Digital marketing costs for lawyers have increased in recent years, due to more competition between law firms for cost-per-click advertising and stricter data privacy laws. Today, the average law firm spends $500 to $2,000 to acquire one new client.
To ensure a profitable bottom line, it’s in a law firm’s best interest to retain more clients.
Clients tend to stick with law firms when they offer high-quality services, make the effort to engage clients, and remain transparent about costs and fees. However, as your law firm grows (and gets busier), you may find that you need support delivering the kind of service that keeps clients around.
To this end, a legal client relationship management (CRM) software can play a valuable role.
Infographic
Six Essential Features in Your Legal CRM (and How to Use Them)
While your legal practice management software keeps the daily work of a law firm moving, legal CRM software makes it easier to bring in new clients, engage current clients, and increase your profits. But not all legal CRMs are created equal. Look for these six features when choosing a legal CRM—and put them to work for your law firm.
How implementing legal CRM software can help your firm engage and retain clients
While maintaining client relationships is essential for your firm’s long-term health, it can require extra work that attorneys don’t always have time for. Here are three ways that implementing CRM software improves client relationships and without taking precious non-billable hours away from your team.
Personalized client communication improves client experience—and your firm’s reputation
Every client will want to communicate with you differently. CRM software allows you to meet their needs and connect with them on the platforms they prefer. Research shows that 31% of American adults prefer text messages, while 53% prefer a voice call.
CRM software helps you offer both. You can respond quickly to clients with automated messages or personalized texts, enabling you to maximize your time while keeping ongoing communication with clients. Alternatively, you can send them a video message for a more personalized experience that feels like a phone call.
In turn, this will improve your firm’s reputation as a client-centered, legal service provider and garner you more word-of-mouth recommendations, online reviews, and social media comments.
Regular communication keeps your firm top-of-mind
While certain clients may only need a lawyer for a specific legal matter, such as a divorce, others may need ongoing services. In these cases, it’s important to stay top-of-mind so you can create long-lasting relationships.
Marketing automation tools can give your firm an edge here. For example, you can encourage current clients to sign up for your email newsletter, where you share helpful legal tips related to their matters.
Another option: remind past clients of your helpful services with personalized, automated email campaigns from CRM software. When a client remembers the great work you’ve done, they’re more likely to come back to you again or offer your services to a friend.
Insight into client needs and behavior improves services
A key benefit of using CRM software is that it allows you to create a centralized database of client interactions. This includes contact details, communication preferences, and other relevant data.
Having all this information in one place gives you insight into your clients and their needs. For example, you can track communication history across client relationships. If you see that a client has not responded to your emails in the past few weeks, you can proactively reach out to them to ensure their needs are being met.
This level of personalization and attention can greatly improve satisfaction and loyalty.
Four best practices for lawyers using CRM software
Implementing any new tool can feel daunting for law firms. But if you don’t change your law firm’s practice management, you’ll never grow to your full potential. Make the most of your CRM software and follow these four best practices.
1. Train team members to encourage CRM usage
No one will implement software that they don’t know how to use. If software adoption eats away at their billable hours, they will stick to the (often inefficient) systems they already know.
Before expecting your team to use CRM software, set aside an hour or two over a week to learn the new software. Most legal CRMs have training videos on hand. For example, CosmoLex CRM offers three classes for CRM training: CRM Basic Training, CRM Admin Training, and CRM Automations and Workflows.
Your team will be more likely to adopt new software if they see firsthand how it streamlines their current workflows.
2. Choose a CRM tailored to law firms
To make the most of your CRM, it’s important to choose one that is specifically tailored to meet the needs of law firms. There are many CRM options available on the market, so it can be overwhelming to determine which one is best for your firm.
Your CRM should allow you to customize fields and workflows based on the specific needs of your law firm and its practice areas—for example, a mass tort law firm will have vastly different needs than a family law firm.
This will ensure that your data is organized in a way that makes sense for your practice.
Your legal CRM should also fully integrate with other tools that you use in your law firm, particularly your legal practice management software. This will save you time and effort by streamlining processes and avoiding duplicate data entry.
3. Set clear objectives where your CRM will provide the most value
Consider what costs your law firm the most profits. Do you struggle with client retention despite positive outcomes in the courtroom? Are nonstop follow-ups eating into your day?
To start, choose one or two client engagement or retention objectives that CRM software can improve for your firm. These objectives might look like:
- Increase client retention rate by 10% in the next quarter
- Reduce time spent on administrative tasks by 20 hours per week
- Improve communication efficiency with clients by implementing automated email and text messaging systems
By setting clear objectives, you can better determine which features and functionalities in a CRM software will provide the most value for your law firm. This will also help you measure the success of implementing a CRM system and ensure that your investment is worth it.
4. Regularly check reporting to uncover ways to make an impact
View reports covering daily, weekly, and monthly data to understand client preferences, allowing you to create personalized interactions that improve relationships. Some insights from your legal CRM that can improve client engagement and retention include:
- Engagement metrics: Tracking client engagement metrics like email open rates, website visits, and social media interactions can show which strategies deliver the best results. Firms can use this information to tailor communications and more effectively engage their clients.
- Client feedback: Collecting and analyzing client feedback can help your firm understand client sentiment and adjust services to improve client experience and increase retention rates.
- Cross-selling opportunities: Legal CRM tools can also help identify cross-selling opportunities by tracking which services or practice areas a client has used in the past. This information can then be used to offer relevant and personalized suggestions for additional legal services that may benefit the client.
- Elevate your law firm’s client relationships with CosmoLex CRM
Engage and retain clients with the legal practice management software you already use daily. CosmoLex CRM is a legal-specific CRM tool that grows your profits by improving client communication. Keep your best clients with user-friendly tools, designed with law firms in mind, that integrate seamlessly with CosmoLex.
See firsthand how CosmoLex CRM benefits your clients and schedule a demo today.
Infographic
Six Essential Features in Your Legal CRM (and How to Use Them)
While your legal practice management software keeps the daily work of a law firm moving, legal CRM software makes it easier to bring in new clients, engage current clients, and increase your profits. But not all legal CRMs are created equal. Look for these six features when choosing a legal CRM—and put them to work for your law firm.
document.getElementById(‘demo_btn’).onclick = function changeContent() {
//console.log(‘working!’);
Calendly.initPopupWidget({url: ‘https://calendly.com/cosmolex-schedule/external’});return false;
}
The post CRM Best Practices for Law Firms: Engaging and Retaining Clients appeared first on CosmoLex.