A customer relationship management (CRM) system should help your firm track leads, improve intake, and keep clients engaged. But if your CRM is outdated or isn’t built for legal practices, it may be creating more problems than it solves. Plus, you’re likely only working with about half the information you need to attract and nurture quality leads.
These outdated and generic systems don’t just frustrate your staff, they can slow down your client intake and ultimately impact your business. If you’ve heard a lot of complaints from both staff and clients alike, it might be time to upgrade. Here are six signs your CRM is holding you back — and how a modern legal CRM can help.
Sign 1: Leads Are Falling Through the Cracks
Whether it’s a missed call or unanswered email, unanswered or unaddressed leads will lead to missed revenue. Plus, it will leave a bad taste in your clients’ mouths, especially if they’re looking for immediate answers.
Most people know what it’s like to fill out a form or provide information and either receive a generic response or no response at all. If your intake staff has to process everything manually, such as inputting phone numbers into the core database, it can eat up time and lead to errors or even missed connections. Today’s intuitive CRMs can automate data entry and instantly capture lead details, ensuring every inquiry gets logged and followed up. Instead of starting every interaction from scratch, you can build stronger client relationships from the first touchpoint.
Sign 2: Follow-Ups Are Inconsistent or Too Slow
If you’re working with different types of clients, especially when they’re in the midst of a stressful situation, it’s easy to err on your follow-ups. You might ask them the same question twice or misinterpret their request, leading to general irritation. If your team’s follow-ups are sporadic, you’re losing business to faster competitors. Without the right CRM, you can alienate clients entirely if your callbacks and nurture are unpredictable at best and downright non-existent at worst.
When 78% of clients hire the first lawyer who gets back to them, you need a CRM with built-in automated reminders, drip campaigns, and texting tools. This gives you the ability to not only keep your firm top of mind, but why you’re a good fit for them.
For example, if your firm specializes in property contracts, you might pull in satisfied client reviews in your automated texts. This kind of follow-up goes above and beyond the standard “Thank you for your inquiry”, and actively gives a client a reason to take the next step.
With Law Ruler CRM, we’ve built a custom system to keep leads warm with custom email drip campaigns and personalized automated text messages. Consider that nearly 98% of all text messages are read by the recipient. While texts should be used sparingly, they’re an incredibly effective way to reach out and grab a client’s attention.
Sign 3: You’re Still Using Spreadsheets or Generic Tools
Spreadsheets or other generic tools can be great (and cost-effective) — if you’re a small firm and only have a few clients to track. However, as your base expands, the manual data entry and lack of reporting tools can make the whole process prone to error. It’s not only time-consuming for your staff, likely leading them to wonder just how much busy work they can take on a day-to-day basis, it’s also not a scalable solution.
A CRM built for law firms offers custom fields, clean dashboards, and workflows that scale with your practice. Law Ruler CRM makes it easy to see your pipeline at a glance and prioritize your most valuable opportunities — without endless rows and columns.
Good CRMs have to strike a careful balance between segmenting clients without creating endless sections or categories. The technology has to be customizable enough to work with your practice, but not so complex that it becomes laborious to track down critical information. Law Ruler has tweaked our technology based on feedback and requirements from multiple law firms, giving us a solid product that can hold up even under a dramatic uptick in lead or client volume.
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Sign 4: Your Team Wastes Time on Repetitive Tasks
Duplicate forms, manual document sending, copying/pasting emails: these are mundane tasks that may feel like the status quo in your law firm, but there’s no reason they have to be. A modern CRM, like Law Ruler, will automate the busywork. Law Ruler’s intelligent intake forms can be customized with your branding and required field properties, making it easy to gather the necessary information from leads, quickly qualify eligibility, and boost your marketing efforts.
Repetitive tasks don’t just open the door to human error, they decrease the productivity of the whole staff. Plus, repetitive tasks can inevitably lead to frustrated clients because it’s likely that numbers and email addresses will vary from one source to another, resulting in anything from confusing or repetitive conversations to missed deadlines.
With a modern CRM, you can automate your sign-offs, create multiple email and text templates, and create smarter workflows. Plus, you can keep everything handy, so you have more contingency plans.
Sign 5: Your Systems Don’t Talk to Each Other
If your CRM doesn’t integrate with your website, phone system, or marketing tools, your data lives in silos. That leads to duplicated work, miscommunication, and missed chances to impress clients.
For example, if a lead initially gives their Google Voice number because they’re afraid of spam but then provides their mobile number to one of the staff members, the mobile number may not make it to more than one system. This makes the client more likely to miss communications, because staff members may use different systems to call, which can lead to delays and frustrations for all involved.
Today’s CRMs unify information across platforms so you always have the latest contact details, case updates, and marketing insights in one place. Law Ruler integrates with the tools law firms use every day, eliminating sticky notes and duplicate databases.
Sign 6: Lack of Data & Insights to Guide Decisions
Making long-term plans starts with better data. When everything moves at the speed of change already, it’s critical to understand where your leads are coming from, how your staff performs, and whether your real-time conversion rates match your expectations.
For example, let’s say that a custom email drip campaign resulted in a moderate shift in click-to-open rates but no shift in conversions. Real-time reporting and solid (simple) KPI dashboards can help you extrapolate the problem before you make future decisions.
Too many law firms will employ a hodge-podge of marketing strategies, branching out into different tactics to see what sticks. Even if you have a vague strategy, whether that’s A/B testing ideas or customer segmentation, this doesn’t always translate to a good ROI. If you invest in a CRM that keeps everything together — and gives you a comprehensive picture — you can get further ahead.
Law Ruler’s CRM automates your reports, allowing you to track the progress of every contact and view the productivity of you and your colleagues. Better workflows ensure that you can monitor leads at a single glance.
Don’t Let Your CRM Hold You Back
A good CRM should make your client intake and communication easier. If your current system has only resulted in convoluted processes to deal with its limitations, you might want to rethink your approach.
Whether you’re tired of data migration snags or client complaints, a better CRM can get everyone on the same page, resulting in better interactions and fewer hiccups along the way. Plus, it can give staff and leads alike more control on their side, so they don’t have to be held at the mercy of technology that may or may not cooperate that day.
Law Ruler was built for law firms. From automated intake to powerful marketing tools, our CRM helps you stay ahead of the competition and deliver the experience today’s clients expect. Ready to see the difference? Request a demo today!
Transform Your Law Firm
Maximize your client intake process and acquire more leads with Law Ruler’s all-in-one legal intake and marketing automation software. Schedule a personalized, one-on-one demonstration of Law Ruler today!