Optimising client experiences – why little data is the next big thing

While many law firms are contemplating the impact of big data, they may be better off getting their heads around the analysis of ‘little data’ if they hope to streamline their businesses, writes Leticia Mooney.

Your law firm accesses, and generates, a huge amount of data. In this respect, a law firm is much the same as almost every other business. Every activity has some kind of data attached to it, and being able to gain insights from that data is a trait of high-performance organisations.^[1] Furthermore, the business intelligence we are capable of getting from big data sets can inform organisational decision-making.^[2]

Yet while we talk about big data – we tend to throw the term around as though we know exactly what we are talking about – it is not rigorously defined. We understand the term at an ‘intuitive level’,^[3] expecting all those with whom we discuss it to understand it the same way as we do.

To provide some context, big data has been defined as data that has four Vs: velocity, variety, veracity and volume. But it can also be defined in terms of its origin, its location, whether it is internal or external, transactional or non-transactional.^[4] The concerns about how we leverage big data are not confined to one sector. In the past five or six years, the same concerns that have arisen in accounting, for example, have also been seen in operations research^[5] and are now being seen in law.

Alongside the rush towards big data has been a rise in what some are calling the ‘analytics movement’: data scientists and analysts who specialise in business intelligence are in increasing demand because analytics is not just about the data. It is, in fact, ‘a process of transforming data into actions through analysis and insights in the context of organisational decision-making and problem-solving’.^[6]

More than just Google Analytics

The challenge is that many law firms not only do not have the business intelligence capacity to organise and use big data, especially if it is unstructured, but that the data alone is not going to provide insights. For that, you need team members who are capable of linking ‘explanatory variables to a business response or outcome’,^[7] whether past or predictive. That is truly when a firm is in the analytics landscape.

The only analytics that many firms know about is website analytics through Google Analytics. It can give you a whole lot of data about your website, its users and their patterns of use. But beyond the website, the firms that are actively collecting, collating, storing, structuring and using data across multiple areas of business are in the minority.

Take small steps

So what can you do if you want to be in a position where you can start leveraging data for the purposes of decision-making? You start small. You see, in all of the discussions about big data and how amazing it is, the thing that has been missed is what is now known as ‘little data’. Little data is the key to getting detailed, granular information about your clients and potential clients.

Little data is small because it is so specific. It is right down to a client’s prior interaction with you and your firm. Knowing the details about each interaction – either in person or online – is what is going to help you optimise your clients’ experiences, to get closer to them, and to reinforce their relationship with you. It is this type of information that ‘is more useful in determining how to optimise the experience to make the next engagement or, increasingly, the next transaction, more likely’.^[8]

Your firm’s challenge, if it has never mindfully captured any kind of data, is to determine the types of information that can help optimise clients’ experiences – and from there to start recording and tracking it. If it all sounds terribly daunting, do not worry: you are not alone if you have not started. The truth is that tracking your data always starts somewhere. Where you start is less important than determining which metrics are important to you.

To find out which metrics are significant, go back to your strategic plans. Select one element – perhaps one related to your long-term client strategy – and see what metrics are important measures for you in driving forward on that element.

In terms of which data to start tracking, you can choose to begin with what is visible, or what is automated. The ‘visible’ elements include tracking what walks through your door: your actual clients. Analyse their demographics; when they come in; how often they do that; how they make contact; and their life cycles. In terms of automated data, you already have access to that if you have a website.

Using your data to drive improvement is relatively simple when you actively keep track of it. While Google Analytics can give you data at any given point in time, for it to be useful you have to track it over time. There are many ways you can do that, from online tools to spreadsheets. What you are looking for are trends, as opposed to fashions. A trend is something that occurs over a longer period of time, and builds gradually. A fashion is something that everyone is suddenly adopting, doing or chasing. The trends you want to look for relate to clients’ changing patterns of content use, demographics, search terms, topics, devices used and so forth.

Case study

When I started working with one Australian immigration law firm, it had no data. Or rather, it did not have it all in one place. During 20 years of practice, the firm had not collated it, examined it, or analysed it. Given that web platforms make data collection a relatively simple matter, that is where we started the firm’s rethink.

Having no data to begin with means that you have to let things run, preferably for six to 12 months, before you start trying to make sense of what you are seeing. During that time you are experimenting with new methods and content, adjusting messaging and seeing what comes through. It is not until you have consistent data over 12 months to three years that you can see real trends. It was as a result of tracking and querying the data that the website design changed and various content elements such as lead magnets (incentives such as a report, e-book or whitepaper that marketers offer to potential clients in exchange for their email address or other contact information) were implemented over and above a standard blogging strategy.

But for the blogging strategy, the data enabled us to do some remarkable things. By examining the demographic data over time and (eventually) tracking it against actual sales demographic data, more accurate profiles of the firm’s audience became clear. In turn, research into the most appropriate content gained greater focus. Eventually, we were able to produce extremely high-performing content with very little effort. We knew exactly what to look for, the questions that the audience would be asking, and where to find it. Once we found that formula for this particular firm, we were able to develop additional resources in other formats, which then increased the number of leads the firm was getting.

Combined with better data collection and analysis in other areas of the firm’s business, the overall result was significant growth. When we began with nothing, the firm was a tiny, solo practice. Now it has multiple lawyers, its own communications team, and clarity about where it is going, what data it is tracking, and why.

How you can get started

1. Establish your strategic goals and be clear about what you want to achieve in three, five and 10 years’ time.

2. Establish the metrics that will help you to track performance against those goals.

3. Identify which data sources you currently have that can help you with small, fast wins. Go for the automated data, and the highly visible data.

4. Put in place a method for keeping track of movement in your metrics. That could be as simple as a spreadsheet maintained in-house, or it could be a forecasting and reporting platform you buy such as CrunchBoards.

5. Let it run for enough time to return valid data (a minimum of six months).

6. Start interrogating the data as part of your decision-making processes, particularly when it comes to website and content changes, and elements of your business that affect your customers’ journeys.

Leticia Mooney is a content strategist for the legal profession and the director of content-strategy firm, Brutal Pixie. She can be contacted on email at leticia@brutalpixie.com.

Footnotes

^[1] Lavalle, S, Lesser, E, Shockley, R, Hopkins, M, & Kruschwitz, N 2011, ‘Special Report: Analytics and the New Path to Value’, MIT Sloan Management Review, 52, 2, pp. 22-32, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 20 December 2016.

^[2] Sangupamba Mwilu, O, Comyn-Wattiau, I, & Prat, N 2016, ‘Design science research contribution to business intelligence in the cloud — A systematic literature review’, Future Generation Computer Systems, 63, pp. 108-122, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 20 December 2016.

^[3] Vasarhelyi Miklos, Kogan Alexander, 2015, ‘Big Data in Accounting: An Overview’, American Accounting Association, pp. 381-396, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 20 December 2016.

^[4] Baesens, B, Bapna, R, Marsden, J, Vanthienen, J, & Zhao, J 2016, ‘Transformational Issues of Big Data and Analytics in Networked Business’, MIS Quarterly, 40, 4, pp. 807-818, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 20 December 2016.

^[5] Liberatore, Matthew J, Luo, Wenhong, 2010, ‘The Analytics Movement: Implications for Operations Research’, Interfaces, 40, 4, pp. 313-324, Business Source premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 20 December 2016.

^[6] Ibid. p. 314.

^[7] Ibid. p.

^[8] Vollmer, C, Bennin, K, Bothun, D, 2016, ‘The Marketer’s Dilemma’, Strategy+Business, Winter 2016, pp. 24-31.