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“Attorney customers, almost all of them, are going through a time of stress. Recognizing that and acting accordingly is key.”

In this episode Jim and Tyson interview Jill Nelson, the founder and CEO of Ruby Receptionists, a virtual & live answering reception service, and will explain why creating a wonderful phone experience can help us grow our business.

“We live and breathe to keep alive those personal meaningful connections…”

Jill Nelson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/callruby

“Wonderful receptionist + great technology”. https://www.callruby.com/

“We speak as if we were part of your practice and have the right information at our fingerprints”

Hacking’s hack: https://meetedgar.com/. Meet Edgar will take in all of your posts in social media and re purpose them. Also, great Blog. This article about Facebook Live is awesome. http://blog.meetedgar.com/what-you-should-do-after-your-facebook-live-broadcast-ends/

Jill’s tip: A new feature in the Ruby mobile app. “The return call” feature. When you host your phone number with Ruby and want to make a phone call through the ruby app, you can do that and it will publish your business caller id.

Tyson’s tip: https://www.stickermule.com. You can get custom labels, magnets and stickers of your firm or whatever you want. It’s really cool!

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/403473303374386/ or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaximumLawyerPodcast/ and comment!
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Transcripts: The Power of First Impressions ft. Jill Nelson

Jill Nelson
phone calls are actually on the rise. And it’s because mobile search is overtaking desktop thirds. And so people are clicking to call and they’re clicking to call in that moment when they’re ready to make a decision. So it’s really in this day and age, it’s more important than ever, you can think about what one new client can mean in terms of revenue, depending on the type of practice you have, and to make or break.

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum layer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.

Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. You’re back on the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.

Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson music. Jimmy, we have probably our highest profile guests on the podcast this week. I’m pretty excited about it. So I don’t want to get into the topic yet. I do want to sort of go over a little bit about who our guest is. Our guest is the great Jill Nelson. She is the CEO and founder of Ruby receptionists which she started in 2003. And I believe these numbers are right, guilty, I think correct me if I’m wrong, but you have about 300 employees, the company was named best small company to work for by Forbes magazine, you’ve been Entrepreneur of the Year and you’ve got over 5000 customers 40% of which are attorneys. Is that right?

Jill Nelson
Thank you so much for their really lovely introduction, and so great to be with you guys today. And it’s almost exactly true. Probably since that synopsis has come out we’ve grown our company, another 1000 or so customers and grown to about 400 employees today. So it’s always a fun ride over here at Ruby. And I think we’re approaching something like almost 45% of our customers are now solo and small, firm attorneys. So again, it’s just really great to be with you guys today to talk about how we can help attorneys grow their practice,

Jim Hacking
Bill, it’s really amazing the growth that you’ve had, and why don’t you explain to our listeners if you don’t mind what Ruby receptionists is, what services you offered, and then how lawyers can take advantage of that.

Jill Nelson
Okay, so Ruby, we are a Virtual Receptionist company. But what that means to attorneys in law practices is, we are your business’s first impression. And we help law firms win new business and keep their clients happy by creating a wonderful call experience. And we do that by leveraging our proprietary call handling software that’s increasingly integrated into the attorneys for that they use every day. And then just hiring and training and empowering wonderful people who truly care about the outcome of every call,

Tyson Mutrux
Gil. Now, I know the answer to this, because I’ve dealt with multiple answering services. But what sets you apart really what makes Ruby so much greater than these other companies. And I’ve used multiple ones, too. But what sets you

Jill Nelson
apart really only Ruby, I think from the day we started, we lived and breathed, to keep alive those personal, meaningful connections and really helping them step outside of the rules to really connect with callers looking at how we can continue to use technology to deliver a better call experience. I think at the end of the day, what matters is the experience that you’re delivering to the caller to win business and rubies is just like another

Jim Hacking
job. A lot of our listeners are attorneys who have dreams of law firms with big numbers of employees and talk to us a little bit about the early days of Ruby receptionist, what are some things that you learned and that you learned about scaling? I mean, to think that you went from a small startup to having 400 employees and 6000 customers? I mean, that’s just mind blowing.

Jill Nelson
Yeah, but you know, it’s a journey. And it’s, there’s always something but I think when we really started to nail it was when we, you know, we figured out what our value proposition was, you know, I did come from a receptionist background, and I had Office experience management and a degree in accounting. So when I started the business, I thought it was just about helping companies with an essential function. And it wasn’t until we started getting phone calls from our customers or referrals, saying, you know, oh my gosh, you just won business for me. And it was because you were so nice. And you treat my callers so well. I can focus on my practice. And when we really figured out that what we were about was keeping alive those meaningful connections and delivering an exceptional call experience to help grow business rather than just, you know, keep the lights on. And then we started to hire around that and train around that and stay singularly focused on that to the good and the bad economies that we’ve lived through it just Staying focused on what it is we do for our customers and aligning our people around that. I think that would be the one theme throughout the years that has helped us be successful.

Tyson Mutrux
So Gil attorneys, we go through law school, we go through three years of law school, they teach us a lot of things. We do a lot of reading. But one of the big things that they do not teach us how to do is actually talk on the phone and talk to clients and actually treat them well. Do you have a general advice for attorneys on how they should talk on the phone and talk to clients?

Jill Nelson
Well, you know, I am not an attorney, I did not go to law school. So I cannot tell you how to practice law or what you do for your clients to serve them or not. And so you can always have us talk for you. We’re happy to do that. I think, you know, when I think about serving attorney, customers, their caller, your callers, almost all of them are going through a time of stress, whether it’s exciting stress, because they’re starting their own business and are incorporating or whether it’s family estate planning, or you know, perhaps someone’s been arrested or you know, has been injured, whatever it is, if you have family, you know, families dividing almost every situation for somebody to hire an attorney involved amount of personal stress around these very, very important life occurrences. So I think recognizing that and of all of those things, what instills comfort and confidence is when people do what they say they’re going to do. So I think that would be if it you know, if I had one piece of advice when you’re talking to your clients or callers is if someone says you’re gonna call back in a day, call back in a day otherwise, that, you know, everyone could be thinking the worst again, especially in those times of stress.

Jim Hacking
We’re talking with Jill Nelson, she’s the founder and chief executive officer of Ruby receptionists. We’re really glad to have her until How does Ruby receptionists actually worked? Walk us through what happens when a caller calls the lawyers number, and then how does things work on your end?

Jill Nelson
Yeah, and so this is where you get the matching of a wonderful receptionist with the great technologies. From a callers perspective, they’re dialing their attorney’s office and within a couple rings, and in fact, 99% of all of our calls are answered by one of our live receptions within four rings, they just received a bright, cheery greeting that’s completely customized to that law practice. And then, depending on what they ask for, our receptionists will handle the call completely according to the attorneys instructions. So for example, we know if someone from the courthouse calls if a judge’s office is calling that oftentimes these are very important calls and attorneys have asked us to interrupt them no matter what they’re doing to put a call through and in terms of if someone is a potential new client for an attorney, that call might be screened and put through to the office, we might be asked to take a message. But really, from day to day moment to moment employee to employee within your organization, call handling instructions are completely customized. So what the caller would experience is just a really friendly person guiding them along and either transferring them to the right person, or getting a message taken, perhaps being asked a few questions, but generally providing a reassuring, kind, caring voice that lets them know that the attorney does have their information and they’ll you know, be taken care of. From there if we put a call through if we were to put a call through to you. So Jim, let’s say you had you were receiving calls on your cell phone. So let’s say and I called you and said, you know, mistake with Jim and Jim is noted as taking calls, we would oh you know, may say who’s calling, this is Anne Nelson. And then just one moment, and then Anne is on hold listening to lovely music that’s completely again, customized by whatever you have selected, and we’re dialing you on your cell phone, you answer and you’re on your cell phone. And it’s me saying Oh, Hi, Jim, I have an on the line would you like to call and you say of course and then and not even realizing that she’s called Portland, Oregon, and then been transferred to a cell phone somewhere, you know, in, I don’t know, a coffee shop or a golf course. And now you guys are connected. That’s how calls work when someone is taking calls. When they’ve used their mobile app and set their status. As you know, just one click, I’m in a meeting for the next hour or so then an O and looks like Jim’s in a meeting may take a message and whatever it is you’ve asked us to do. And then those messages will get delivered right into your mobile app you’ll receive depending on what your settings are, you might receive an alert on your phone, you might receive an alert on your Apple Watch, or you might just receive an email depending on whatever your preferences are. And so it’s all very seamless and then you can return that call at your leisure. Dialing through your mobile phone. Does that make sense? Or did I get to net people too?

Jim Hacking
Oh, perfect. Okay,

Jill Nelson
great. But really, you know what it feels like is that you have this office no matter where you are no matter what time of day, your callers are going to receive a wonderful, pleasant experience. And you’re going to get the calls you want and none of the calls you don’t want, wherever you are.

Tyson Mutrux
Jill, we were talking a little bit before the show about the numbers a little bit. And can you talk a little bit about any numbers that you may have about lost clients because of the bad phone experience, or anything that you might have that can really demonstrate how important it is to have a live warm, cheery voice on the other end of the phone?

Jill Nelson
Yeah, you know, it’s really remarkable, even in this day and age, you know, when I started the business 14 years ago, I thought, you know, will the phone call ever die. And, in fact, phone calls are actually on the rise. And it’s because mobile search is overtaking desktop thirds. And so people are clicking to call and they’re clicking to call in that moment when they’re ready to make a decision. And so we have some statistics from Google that say something like 70% of mobile searches result in a phone call. And Kelsey, BIA reports that something like 29% of all inbound phone calls lead to a sale versus 2%. If someone fills out a form on your website, and then 47% of mobile users will move on to someone else, if you do not have a business phone number. And if you do not have a positive phone experience, 80% of your callers are likely to go somewhere else for their needs. So it’s really in this day and age, it’s more important than ever, you can think about what one new client can mean in terms of revenue, depending on the type of practice you have, and to make or break.

Jim Hacking
Certainly pay for itself, that’s for sure. Yes, Joe, how does Ruby receptionists go about recruiting the right kind of people, they want to answer the phones.

Jill Nelson
So if you’ve experienced Ruby service, you’ve experienced how deeply that receptionist wants to make you happy and please you and leaves you with a positive cheery impression. That’s kind of what it’s like working at Ruby and and it feeds on itself. And I think more than anything, the people that we hire, just they’re wonderful, just being around them is one of the key contributors to getting us being voted a great place to work. So our funnel is actually really strong for new receptionist candidates, something like 70% of our hires come from referral. So the same level of dedication, we have to making our customers happy, we have to walk our talk, and we want to make our employees happy too. And I think at the core, that’s the strategy. But I also firmly, firmly believe in massive training. And, you know, just being really never ending on that we can always be better and creating a culture of striving for growth. And then really empowering people and making sure you’re incenting, around the things that matter. So I would say a really good chunk of the population are great candidates as a receptionist at Ruby, but if they go work somewhere else, and being nice, isn’t reinforced and rewarded. And if they’re given so many restrictive rules around, you know, delivering service and being quick to practice their tasks, rather than really doing a great job, perhaps that same employee wouldn’t deliver the same experience somewhere else. So it’s not just about recruiting the right people, it’s once we they get here, we want to make sure and empower them to really deliver that service. Keep them happy. So they stick around and refer their friends and just continue to help them build their skills by train, train train.

Tyson Mutrux
Joe, I’m actually gonna follow up to that question, because I heard something really interesting that you incentivize your employees based upon basically how well they take care of your customers, not necessarily the number of calls of the tag, not the volume of calls that come in. Is that true? And then how are you able to track

Jill Nelson
the things that you can track are it’s tempting to want to you know, reward off of that, and it is hard we actually did make and it is true. We used to it was one of the lessons we had to realize about we used to talk about wowing customers and make their day brighter. And then our we would give raises based on productivity. And we let go of that probably nine or 10 years ago when we realize how sort of hypocritical that was, we have moved to this model because we are have reached a level of standards that we actually if you’re a Ruby, you’re an A player. So all rubies depending on their experience, actually make the same wage but then every quarter, we award legendary receptions, cash awards, and that’s where the really great stories get fished out of how someone made a difference and they get cash prizes. The Wow story of the quarter gets a $500 cash prize is a legendary receptionist gets nominated for their overall performance and receives cash awards. And we actually get to look at their call experiences, we get to look at customers that have proactively written about the experience they had with that particular receptionist. So we reward a legendary receptionist, cash award. And that’s how we continue to sort of incent on the things that matter.

Jim Hacking
Jill, I’m on your website, and I’m looking at your company’s core values. And I like all five of them, but the ones that I like the most is practice. Wow, is what is Wow.

Jill Nelson
Yes. And I’m so glad that you liked that one the most that actually, I have to think about what my favorite art I think mine is also practice Wow, ism, which is just that whole concept of fine is a four letter word like we do not we want to hit it out of the park and practice Wow, ism is really just getting people to say, Wow, so if we can anticipate your unexpressed need and and give it to you before you before you ask, you might get a a wow, that would be you know, if you get a wow, I didn’t even ask for that. And you just knew to to put this call through it might be we made a connection. Let’s say I’m talking to one of our customers. And we notice that they’re sniffling over the phone. And the next day, a little care package shows up that says, hey, I hope you get over your cold soon. That’s practicing. Wow, that was just unexpected. Delight. It’s going beyond just doing the basics and doing what you say you’re going to do it but just really over delivering and getting a wow,

Tyson Mutrux
joke. Now, the answering service, the job you’ll do is fantastic. But it may not be right for everybody. What are some reasons why an answer? Ruby in particular may not be right for an attorney?

Jill Nelson
Well, you know, I think the more the value of a phone call is, if it’s strong, then you know, it’s hard for me to think of a situation where answering the phone is not a good idea. But in terms of answering services, there is that, you know, I do think it’s important that whatever service you choose, you do want to create a great experience. So if the answering service is not able to be helpful enough to make your callers feel like it was a good experience, and that a voicemail wouldn’t be a worse experience, then you know, an answering service probably isn’t the right solution. At the end of the day, it has to add value. And if it’s not doing that, then doesn’t make sense. But tactically in almost every situation, I can think of why you would want to use an answering and certainly a Virtual Receptionist. We like to think of Ruby as being very different than an answering service because we speak as we are part of your practice. And we have the right information at our fingertips. Because more likely than not, we’re integrated with your practice management software. So our messages are going right into your software. We’re we know who your familiar callers are, we know how you want your calls. We know how to answer basic questions. So it’s different than sort of a blind answering service who may not be able to be helpful. And if you if you’re on the phone, and you’re in a time of need, and the person at the other end of the line isn’t able to be helpful, and they aren’t enabled able to instill confidence. It’s actually a detractor and not a plus.

Tyson Mutrux
You know, it’s funny you say that because I feel like every time I call Ruby, an answering service, it’s insulting to you, because the way you will how good of a job you do. And so I apologize, you’re like you all are really great. So I apologize, you are more than an answering service. It’s not fair to compare you to that. But I apologize for that. I do you know, whenever I would ask the question is like, I don’t really see like, it’s such a great.

Jill Nelson
We feel like we’re part of your marketing team. Because we really feel like we’re a part of the team of our of our customers. We’re a daytime service. I don’t know if and that’s where like a traditional answering service is a 24 hour sort of backup position. And we might be a backup position. And we’re have you know, we’re a big part of the day from five in the morning on the west coast to 9pm in the evening. So that’s almost all you know, 8am to midnight on the east coast. So we’re there most of the time. But we’re not a backup. We’re a part of your firm.

Jim Hacking
When I first started when I went on my own back in 2008. I use Ruby at first and we stopped using Ruby just because we had so many calls that we just basically have someone who his entire job is answering the phone now. So but I remember back when we were using Ruby, the very first day that you guys were on the case my wife called the office and she knew that my paralegal slash receptionist name was Adela and the only people that worked in the firm were Adele and Jim so my wife called and Anna answered the phone and my wife called me later and said, Who’s Anna? She He had the best phone voice and she was so attentive. It was, it was the best phone call I’ve ever had. Yeah.

Jill Nelson
That’s wonderful. Thank you for saying that. I’m sure congratulations on growing your practice.

Jim Hacking
Thanks. So one other questions that I really want to get your honest answer on. And when you guys are all I know, 45% of your clients are attorneys. And I’m not asking you to dump on attorneys. But I’m wondering, are there things that are unique about working with attorneys that either you guys enjoy? Or or that makes life difficult or things that attorneys need to think about when working with Ruby receptionists?

Jill Nelson
That’s a really great question. And, you know, we have examined the attorney as it relates to how does it compare to the rest of you know, there are other customers and we love working with attorneys, by far and away on almost every measurement, they are our best customers, not just our biggest component. And so we continue to learn more and more about what, you know, how can we help attorneys be successful and really focus specifically on that. But the unique thing about those attorney phone calls, and I go back to that sort of that moment of stress is that callers and as you know, and it varies depending on the type of practice, but very often in a time of stress, and that’s what can make it for receptionist, it can make it the most rewarding, and the most challenging because and we live, we live for someone calling, feeling frustrated, and being able to turn them around and make them feel at peace and know that you made a difference in their day, we live for that. And so that’s why it can be the most rewarding that if someone’s going through a very difficult time in their life. And that’s probably the thing with attorneys, the people going through the most difficult time in their life are coming in on, you know, the lines of our attorney clients and, and so that’s where we actually can, when we go, that was a really great day of work, I really made a difference in someone’s life. It’s those colors at the same time. It can be you know, it can be really challenging, and even sometimes emotionally draining when someone is going having such a hard time and then they know when to take it on the receptionist. And we know not to take it personally but but it can be challenging.

Tyson Mutrux
Do we know that you’re very busy. So all before I wrap things up, though, I do want to remind everybody to go to the Facebook page, make sure you interact with us there, put a maximum lawyer.com Also, wherever you get your podcasts, please like and review us. Either way, it’ll be on iTunes, or any other place that you do get your podcasts. But I do want to get to our hack and Tips of the Week. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week.

Jim Hacking
So I’ve talked before on the podcast about a great little service that I use called Meet Edgar meet, Edgar will take in all of your tweets or your posts on other social media sites. And you can load them all in and then it will at whatever interval you want. It will put out tweets or Facebook posts or whatever you like. And it’s a great way to repurpose content. But they also have a pretty good newsletter. And in their most recent newsletter, they talked about something that we talk about on the show a lot. And that is Facebook Live. And so we’ll put a link to the blog post on our website about what the ways you can maximize Facebook Live events that you’ve had, and ways that you can make sure that more and more people see it. So it’s a pretty good article. So I’ll share that,

Tyson Mutrux
then I actually really do. I don’t use me that year. But I do get their newsletter. And it it really is a great newsletter. Jill, I understand that you got a tip of the week. And it’s actually really cool. I heard you talked about it before. And I think it’s actually really cool. So go ahead. Oh, good. Well,

Jill Nelson
I have to plug one of our new features in the Ruby mobile app. So it is the return call feature in the Ruby mobile app. And when you host your phone number with Ruby, what you can do at no charge is included in your service. And you want to make a phone call through the Ruby app, whether it’s returning a phone call with one click or or calling anybody in your contact list, you can do so and it will publish your business caller ID so that you can keep your clients returning, you know, using your business phone number rather than your mobile phone number and not having to give that out and making sure that when they’re calling they’re calling the office and your cell phone.

Jim Hacking
That’s fantastic.

Tyson Mutrux
It is really an awesome feature. It is such a cool feature. And I don’t know just the people are really clear about this deal. You’re actually saving the money with this because you host the number now before used to not host the number now you do and so you don’t need the phone company. You don’t need voice over internet phone company to host your number now. Now Ruby does it for you. So it reduces those costs. So they can afford to pay for Ruby. So I think that’s that’s really awesome. Thank you. So we’ll plug as much as we can. So the tip of the week is actually nothing it’s actually not as cool as your both of yours but it is something that I’ve found useful. It’s called sticker mule.com just like it sounds and it’s you can get custom labels, magnets, stickers and wall decals. So it’s pretty cool. It’s cheap, people can check it out, you go through the upload your your logo, and a lot of the work is done electronically through their magic website, and then you get your magnets or whatever may be in the mail. And it’s pretty quick. So that’s something I want to pass along. So I used it recently, and I really like it. But I do want to wrap things up, Jill, we very much appreciate it. And thank you for moving your schedule around to actually do this with us. You’ve been a fantastic guest. Thank you.

Jill Nelson
Well, thank you for inviting me and for having me on the show and for doing what it is you do giving attorneys you know, helpful tips and growing their practice and we save your success is our success. So thank you for helping our customers grow too.