Spot-Light Wednesday: Professional Service Offices
Who said lawyers can’t work in tech?
Alex Su over at Ironclad has some great content on lawyers making that transition. As an attorney/CPA and tech worker, I’m here to answer another question; who said lawyers can’t work from a virtual remote office? Or -- accountants, consultants, engineers, doctors, architects…
Many law offices are quagmired in a tradition of toxic culture that seeks to over-work employees to maximize profit for the company. Lawyers are trained to work like super endurance athletes -- days on end and extremely long hours.The current logic of most firms is that the more control (physical presence in an office) a firm has over the associate the more hours that associate can bill. This is great for firm margins/profits but not great for the individual.
For many owners of these professional offices they continue to require “in-person” work because it’s all they know. Employees are changing the workforce landscape and leaders willing to adopt the future now, will win.
My law firm, Ralston Law, was using a hybrid approach to remote/in-person work and leveraging Microsoft Teams to communicate. Just like many other Professional Service Offices who are forward thinking and looking to adopt new tech, our office was looking for a tool that would improve the employee/customer experience, increase productivity/revenue, and improve communication. We found what we were looking for in Spot and immediately transitioned. I loved Spot so much (also biased by liking the people working there) that I started working with Spot and operate my firm virtually.
As both a user of Spot for my own professional office and working in Operations for Spot, here are a few wins for your professional service office when leveraging Spot:
Saving Time
The billable hour. If you're in professional services then your time is your business. How about we give more of that back to you to improve your quality of life or increase your revenue?
Instead of feeling overwhelmed from calendar meeting fatigue you can keep your calendar open for revenue generating meetings. You can free up more time by removing staff generated meetings on the calendar to answer live in your virtual workspace. You can pull multiple staff members into a training, solution discussion, or meeting. If someone is out of the office, you don’t need to repeat, save time by inviting the person who was out to watch a recording of the meeting or to read through notes.
Improved Employee Happiness/Culture
Helping people live their best lives should be a priority for all of us. Employee happiness is greatly improved with the ability to work from home. If additional motivation is needed, then understanding that professional service companies are only as successful as the people working there is material to the virtual office conversation. Recruiting and retaining the best talent requires forward thinking leaders to adopt virtual tools, like Spot, that allow for remote work -- but also maximize the happiness, culture, productivity, collaboration, and spontaneity that can be cultivated from this platform.
“When I needed to work from home during COVID Spot brought me little pieces of joy and helped me feel connected to my teammates!” -Shelby
Increased Sales
An entire industry was created to design physical spaces that help maximize the customer experience and increase sales. This industry is now pivoting to the virtual design space as well.
You lose all investment and advantage to sell a customer with a standard video call. Bring branding, marketing, and other physiological factors back to the connection experience with your clients and customers. Start fresh with a new template, connect with our team, or connect with one of our third party partners for a custom design.
Confidential Meetings:
Whether important meetings with staff or confidential conversations with customers/clients, the privacy and security of those conversations was top of mind when selecting a platform. With Spot, we can easily lock the room to prevent people from walking into the conversation. Screen sharing and other communications are not available to those outside of the locked room. Want to go a step further and “meet off-site”? Additional privacy protections are available if you want to create a “new space” for the temporary purpose of a meeting and then delete afterwards.
Got Questions?
Want to chat more about Spot or how I run my virtual law firm? Shoot me a note at graham.ralston@spotvirtual.com