benefits but has one major flaw; when a cyber-attack hits, it's no longer just internet access, computers and servers that are compromised. All communication channels are vulnerable. In many situations the only option is to go dark and take everything off-line, resulting in no emails, no internet access, no incoming or outgoing phone calls, no conference calls with clients. A business's ability to communicate internally with its own employees, and with the outside world is significantly impacted.

BUSINESS CONTINUITY DURING CYBER ATTACK

As specialists in integrated communications and infrastructure for some of the top firms in The City, managing their global communications, we have supported firms through potentially catastrophic cyber attacks.

Here are our top ten tips on maintaining business should you be subject to cyber attacks or data breaches:

1. Protect your brand at all costs. Perception is reality.

It is unacceptable for a customer focused firm to be unavailable for any length of time.
Being able to demonstrate that regardless of the situation, you are open for business and capable of maintaining high service levels builds trust, customer loyalty and professional respect.

2. Enable your teams to focus on the crisis.

When a crisis hits, you will require total focus, concentrated effort and coordinated teamwork to survive. Create space and mitigate risk by ring-fencing the front line experience. Triaging internal services, information updates and escalation requests engenders an atmosphere of uninterrupted calm and control, and puts you back on the front foot.

3. Provide a serviced virtual meeting place for stakeholders

Continuous communication is the single most important factor during a crisis. An easy-to-use voice conference room that can be accessed at any time is key. A managed audio conferencing service can facilitate requests to ensure agility and fluidity as the situation develops.

4. Keep your staff informed. Duty of care is essential

Defined, well-rehearsed communication channels minimise confusion and insecurity amongst stakeholders and staff. It is vital to have access to up-to-date stakeholder and staff contact lists for consistent communications (e.g. text, email, voice, hotline).
These comms can be invoked through a managed service in the cloud.

5. Ensure access to your knowledge asset

Having an external switchboard provider that understands your processes could enable you to maintain access to key information and business services even during a crisis, ensuring ongoing efficiency and information flow

6. Keep your IT help desk functioning 24/7

Minimising confusion as a crisis unfolds is vital. Getting and keeping key IT capability up and working is a pivotal step to achieve this. Ensuring clear lines open to your IT help desk gives your workforce assurance that the situation is under control. Using a triage capability to answer calls and service requests; fact find, prioritise and escalate - enabling your own IT staff to focus on the higher level problems.

7. Provide your staff with the right tools for remote working

By providing alternative, company sanctioned and network independent communication tools, staff can stay productive rather than having to second guess
the company's risk, security or compliance regime. A BYOD (bring-your-own-device) technology that's simple to use and allows easy billing will encourage staff to continue communicating.

8. Think Global

For global corporates a cyber-attack could mean that all world-wide communication becomes disrupted. Do you have a global resilience plan in place for communication? Is it tested around your key risks and invoked on a regular basis?

9. Create strong supply chain relationships

When a crisis hits, relationships with key operational suppliers become even more important. Maintaining strong connections with the right people in these organisations will help ensure your problem is prioritised. Share your BCP plans with your supply chain and include them in your scenario planning.

10. Protect new business opportunities.

Industry statistics show that up to 55% of switchboard calls to professionals service firms are existing or new business calls. A crisis hits customer confidence and keeping lines open to answer questions, escalate requests or give advice will ensure your customers do not seek out new suppliers

Cyber security is now considered a vital part of any business continuity plan, helping keep the threat minimised with proactive solutions. If it's something you’re considering and would like some guidance talk to our team.

Written by
Amanda

3 key points to prepare for the worst and deliver the best in business

  • Agile Working
  • Business Continuity
  • Company Culture
  • Outsourcing
  • Solution
3 key points to prepare for the worst and deliver the best in business

In March 2020 I returned to work from my honeymoon in Australia, well and truly still in holiday mode. Given the extent of Australian news coverage at the time I boarded my flight aware of little more than "There's a toilet roll shortage". I was fairly oblivious as to what faced me upon my return to the office.

Expecting this toilet roll emergency to blow over while I tortured everyone with holiday pictures, I was ushered into our boardroom and given a pandemic reality check. I was asked to prepare for our offices to close and get ready to support all of our clients as they faced the same challenge.

So how do you move over 1 million calls and 70 Virtual Switchboard staff to a remote working environment, and continue to achieve an industry leading service level, with 95% of calls answered in 3 rings? We were of course apprehensive, but we found that our business continuity planning had left us well prepared.

Without giving away the ComXo crown jewels, here's my 3 key recommendations to enable your organisation to prepare for the worst in order to consistently deliver the best:

 Plan and TEST your BCP measures constantly.

  • For the past 5 years, ComXo has had a unit of remote working operators logged in ready to support calls in the event there was a crisis with the office.
  • This team of operators had tested our tech, software and logistics ready for a wider scale rollout of remote working.
  • Our disaster recovery site is regularly tested on a scheduled and unscheduled basis.

Look after your people

  • Rather than increase operator workload, we introduced more team huddles, 1-2-1s, training time and regular "check ins" to ensure the team were coping with the pandemic. Parents were given some extra, much needed TLC.
  • The business took a VERY open stance to the uncertainty of the future and the roles we would all need to play in order to ensure that ComXo and our clients prospered during this period.
  • Educating our staff on "The grief curve" allowed teams to meet, discuss and share experiences.
  • The Zoom Christmas cocktail party and online bake off/pizza making competitions kept up team spirit. These were planned sensitively, especially once it became clear that the pandemic was going to loom for a substantial period of time, and we were conscious of Zoom fatigue.

In return, our indomitable staff responded in kind with sickness and absence levels dropping to next to zero!

Our service levels actually increased to 97.7% of calls answered within 3 rings and adverse feedback dropped to an all-time low.

Understand your true capacity

  • If the workload demand of your team regularly exceeds 80% of their maximum work rate, it's possible you are heading for burnout and staff churn. Look to schedule at least 30% capacity for breathing room, shrinkage, creativity and sudden spikes in workload.
  • Diversify your workforce: working with parents, students and full time professionals to align their wants and needs with your own workload forecast is a powerful thing.
  • Recruit ahead of the curve - if you wait until you need the staff, you are already too late.
  • If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. Understand the scientific equation that predicts your working capacity. If you don't have the tech, you can do this by simply and consistently checking in with your team and asking "Hey, on a scale of 1 - 10 how busy have you been this month?"

Ultimately, we have been very lucky that our clientele have had a mostly prosperous two years and we are proud to have been able to support them on this journey. Looking back, what would I change about ComXo's approach to the pandemic? Not a lot. But on a personal note, maybe I would have invested in some more toilet roll when I landed back in England. They weren't joking about that part.

Richard Gostelow, Director of Customer Service

Written by
Amanda

Why your firm needs a Business Concierge Service right now.

  • Client Experience
  • Outsourcing
  • Productivity
Why your firm needs a Business Concierge Service right now.

If you haven't already thought about outsourcing some, or all of your day-to-day operations within your firm then the current work environment may be the biggest reason to change that right now. Allowing a trusted expert to consolidate and merge your firm's client experience as well as handle your internal employee's tasks can increase brand image as well as productivity. Business or corporate concierge services could include things like virtual support with space booking, management of your diary or human assistance regarding the firm's knowledge based queries.

What do business concierge services entail?

These services include:

  • Instant access to staff directory where the confidential data is managed securely and kept up to date.
  • A knowledge base of policies and your firm's information that employees can remotely access at any time.
  • IT & Facilities helpdesk services where employees can create tickets for issues or requests.
  • Virtual Assistants: Human support at any time to help with the tasks and features mentioned above
  • Client Experience (CX): Services like outsourced switchboard can dramatically increase your brand image as well as the experience your clients receive. In the agile work world of today, this may be a vital cost saving and brand improving option.

Benefits of business concierge Service

  • Employee productivity increases
  • Focus on business growth can increase with more new business opportunities captured
  • Services like secure audio conferencing and desk booking are organised and maintained for you, giving you time to focus on other business aspect
  • Dramatic reduction of costs
  • Specialised mobile device apps help tackle the widely spread out workforce combine and collaborate easily

If you want to find out more about how Business Concierge Services can help your business, contact us now.

Written by
Amanda