Shakespeare Martineau pushes for deeper relationships with Peppermint CRM

Originally published in Briefing March

Shakespeare Martineau heads of business development and marketing, Audrey Holden and Daniel Woodhouse, outline how Peppermint Technology’s customised CRM is helping to deliver a more holistic client experience.

For Shakespeare Martineau, an efficient client relationship management (CRM) system is not a fad, but a necessity. As the firm offers legal services for numerous private and corporate clients across many specialisms and sectors — including banking and finance, energy and healthcare — it’s fundamental. “I genuinely don’t know how anyone could otherwise manage the level of complexity of client data, for marketing or business development, in a compliant way. You need that comprehensive system to manage client information properly,” says Daniel Woodhouse, head of marketing at Shakespeare Martineau.

For Woodhouse and Audrey Holden, the firm’s head of business development, a CRM must have two essential features. First, it must be a platform that is user-friendly and makes collecting, managing and analysing client information as easy as possible. The second is that it gives a complete, holistic view of clients across the business — including prospective or lapsed — to get the full picture and help identify any new avenues for profitable exploration.

It was felt these needs were not met by the firm’s former system. “It was barely a CRM, as it didn’t integrate with any business systems, and was just a repository of marketing data — basically, it was a fancy spreadsheet,” recalls Woodhouse.

With a desire to grow the business further and also use client data to improve service delivery, as well as unlocking new business opportunities, in 2021 it decided to invest in Peppermint’s Client Engagement.

Another alluring aspect was the supplier’s close partnership with Microsoft. This enabled the firm to integrate other Microsoft products with the new CRM, thus both contributing to cost savings. “As lawyers/people were used to Microsoft, the system also seemed easier to use and more intuitive,” notes Holden.

Perhaps the biggest attraction though was Peppermint’s expertise in delivering CRM solutions for the legal sector specifically. “If we had gone with a generic CRM, we would’ve had to start from scratch, with the onus on our teams to make a lot of changes to make the platform work for us. With Peppermint, the system is preconfigured for the legal sector,” says Woodhouse.

A holistic approach to client relationship management

With a new CRM in place, Shakespeare Martineau was able to streamline a number of existing manual processes, and pull together a large volume of client data (such as matter types, billing history, contracts), leads and inbound enquiries to create a one-stop-shop for all client information.

“It all ties back to having an overarching view of a client. Now, if anyone has a question about a client, they’ll come to the MBD function, because we’re the ones with the knowledge — we can see what clients are paying us, our best contacts from those companies, who has turned up to which events, how satisfied they are with our service, and more. We’ve got a wealth of information, which has created an appetite across the business to learn more about each client, and contribute to this data goldmine,” says Woodhouse.

Shakespeare Martineau can also use the data to produce a report that identifies any gaps in the firm’s provisions to clients — which it might be able to pitch.

Winning the team’s hearts

Moving from one system to another can sometimes be a challenge for a firm’s people, who must adapt to a new way of working.

Although the system was poised to deliver the efficiency gains, getting buy-in from the MBD team was slower at the beginning, recalls Holden, as people weren’t used to the features the new platform brought to the table — compared to the simplicity of the previous system. The implementation also coincided with the roll-out of a new finance system — causing a certain amount of “system fatigue”.

Part of the solution was for senior leadership team to be advocates, making it clear how everyone will benefit from the change. Slowly but surely, as people became more familiar and comfortable, they began to recognise and embrace the new system.

New features in focus

Shakespeare Martineau has continuously customised Client Engagement since launch, developing and implementing several tailored features to best suit the firm’s work.

One requirement was for increased data security across the CRM. As the firm grew significantly, working with multiple regulated entities, it needed to ensure that specific, sensitive or private client details were only visible to the relevant people within the firm — thus meeting regulatory and confidentiality compliance. As such, the firm worked with Peppermint to build a complex security system to meet this requirement.

The solution has also helped to improve the firm’s succession planning. Holden explains that the MBD team has developed a tool with Peppermint to pull together all the data sources across the CRM to identify where the relationships with clients sit within the business. “It may not just be one particular fee earner that has a connection with the client, there might be other people who know that client and their business very well, but in a different service line. Using this tool, we know that even if someone has left the firm, is on maternity leave or long-term leave for medical or personal reasons, we still have a point of contact with the client,” she elaborates.

Taking client listening to the next level

Despite having a solid client listening programme in place, Shakespeare Martineau was keen to find new ways to enhance it even further. As such, the team worked together with Peppermint to bring in automation in several areas — including regular reminders for contract renewals and management and delivering client feedback requests — to boost the programme’s efficiency.

“We’ve been able to automate the sending of a basic net promoter score (NPS) for data capture and reporting. In the very rare case we get some negative feedback, there’s an immediate alert sent to the client partner, so they can pick up the phone and address any concerns. This means we’re getting objective feedback from clients, freeing up fee earners’ time, and enabling us to act quickly — it’s also cost-efficient, as we didn’t have to spend any money on external consultants,” Holden explains.

Effective teamwork

Holden and Woodhouse note that Peppermint was attuned to the firm’s needs throughout, listening to all the team’s feedback, suggestions for improvements and new features to be developed and delivered. Moreover, it was able to connect the firm with other Peppermint users, to swap experiences and learn from one another.

“While we’ve been the ones driving these new features and customisations, Peppermint has been very supportive. We’ve met on numerous occasions with their product development team, who was happy to see us tailor the CRM and helped us with this. Overall, it’s been a really collaborative relationship,” says Woodhouse.

Recognising there’s still more untapped value to be unlocked, Holden and Woodhouse confirm they’ll be continuing their work with Peppermint to further improve how client relationship management supports the firm’s ambitions.

First, the firm will look at customising the platform to allow users to track where each specific client and business line has originated — whether an event, referral, marketing campaign, and so on — to better measure the ROI in certain MBD activities.

The other big focus will be implementing more automation within the CRM to detect and notify the MBD team and lawyers immediately should there be any changes or updates with a client — for example, if they submitted a negative NPS, or if they have not been in contact with the firm for an extended amount of time. These changes will enable the team to be more proactive when interacting with the client and provide a higher level of personalisation.

Ultimately, all these developments are designed with some overarching goals in mind: to ensure client satisfaction every step of the way, and ensure the whole firm stays as close as possible to all the changing circumstances at those hopefully happy clients. “We’re conscious that in terms of the letter of the law, we’re the same as other firms. It’s the client relationship that makes the difference, so our focus is always to do whatever we can to make that relationship and client experience better,” concludes Woodhouse.