Why Your Legal CRM Needs Two-Way Calendar Sync

84% of law firms want to increase their revenue during the next year. They also want to decrease their costs. How can these two factors work together? Employees lose an average of 520 hours a year to tasks that could be automated. These wasted hours are the perfect place for law firms to increase their revenue by working smarter, not harder. The more administrative tasks you automate, the more time you have to spend on billable hours and the more money you have the potential to make. Using a CRM that’s calendar synced is just one way to achieve this. Calendar sync means that any changes that happen in your CRM automatically sync to your calendar provider, and vice versa.

No manual duplication

Many legal firms still duplicate information manually between software and even handwritten schedules. Not only is this time-consuming, but it’s also open to errors. These errors can, at best, cause confusion. At worst, they can provide a poor customer experience and lead to a loss of revenue. When so much could go wrong, why are some firms still wasting time on manual duplication instead of providing a better customer experience and saving themselves time? When information automatically syncs between your CRM and your calendar, errors won’t happen. Nobody can forget to update a change of date in multiple locations. Since everything syncs in real-time, you won’t get caught out by double-bookings, either.

Save time on admin tasks…and make more money

Admin tasks take up 48% of lawyers’ time. This reduces the money that you can earn. It also reduces staff morale – after all, they signed up to help people, not to do admin. Automating tedious tasks increases employees’ engagement with a role. They’re then happier in their position and more likely to stay. This contentment with their position is also reflected in how they deal with customers, creating a better customer experience. Customers are then more likely to return, leave a higher NPS, and recommend your services to their network. When you save hours every week, it gives you more time for what really matters: client work. The more client work you do, the more people you can help. You also have more time to spend with current clients. Both of these factors mean that you can earn more revenue, helping you to grow your firm faster.

Better customer experience

35% of appointments are scheduled out of hours. While that statistic doesn’t just apply to lawyers, it doesn’t mean that your clients don’t want this ability too. Failing to offer it means you’ll lose potential clients to your competitors that do offer out-of-hours bookings. Online booking is a faster process for everyone involved. Your firm spends less time and money on administrative and scheduling processes, while potential clients don’t need to find the time to make a phone call. They can book an appointment at their own convenience and pick a time that best suits them. You also don’t need to cross-check calendar information or different sources; everything is synced with your software to decrease the risk of information or appointments being duplicated. A better customer experience also means that your NPS and other review metrics will improve because clients will be happier with the service that they receive. It also means that, because of your improved reputation, you can charge clients more, further helping toward the goals of increasing revenue while decreasing costs.