Revamping the Sales Pipeline
Overview
Wiggam Law is an award-winning tax law firm located in Atlanta, GA, USA. The firm focuses on helping their clients through financial difficulties and represents their interests when dealing with the IRS and state tax authorities.
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I partnered with the firm to target opportunities for improving operations and positioning the firm for sustainable growth.
My Role
Management Consultant & Service Designer (Freelance)
Tools
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Audio Recording via iPhone
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LucidCharts
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Sketch
Timeline
December 2018 - September 2019
Overview
The Opportunity
Craft a new service role to manage the new client pipeline and increase revenues.
Wiggam Law experienced double digit revenue growth every year since its founding in 2016. From inception, the firm's owner handled every facet of the firm’s management, from lead follow-up to completing casework, all while actively growing the firm’s client base and referral channels. In late 2018, the firm grew to a point where the owner wanted to step back from managing daily operations to focus on strategic initiatives and sales growth.
I ran a series of depth interviews with the firm’s owner to explore the problem space and define the focus of our partnership:
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What were the firm's current challenges?
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What could reasonably be achieved in our time together?
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What deliverables would maximize value for budget and generate lasting impact?
Our high level goals:
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Create a new intake coordinator role to manage the firm’s incoming leads, including workflows and standardized service interactions
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Review the firm’s existing operations to define current processes and identify improvements or opportunities
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Examine the firm’s case and client management systems against existing workflows, identifying gaps and opportunities in meeting firm needs
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This case study outlines the process and methodologies used to create the intake coordinator role.
Who we designed for
The firm's clients ranged from private individuals to rap stars and multi-million dollar business owners. What they all had in common were disputes with the IRS or state tax authorities. For example, liens or penalties due to late or unpaid tax bills. However, the firm did not take on every client that expressed interest in their services but targeted clients with a minimum case value and certain types of disputes.
My contribution
I embedded myself as a team member at the firm and worked alongside firm staff daily with free rein to explore and execute tasks.
My primary activities throughout the engagement included stakeholder communication, workshop planning and execution, desk research, depth interviews, contextual observations, process mapping & diagramming, service prototyping, and a service blueprint.
Project scope
Scope: my primary focus was on building the client intake service role with secondary goals of documenting and mapping existing firm processes and identifying gaps or opportunities for improvement.
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Timeline: I embedded with the firm and worked out of their offices over a period of 4 months with ad-hoc remote projects over the remaining 5 months.
Desk Research & Contextual Inquiry
Wiggam Law had multiple staff performing various aspects of the intake role. At the project outset, I reviewed the firm’s materials on standard law firm management practices, as well as researching job descriptions from other firms, to gain an initial understanding of the intake coordinator’s role and responsibilities. From this research, I targeted areas to explore through contextual inquiry with firm staff.
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The answers to these questions would help me identify the workflow for this role and its interactions with other members of staff, what’s working well in the current workflow and what could be improved.
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What happens when a potential new client contacts the firm?
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What does the firm consider a worthy lead to pursue?
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What is the overall workflow?
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How are leads being managed?
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What are the tools involved?
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What works and doesn’t work in the current system?
Insights
The main points that came out of contextual inquiry were that the intake coordinator workflow must be:
Standardized
To be simple and scalable, the workflow needed standard communication scripts and service guidelines.
Trackable
Performance bonuses would be based on consults completed and new client agreements, so tracking was essential.
Automated
Within the firm's lead management system, there was no way to tell when a lead was followed up on nor where a lead was in the pipeline.
Standard Workflow & Script
The first step to standardizing the service interaction was to create the intake coordinator’s workflow and the document tools and timelines for each step of the flow.
Fig. 1 Intake Coordinator Workflow
With a standard workflow established, it was time to focus on the initial service interaction between the intake coordinator and a potential new client. The script needed to include basic fact-finding to document initial information about the client’s case to help the coordinator determine if the client’s case was appropriate for the firm. The goal was to reduce bad leads making it to sales consults, saving the firm time and money.
Script determining if a call is tax or bankruptcy related.
Call script for tax related new leads.
Call script for bankruptcy related new leads.
Script determining if a call is tax or bankruptcy related.
Fig. 2 Intake Coordinator Phone Scripts
Fig. 3 Lead Log Tracking Spreadsheet
Lead Log
The incoming leads and subsequent followup needed to be trackable. The firm used a SaaS system called Lexicata to document and manage incoming leads. Lexicata allowed for automation of workflows and task reminders. However, it lacked a way to generate reports showing where each lead was in the workflow and how many leads turned into clients, which was key information required for bonus calculations. There were no resources available to program a custom report. Until a different lead management system could be procured, I created a lead log using excel to track and calculate this information.
Fig. 3 Lead Log Spreadsheet
Workflow Automation
The third goal of the project was automation to improve lead tracking and follow up. Lexicata’s features allowed for a certain level of workflow automation, communication automation and reminders. Once the standard workflow was agreed on, the corresponding steps were set up within the Lexicata system as well as standard tasks, standard client communications and task reminders for each step in the workflow.
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The firm has since moved to a new system called Lawmatics that allows for better automation and lead management, including more robust reporting that eliminated the need tracking leads in Excel.
Lexicata dashboard showing where leads are in the pipeline.
Staff can attach the standard workflow to a new client's information in Lexicata.
Staff can set themselves reminders for tasks in the workflow.
Lexicata dashboard showing where leads are in the pipeline.
Workshop: Phases of a Case
Next I zoomed out to look at the overall flow of the firm’s cases, from initial lead through to case closed, to define and document the front of stage and back of stage interactions related to the intake coordinator role.
I organized a half day workshop with the firm’s owner to discuss and map out the types of cases the firm was involved in and the typical steps.
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Out of the workshop, I detailed the steps in a case’s workflow and what staff performed each task to build a picture of the tasks and service interactions in each phase of a client’s case.
Standard firm roles identified in the workshop.
Standard steps outlined for each case type.
List of steps for a particular type of case as documented in the workshop and estimated time to complete each step per staff type.
Standard firm roles identified in the workshop.
Service Blueprint
Combining the intake coordinator workflow with the overall case workflow, I generated a service blueprint to visually document the front of stage, back of stage, and support processes for the firm’s new role.
Fig. 4 Intake Coordinator Service Diagram
Outcome
The intake coordinator role has directly contributed to the firm’s growth after the firm first onboarded the role in 2019:
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One intake coordinator currently on staff.
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Doubled the number of leads handled in the first year after staff onboarding.
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Leads handled per year increased by 100%.
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New clients engaged per year increased by 100%.
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Sales revenues have increased an average of 25% a year from 2019-2021.
Key learnings
Be curious. The key to my growth and success in this project was keeping an open mind and being unafraid to ask questions every step of the way whilst bringing a fresh perspective to the table. Before working on this project, I had no experience working in a law firm and had little exposure to tax and bankruptcy related matters. By the end of my contract, I had learned the ropes, picked up on industry jargon and could fluidly discuss firm needs and potential solutions with all members of staff.
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The devil is in the details.
You can go too far detailing and documenting every minute step in a process. It’s better to KISS it (keep it simple, stupid) than to create overwhelming and confusing maps and blueprints. Processes and workflows adapt and change as services are performed in the real world, so designers need to create documentation that is useful but also adaptable to those changes.
Attorneys can speak with qualified leads versus all leads, so we waste less time. We can make more referrals to our referral partners, which usually results in additional business for us. The big picture is that attorneys spend less time on cases with little value and can bill more hours by doing less administrative work.