As CEO of Evolve Family Law, Beau Atkins learned that a law firm is not just a law firm. It’s a law business, and by treating it as such, you have to do what is needed to improve the service that you offer your clients. That includes increasing productivity, which ultimately improves the accessibility to justice and the quality of service clients receive.
One of the biggest pain points for most law firms, and businesses in general, is the receptionist position. It is vital because it is the first point of contact a lead or existing client speaks with, but as we all know, the phone isn’t always ringing. Atkins realized that he could hire virtual receptionists to handle the phone calls, allowing his current receptionist to pivot to a new role and freeing up her time to do more meaningful tasks within the office. The other main benefit of the change is that Evolve Family Law now has 24/7 phone coverage, something they couldn’t offer before. Now clients can call at their convenience and not just during typical office hours.
His office manager decided that rather than looking to see what other law firms were doing, it was more important to see what other businesses were doing and that’s how they found Smith.ai. Of course, Smith.ai handles calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but our capabilities go far beyond just phone answering. We answer and respond to calls, chats, texts, and Facebook messages. Not only that, but we also offer our Outreach Campaigns, calling leads and clients on your business’ behalf with the instructions provided, to help qualify more leads and keep current clients informed. The variety of services offered that increased his firm’s overall productivity was a big selling point for Atkins.
Evolve Family Law has all types of calls come in, ranging from quick questions to complex issues. And not only that, they receive calls at all hours of the day. Co-founder Beau Atkins wants to provide his clients with the best service possible and accommodate their needs, but his staff doesn’t work 24/7/365.
At the same time, Atkins couldn’t keep his full-time receptionist busy during the daytime, so there were inefficiencies: his firm missed calls at night and had unoccupied staff during the day. He saw the benefit of outsourcing his phone answering, and experimented with different virtual receptionist services before landing on Smith.ai.
Evolve Family Law works with clients with varying degrees of needs, with some clients needing extra assurance as they go through stressful legal proceedings, so hearing a live voice on the other end of the phone helps give them the peace of mind they desire. Smith.ai’s professional and friendly receptionists put their clients at ease, which in turn let Atkins know he had made the right choice, but we turned him into a superfan after he realized he could easily work with Smith.ai to refine his call handling instructions and get a highly customized service that felt even more tailored to his firm’s needs. After a few back-and-forth conversations, Beau knew he hadn’t just found a vendor, but instead a partner in his firm’s success.
Smith.ai is the perfect solution for Evolve Family Law because of our flexibility. Evolve currently uses a phone menu system so you can select an individual to speak with, as long as they are in the office. If they are not available, Smith.ai answers. Plus, we handle overflow calls, all of their after-hours calls, and weekend calls.
The best part is that Atkins was able to keep his receptionist employed by pivoting their role to help accomplish more specialized work inside of his firm, which allowed him to get more value from their work and better leverage their training. Since Evolve Family Law is a paperless office, this new role was created to help scan files, organize documents, send communications, and focus on improving their systems and procedures. All of these tasks are naturally suited to an in-house employee.
Atkins says, “I’m a big fan of The 7 Habits [of Highly Effective People] by Stephen Covey, and he talks about living in quadrant 1, which is the important and the urgent things like answering the phone when it rings, so by shifting that to Smith.ai, it’s allowed us to work more in quadrant 2, which is the important but not urgent, which will hopefully allow us to operate more efficiently as a business.”
Plus, after seeing the success and growth Smith.ai has helped his firm achieve, Atkins is now exploring more tasks our receptionists can take off their plate, including outbound follow-up calls to leads and full-time call handling instead of just overflow and after-hours.
“One of the big reasons we chose a virtual receptionist was after looking at the statistics of the number of phone calls that go unanswered, [...] we wanted to be proactive in making sure we weren’t responding in the way that the industry standards appeared to be. We wanted to be on the front of that wave to increase the accessibility of our services.”
Beau Atkins is the CEO of Evolve Family Law, a firm located in Saskatoon, Canada, that solely practices family law. They pride themselves with being at the forefront of new developments in family law and the family courts. Their unique model includes innovative flat-rate billing with fixed fees, which creates transparency and sets clear boundaries for both the price of their legal fees and the scope of their legal work. Being accessible by clients 24/7 and having a professional voice on the other end of the call helps to set Evolve Family Law apart from other family law firms, as well. Atkins loves the customer experience Smith.ai’s receptionists provide to his clients, but he also appreciates the service he receives from Smith.ai’s knowledgeable account managers when he needs to update call instructions and make changes to his plan, to keep pace with his fast-growing firm.
Smith.ai is a superior 24/7 call answering and intake service for law firms and small businesses. Our virtual receptionists help you build better relationships with new and existing clients. We will help save you money and time, give your clients the personalized attention they deserve (don’t we all prefer to talk to a human!), and capture more qualified leads (bye-bye spam calls!).
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