Over 15 years ago, firms were plagued with the dichotomy of trying to increase revenues and reduce the administration on fee-earners and support staff at the same time. Their solution was thought to lie in the advent of voicemail. What is of more value today though is whether or not it is possible to measure the true impact of voicemail not just on the bottom line but also on staff productivity? Has it produced the benefits it was set out to or has it just been lost as an administrative "must" for the office.

It was envisaged that voicemail and DDI systems would provide the ideal solution by capturing all client calls and freeing up secretarial time from answering calls and message taking to fee generating tasks i.e. focusing on document production. The reality is very different.

When questioned about voicemail, on the surface talk suggests that it is wonderful and serves its purpose well, but behind the scenes paints a different story, with lawyers, partners, clients and advisors alike secretly hating the technology. Voicemail still remains a tool, but mainly because there really is no other alternative in the marketplace that resolves its inherent flaws.

With voicemail came a new set of problems - voicemail became impersonal (clients preferring to speak to someone instead). Industry surveys confirmed this picture. 75% of callers' hang-up when they get through to a voicemail message. But it doesn't stop there. Outcom Limited, a communications company designed for the professional marketplace, undertook a survey of law firms and found the results quite staggering. Over 82% of firms in the pole admitted that their voicemail systems were not delivering results. Amongst the issues were that messages were simply not being left and fee-earners were not utilising the system because it was too time consuming and complicated to operate.

The result: well firms seem to be stepping backwards towards the pre voicemail era in a hybrid state with secretarial staff continuing to take messages at the cost of other more effective fee-generating activities.

Voicemail adds another layer of administration to fee-earners' time (rather than take it away) and costs firms through lost chargeable time. It takes on average 90 seconds to retrieve each voicemail message through the time it takes to access the system, write down or extract the information (and maybe re-listen to the message) to the lost concentration time. A fee-earner typically retrieves in excess of 10-20 voicemail messages a day. The end result is valuable time (15 to 30 minutes a day) is being taken away from client and hence chargeable work. One only has to add in the chargeable rates and the number of employees to see the true value of the fee income being wasted on a daily/annual basis.

Of course, some would argue that this time is already accounted for in administration so is hardly charged. Well with charging becoming more and more acute the pressure is on for lawyers to tot up their targets, however informal they may be. Further, with client pressure to deliver projects within fixed fee and tighter time frames, it becomes imperative that law firms are given the opportunity to maximise their time and profits without extra pressure on staff.

What about secretaries? They spend up to an hour a day taking messages for their 3 or 4 bosses. Over a year and you have a considerable amount of time spent away from fee-generating activities. There is also recognition that secretaries can play an important role in becoming more client orientated by becoming more productive and highly skilled and undertake more value-added activities which contribute greater value to a firm, such as paralegal duties, marketing, knowledge management or billing.

Client satisfaction is also topping the agenda. With anything between 10 - 40 seconds before you can even get to leave a message is it any wonder that law firms are missing calls as clients get intensely frustrated with voicemail. The messages conveyed in some voicemail recordings again seem to defy any logic: if a client reaches a recording he/she knows the person is not available and therefore does not need to be reminded in a lengthy message concerning the lawyer's movements leading to increased irritation. Wasn't the purpose of voicemail to avoid all this and reduce administration? Hunter groups or group pick up seem to add to the problem with clients being sent on a run around and calls not answered in time before the client hangs up.

There are plenty of technologies developed to try to resolve some of these problems, for example, unified messaging - which goes to highlight the inherent issue with voicemail and then again it resolves some, but not all the problems mentioned - clients still have to leave a message in the first place, which as we have seen they are reluctant to do. And it involves costly IT integration and infrastructure costs and training.

And how do you measure return on investment on the implementation of voicemail against this background? What is the effect on the bottom line? If law firms are so focused on squeezing as much time as possible to improve efficiencies and productivity in today's very competitive marketplace, should they not be looking at real measurable alternatives.

One company, Outcom Limited, has an answer to this problem. It's Managing Director, Milan Zala, a former City corporate lawyer, believes that firms should turn the issue on its head by outsourcing their call management functions to third party providers. His company provides the only professional answering service dedicated to law firms. As an extension of the law firm, Outcom captures all calls with messages delivered directly to the individual desktop/blackberry to bypass both voicemail and secretaries altogether to improve productivity, profitability and client relations without any infrastructure costs. The system is a flexible opt in service allowing partners who prefer to maintain their client relationships through their PAs to continue without compromising the benefits for the remaining staff. Mr Zala believes that by giving back time to the workforce, firms are investing in their well being by helping them manage their time more effectively and efficiently producing results for both the employee (more control, less stress and quicker work turnaround times) and for the employer (through increased productivity and profitability).

This may solve the problems inherent in voicemail and provide benefits you can see around the office, but what about the bottom line?

Outcom seems to have resolved this problem too by having a unique and transparent reporting tool that provides a individualised and departmentalised view of the cost savings and the extra chargeable revenue opportunity resulting directly from the actual usage of the system by the law firm, providing invaluable information to assist in management decisions.

So how are managers responding? Increasing numbers of firms are reviewing their secretarial support to fee-earners to improve the quality and responsiveness of secretarial staff, against a competitive backdrop where clients demand speed of response, consistency of service and value for money. This opens the way forward for firms to outsource some of their non-core activities to provide a win-win situation for clients, law firms and their staff.

With practice partners searching for tangible return on investment through new processes to save valuable administration time for the workforce, could voicemail become a thing of the past?

Milan Zala of Outcom Limited, can be contacted on +44 (0) 208 590 7408 or by e-mail at milan.zala@outcom.co.uk.

Milan Zala - 16 August 2006