A solution to meet new challenges
The introduction of the Legal Services Act in 2011 created a new competitive environment for law practices, as it opened up the market to new non-legal entrants. Forward-thinking practices such as Pitmans have recognised that in order to retain their existing clients and build their business in the future they need to embrace strategies that are focused towards providing exceptional customer service.
Finance Director at Pitmans, John Hargrave explains, “We have always prided ourselves on our customer service; however the new legislation increases competition by allowing new players such as Tesco to tie-in with legal professionals to provide packages ‘over the counter’. This will obviously offer more choice, but it also means that established legal firms like us need to be able to differentiate ourselves. We recognised that a strategy based on introducing new technology across the organisation could form a key part of addressing this objective through the delivery of excellent customer service.”
He continues, “We regarded our telephone communications as the heart of our business, however our 18 year old hardware based system was beginning to see the strain as we continued to expand. In a typical day we would receive between 700 and 900 calls! It was becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to add new users and there was no way we could integrate it into our core business processes. We also identified telephone communications as a critical area where we could increase both our customer service and our overall productivity”.
Pitmans embarked on a rigorous procurement process to select a new telephony solution that could help them to give customers more responsive and tailored business communications.