Robert Harney: How Smarter Phone Systems Stop Law Firms from Losing Clients at First Contact

Voiceover: Ron, welcome to the 1958 Lawyer, the show for attorneys who know the old model isn’t working anymore. The billable hour, the 12 hour day, the expensive office no one visits. Your host, Ron and Rebecca Bockstahler, are here to question all of that and more by exploring smarter, healthier, more flexible ways to run a law firm. No more burnout, no more outdated expectations, just real conversations with attorneys who are proving there’s a better way. If you’re ready to build a law firm that’s profitable and livable, you’re in the right place. Now, here are your hosts, Ron and Rebecca.

Ron Bockstahler: Welcome to the 1958 lawyer, the podcast about business of law. I’m your host, Ron Bockstahler, joined by my co-host Rebecca. Here’s a number that should stop every attorney in the tracks: roughly two thirds. I had to read this a couple times, so roughly two thirds of prospective clients hire the first attorney who responds to them, not the best lawyer, not the cheapest, the first one that answers the phone, and yet one out of every three law firms never respond to leads coming through their own website. The case is being won and lost in the first 10 minutes after a prospect reaches out, and most firms don’t even know what’s happening. Our guest today has spent more than 25 years on the front lines of exactly this problem. Robert Harney is the founder and president of Open One Solutions, a Chicago-based firm that’s been building voice IP and business phone systems since 2009 And today, AI-enabled voice platforms that are quietly closing the gaps where firms lose clients, the routing failures, the voicemail traps, the after-hours dead zones. He, he’s also president of the Business Executives Association of Chicago. I believe the incoming president or the current president of Rotary will clarify that. And a fixture in the Chicago small business community. If your phone system is where you’re making that marketing dollars go to die, this is the episode that fixes it. All right. Welcome, welcome to the show, Robert.

Robert Harney: All right, well, welcome, Ron. Thank you, and Rebecca. Just to clarify a few things, I am the past president of the BEA Association, and I am the president nominee for Rotary One, the Rotary Current Chicago. So, just that clarification.

Ron Bockstahler: Thank you. I think it’s clear to say you’re very, very active in the community, so that’s that’s a great thing. That’s kind of where we’re at. Let’s get this: every attorney listening has spent money on marketing, websites, ads, referrals. Almost none of them have looked hard at what happens when the phone actually rings. You’ve been living inside that moment for 25 years with that take us back, how does a guy go from Ameritech in the late 90s to founding, as you might have to explain to people what Ameritech is, and founding his own telecom company in 2009 What did you see in the industry that made you say I can do this better?

Robert Harney: You know, back in the late 90s, when I was at Ameritech, and moved forward, went to another large enterprise NEC, where we sold large phone services and systems. What I saw all of a sudden was that VoIP was coming, and you could run a phone company literally from your garage, and back in the day, there were people running phone systems out of their garage. At one time, I had a Frankenstein VoIP network, and then they continuously evolved, and they got better and better as the internet became stronger, because way back in the day it was dial-up, and then you had DSL. Well, then you had broadband, and now broadband has moved into fiber, so we have robust internet, and so today we don’t have to worry about voice on the internet, and that’s where I’m at. And then what’s kind of cool has been a lot of the solutions that have been created around voice on the internet, and a lot of other advanced capabilities, so for a very cost affordable basis, people can have the power of what used to be multi million dollar phone systems.

Rebecca Bockstahler: Interesting, I definitely want to talk about the cost piece of that in a minute, but first you call it getting businesses out of quote telecom hell, so what does telecom hell actually look like for a small practice or a solo practitioner? What does that phone call look like from an attorney who’s finally had enough?

Robert Harney: Excellent question. You know, back in the day, you hit the phone guy, right? They would come out to your office, they would check things, make sure the phones were all working, everything was working good, and just because of how the world changed, it no longer became profitable to have to be a phone provider to sell phone systems themselves, because of the advent of wipe, and the phone guys all went away, and then you. Had a lot of these really big corporations that got built out of VoIP, and the problem is they have like this contact center that you have to call, so now you got to wait and hold for two hours. Now, trying to get to the right person, trying to get someone to be able to actually design the solution that’s right for you, doesn’t exist. So, what’s great is there’s been the advent of folks like myself that have come about where we have our own solution and we do something called white labeling today, which means we use a small fraction of a really big system, so we don’t have to have the multi million dollar investment, and we can really focus on the client’s needs, so when you call up, our phones are answered within 30 seconds by a VoIP engineer. We address that issue right then in there, and that’s how we begin to take people away from telecom hell. And then we also begin to look at the cost of where things are for clients. Many times they don’t analyze their phone bill. A lot of times we start with the analysis, and all of a sudden we can find 40% plus savings for clients just because they don’t understand what they’re spending their money on, and they see it’s a bill, it’s a bill, I got to pay it

Rebecca Bockstahler: right. Well, Open one solutions as a family business, and as was mentioned in the opening, you’re deep in the Chicago community, you’re involved in a lot of things. How does that local relationship-first approach shape how you help your clients and build out their phone systems?

Robert Harney: You know what’s great, Rebecca, it’s that where we can really get to know our clients, we get to know how do they need the solution to work for them. We ask, you know, how do your customers and your clients connect with you? Is it voice, is it video, is it texting, is it SMS? Do we need to look at AI, different AI solutions? How is it? And then also internally, how do you communicate within the organization? Do you have work-at-home people? Do you need road warriors that are on the go that have a phone on a soft phone on their iPhone or their Android device? What is it? And then, do we need to integrate with CRMs like a HubSpot or some specialty software. Do we need to analyze calls? What is it that we really need to do, so we can convert your communications network into a profit money machine for your organization and convert happier, more productive employees?

Ron Bockstahler: I I mean, the talk sounds great. It’s, it’s, I mean, it doesn’t seem.. it seems like this would be awesome, but automating this, if we’re talking about automating, seems like it could be, you know, daunting, especially for small firms. Before we go deeper, let me put one more number out there on the table for our listeners. MIT’s lead response management study found the odds of even reaching a lead one drop 100 times when you call back 30 minutes after inquiry instead of within five minutes. Are you seeing numbers like this out there, Robert? I mean, are you talking to these, your clients, and saying, yeah, this is what’s happening, or how are you addressing some of these issues? These just seem like crazy numbers to me.

Robert Harney: Yeah, I mean, part of it too is getting analytics, you know. We have different analytic software that’s very inexpensive that allows to see where the calls coming in from. If you have, we can provide clients with multiple different numbers, so they’re Google, they have a different number, they have a different number for the different ad groups that they’re working with, so they can see what’s happening. We can even begin to record calls to analyze calls, so when they’re connected to someone for coaching, again, this is so we can find out what do we need to do to ensure that that call converts into a live prospect, but not just a prospect, but then a sale, and we found that in a lot of different companies that people will just call if they cannot get to someone live or to get something they can get an answer quickly, they just pick up the phone, and they call the next, and that, like you said, is a lost sale. So, when we have solutions that can track people down with find me, follow me, get the collect the data that it can be forwarded to the individual for a rapid response. You know, I even have it set up on my phone. If someone calls the sales line, I know it’s a sales call. I know that’s an important call, so I need to take it.

Rebecca Bockstahler: Yeah, that’s interesting. Well, you’re the person who gets called when the phones are failing. When you walk into a law firm, what are the failure points you most often see? Is it routing? Is it a voicemail trap? Is it after hours gap? What are kind of the low hanging fruit things that you look at first? First

Robert Harney: of all, we need to just back up a second, where we, what we do is, we actually take a look at their network. Okay, because the single most important thing for quality voice, you have to have great internet connection, and then you have to have a great internal network, those switches, those routers, that stuff, so that’s first thing I like to check to make sure all of that is in place, and if not, we need to have that discussion, that it doesn’t matter what void provider you go with, it’s not going to be good unless if we make these changes, then once those changes are made, it’s the questions, it’s okay. How do calls come into your office? Who answers the phone? How are they handled? How do you know if an attorney is on the phone or not? What do you need to do in order to process those calls and to work with clients? You know, we have one firm. What they do, it was very important to them to have phones at their houses and at the office that mimic everything together, and also the app on their cell phone. Well, in the other system they were on, they used to have to have three different phone numbers, three different extensions. In our system, it’s one phone number, one extension, one button on the phone. So, whether it’s the work at home phone or the office phone, they can look at the light, they see that, oh, Joe’s on the phone. It made it a lot easier for this customer to interact internally and externally with their customers, because sometimes people didn’t know what number should I call,

Ron Bockstahler: yeah, you know, attorneys, they hear phone system and they think it expense, not a revenue problem. You mentioned this earlier, you know, kind of rephrasing this is let’s make the business case for, you know, how does the phone setup directly decide whether a six figure matter signs with you or the firm down the street. How are you making the attorney you’re talking to as a prospective client realize this is a revenue generator more so than an expense?

Robert Harney: You know that is where it goes back to how is the call being handled. This is many times people’s first impression when they contact a firm, does it go to the auto attendant? Is the auto attendant professionally recorded? Is there a professional voice that’s recorded the auto attendant? You know, is it asking where it goes into even in AI, and where we’re even advising people that you let it be known that this is a virtual assistant. I’m here to assist you and direct you to the right individual. It’s when folks know how to answer the phone and even reviewing how do you wish to properly answer the call, so it becomes and adds that personal touch. And then use, how easy is it to use the system needs to be really easy to use.

Rebecca Bockstahler: Yeah, what’s.. do you have an example of maybe a first contact failure that you walked into and noticed, like one that still makes you shake your head when you’re telling stories about

Robert Harney: it? Yeah, calls when people call, and it literally would go nowhere, or you would call, and then it would just disconnect stuff like that still exists, or you can’t get to a person, so you get into the auto attendant, even if you know the individual you’re trying to reach, you can’t speak their name, you can’t enter their extension, it just goes somewhere, and you don’t know where it’s going. Those are where I find some of the big epic fails that folks have had with deployment of their systems.

Ron Bockstahler: Is this because people keep their phones a long time, and that’s obviously you don’t make changes very often, and the technology changing really fast, or you know what’s kind of leading to where we’re at today.

Robert Harney: I think there’s a combination, you know, with what has happened in the past is that sometimes staff has changed, so they don’t have someone to be able to update the system. You know, a lot of times people and firms have come to us, and I’ll even start teaching them about the go. Do you want to learn the back end, right? And the smart firms are like, I don’t even want to know what the back end looks like. I want to know that I can pick up the phone and call your company, and someone will fix it and change it, add a new employee, so whatever it is that we need done, it will just get done in a very efficient manner. Another client came to us because they called another very huge provider, and three weeks later they’re finally getting a call back, and they needed a phone three weeks ago for the new hire. The new hire. Been without a phone for a month, they just decided they’re coming over to us. They no longer can work with a company that can’t get back to them, especially as they’re a growing organization. You can’t afford to have people without communication.

Ron Bockstahler: That’s it’s crazy how things are out there, and I know they’re out there. We’ve seen it, right? We’ve seen it with clients join us, that it’s just, I guess they just think that’s what it is, but there’s a better way to do this, and you know, we kind of keep wanting to go back to, you know, the stats that are out there about firms not responding to their clients, right? There’s the 67% rule, I think we’re going to chat about in a minute, two thirds of the callers that come in don’t get a response in a timely fashion, and if you’re talking in the law firm, the it’s the first attorney that the client talks to, they actually get to work 67% of the time. That’s, you know, it’s a really consistent stat that’s out there. And if no one ever calls you back because you didn’t know you got a call, or you didn’t have a system in place to take that call, or, you know, follow up, what do you, I mean, how are you setting up systems, and what are you seeing? Maybe a couple ideas of how you’re setting up systems today that kind of let’s alleviate that problem. And can you automate this?

Robert Harney: Yeah, I mean, one of the big ways to automate this is obviously is looking as AI, and we have to have that discussion. You know, is it right? You know, what type of clients do you have that’s calling in, and can really be happy to engage? And part of it is, you need to make AI friendly, you need to be honest and authentic, that this is AI. I’m a virtual receptionist, I’m here to assist you and get you to the right, you know, the right individual, maybe ask a few questions that you know this information is personal and gets passed on to that attorney. The other way is that going with analytics, right? We can now get reporting from the system, we can see did people actually answer the phone. You know, sometimes what happens is the calls just don’t get picked up, the reception just doesn’t answer the phone. So then what do you do? Where did that call go? Did he go to someone’s voicemail? We have another one where we run a voicemail report for the client daily that gets sent to them to see what voicemails haven’t been checked and answered in the system.

Rebecca Bockstahler: That’s interesting.

Ron Bockstahler: Oh, that’s interesting. Okay, let’s keep the going. You mentioned AI, you’ve been doing this 25 years, and then AI showed up. Has it actually shown up? So it’s viable to be used with the law firm today. How is it transforming the business at Open One, and what can it actually do today for small firms versus what’s still science fiction?

Robert Harney: What the whole big thing is about, we need to find out what it is you’re trying to accomplish, your AI for the sake of I any technology for just I want to throw in this technology does not make sense. It’s what’s my use case. How do I need it to work? What do I need it to do? Okay, so we’ll start out simple, like you know, I even had one group, they wanted to have five languages, everything thrown in at once, and all this. I go, no, we’re going to start simple. But what’s really cool with our system, if it – if the AI prompts and starts talking in English, and the caller responds in Spanish, our solution will actually change automatically to Spanish, and then speak to that individual in Spanish, which puts people a lot at ease, so it’s really designing the system, finding out, and then also basically finding out how are people interacting with the AI. We actually rate the calls, you see, was this a positive call, a negative call. What was good, what was not as good, what needs to be improved. So then we can train and constantly train the AI to better improve itself, so that way it engages with clients much better. Think of AI as like this three year old, right? And sometimes three year olds, we need to teach them, we need to kind of teach them how to do things right, and that’s how with AI too, we need to teach it, we need to tweak it, so it’s doing things in the manner that’s a human caller wishes to engage.

Rebecca Bockstahler: Let’s talk about the flip side. Then, what should people be genuinely concerned about with AI, and specifically for attorneys, you have a nervous prospect calling who wants to talk about a divorce or an injury. Where does automation help, and where can it cost you, the client, or even worse, the confidentiality?

Robert Harney: Yeah. That’s an excellent question, Rebecca, because you have to be very careful when you vet the systems, because a lot of systems, what they do is they use the data against you, and that is, you know, the in the details of the agreement, especially a lot of these online systems that people just sign up for, the issue that you need to look at is what is the privacy policy. How is your data protected? Do they adhere to HIPAA, PCI, European compliance? So that way, then the recordings things are not being stored, so that way then it acts as just a regular conversation, only the intake information that they’re after, and what people are comfortable with. People may be comfortable that, okay, I don’t want to leave any intake because it’s AI. Great. Well, then AI can change course and say, great, let me take your name and phone number, and I’ll have Joe get back to you, or hold on, let me see if Joe’s available. That’s the other cool part with AI, is it works as that virtual receptionist, so it can then try to reach out, you know, that oh, it’s the receptionist reaching me, maybe I better take that call. Oh, wow, I have a prospect on the line. Yeah, why don’t you just please patch that individual through to me, so that’s another really cool benefit that AI can bring to the table. It understands the difference between a prospect and someone maybe trying to sell you paper or something else that you know that maybe you can’t take that call right now,

Rebecca Bockstahler: right? That’s interesting. Well, where do you see the industry heading five years from now? What does first contact look for for a firm that’s doing it right?

Robert Harney: What I really see is that it’s going to mean more lot, you know, the human touch integrated with AI. It’s going to be high-level touch, and really being with AI is good to help and assist and move people in the right direction, but then when you need that human interaction, we need to transfer that call to the proper individual that can truly assist that person. That, where is where I really see things I see better analytics where folks are actually really looking at, okay, what’s happening. How are the calls? A lot is also about, I’ll say something, it’s called an API. Basically, an API allows different systems to talk to one another, and it’s going to be about communication in an open environment that allows systems to communicate, so HubSpot communicates with the phone system that communicates with your practice management software, so everything’s aligned and can talk to one another. It’s not about closed systems, and it’s also about working with best in class, because of API, you go with the best practice management system. You don’t want the practice management system that does, oh, CRM, it does it, also does phone system, it does this, it does everything, because then it’s just a jack of all trades. So we can pick and choose which are our right products, and then interact, they all work harmoniously together.

Ron Bockstahler: Let’s bring this back. We’re all about how we can bring in more retainers every month, because we’re talking to attorneys. So, for the attorney listing in the car right now, what are the first two or three moves you’d tell them to make this month to stop losing clients at first contact?

Robert Harney: You know, pick up the phone. Obviously, that is definitely something that’s important. And if you can’t pick up the phone, ensure that the greetings are very warm and professionally produced, that way that you can put clients at ease, and then have a system, so it can contact you or your associates, so as soon as humanly possible, someone can reach out to that contact, so someone can reach out to that prospect. If it’s not right then and there, it can we return that call within five minutes. What is that process, and then even when you’re collecting the data systems can automate and even send someone a text. Thank you for calling. We appreciate your call, Joe. We’ll be getting back to you shortly. Sometimes even simple things that nature allow folks to put them in ease, that, oh, I found the right organization. They’re not just letting me, you know, they’re not just not going to be following up with me. They’ve been proactive.

Ron Bockstahler: Okay,

Rebecca Bockstahler: that’s interesting. So, I want to go back to something that you brought up at the very beginning, and that. Price and cost, so what is the biggest misconception attorneys have about a modern phone system, and what it might cost, because a lot of them are probably overpaying for less than they could be getting.

Robert Harney: Yeah, typically, how our systems are priced is that we price them based on user, so you only pay by the active for the active user within the system, which is nice. The other thing is you always have to look at the total cost, and the total cost includes taxes and fees, and unfortunately taxes and fees are a profit center, because I’ve seen them in my industry go from anywhere from in the low 20s to almost 70% I’ve even seen fees for New York sports fee. There’s no such thing as a New York sports, but the company invented it because it’s a profit center, because what they do is they say that, oh, this is the price they lead with a low seat price, but they make it up in all these taxes and fees, so it’s always important to get a holistic proposal, taxes, fees, everything, so you know what, am I going to pay on a true monthly basis, that’s the first thing that I really say is important, and then it’s going to be based upon what your needs are, seed prices range, you know, like there in many cases there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, and meaning there ain’t no such thing as a free phone, you pay for that phone, so a lot of my clients buy their phones because then they pay a lower monthly charge with us, because if they’re not buying the phone, well, then I have to amortize that cost of the phone over the lifetime of the contract, right? So it’s not free, there’s still a cost, but people think, “Oh, it’s free, it’s free. Well, let’s look at the real cost, and we’ll make both comparisons with clients. In fact, one of my clients, who’s been with us for 10 years, he goes, “The smartest thing I ever did for me, Robert, was buy those damn phones.

Ron Bockstahler: Well, then the phones can be interchanged within different systems, carrier groups, right? So, generally,

Robert Harney: yes, if you buy a phone that is a standard phone, like a Yealink or a Poly, you know, those I feel are that by far the two best manufacturers of phones, they can be used anywhere, but now, if you got an Avaya phone, that’s only going to work on the Avaya network, you’re kind of stuck.

Ron Bockstahler: Good point.

Robert Harney: And you got to be really careful that is, will this phone that I get from the provider be ubiquitous and work on any network? So, if I get upset with you, can I take it somewhere else, or am I stuck, and will it only work forever and ever on your network?

Ron Bockstahler: That’s a great point. That’s what people got to think about. Is you never know if the network’s going to change, time’s going to change, business is going to change, company’s going to get bought out. If you’re going to have to move, you don’t want to have to go buy the phone again is another expense, so great point.

Robert Harney: Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: anything we had some questions. I want to make sure we’ve covered everything. We’re about to wrap up, but Roberts, anything we haven’t hit on that you want to let our listeners know about.

Robert Harney: Wow, I think the big thing is, you know, buyer beware. You need to take a look, but really get a partner. You’re an attorney. You don’t want to mess around with phone systems. You don’t want to try to be the jack of all trades, the tech guy in your office, the phone guy, everything else, because that’s time taken away from your billing at what hundreds of dollars per hour, and now you’re going to do $5 an hour work. Now let someone else do that work for you. Find the right partner that you can outsource that, so you can just practice law, and then you know that partner has your back and is going to take care of you. So, whether it’s someone like myself or someone else, you’ll find that smaller company, that company that can provide that hands-on support, that has local service techs that can come to your office, or when you call, the call them, the calls are answered immediately by a technician that can assist you, because that’s what you need, so you can just run your business,

Ron Bockstahler: all right. And there you have it. From a gentleman that’s been doing it for 25 years in this industry, understands what he’s talking about and what’s happening out there. Robert, thank you for being here, and for making the case that the phone isn’t an IT line item, it’s the front door for the firm. The breakdown of where first contact actually fails, and when AI voice can and can’t fix is something every attorney listening needed to hear. If today’s conversation got you thinking about what happens when your phone rings or doesn’t get answered, I hope you’ll take one idea from Robert and put it to work this week. You can find Robert open, open, open one solution. Dot com. You can reach them on LinkedIn. We’re going to put all that information in the show notes. Robert, do you want to give out a phone number? We didn’t have a phone number down for

Robert Harney: you. Yeah, our main number is 312-780-1010 Option one is for sales. I even say check out option two for support. See how quickly our support team answers those calls. Excellent. All

Ron Bockstahler: right. Thank you, Robert. If you’ve enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with a colleague who could use it. The 1958 lawyer is brought to you by Amata. For more than 30 years, Amata has helped law firms of all sizes do more with less, built on our five pillars: fractional support staff, virtual office options, office space, Leo community, and marketing support. Whether you’re a solo practitioner just starting out or an established firm looking to right-size your overhead, Amata gives you the infrastructure of a big firm without the big firm price tag. Learn more at Amata corp.com Robert, thanks for being here. It was great having you on the show. We really appreciate it.

Robert Harney: All right. Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Rebecca. It’s been a pleasure.

Rebecca Bockstahler: Thanks.

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