Use Technology To Your Advantage

• April 15, 2009
• by ServeNow Staff
• Business Tips
• Technology

How Accepting Papers Electronically Can Increase Your Business

When Matt Klein, Vice President of Sunshine Legal Services, began accepting electronic papers in the late 1990s his business increased between 30 and 40 percent.

“Clients welcomed it,” said Klein. “In fact, it was a deciding factor for some clients when choosing my business over others. My flexibility and availability to receive their work was appreciated by them.”

Customer service is just one of the many reasons why most process serving companies are now receiving files electronically. In fact, according to a ServeNow.com Yahoo! Group poll, 89 percent of process servers will accept electronic documents. Klein credits his decision to receive papers electronically to increasing his business’ productivity and efficiency.

“In the case where someone’s up against a deadline, if we can serve a copy then they don’t have the expense of sending it overnight,” said Klein. “We also are able to forward the documents to our remote servers who don’t make it to the office daily, or are so far out, we would have to mail or overnight them.”

Technology has created new expectations for process servers. Clients today expect their papers served quickly and notification that the serve was completed communicated back to them instantaneously. The demand for increased technology led to the creation of the ServeManager software, which will be released later this month by ServeNow.com. According to Trent Carlyle, co-founder of ServeNow.com, by receiving papers electronically you offer a higher level of customer service to your clients and in turn, can take on more business.

“When creating ServeManager, we were looking for a way to better serve the process serving community’s technology needs,” said Carlyle. “Not only do we want to help them garner new business, but to keep that business coming back to them time and time again. One of the features in ServeManager is the ability to assign, and upload electronic documents to a process server from anywhere in the country. This will allow the customer to instantly send legal documents in a safe and secure application.”

Despite the technological nature of business today, there are still some people who do not receive work electronically.

While accepting papers electronically can increase business, there also can be more front-end costs associated with printing paper and toner costs.

“Without a doubt, it has increased the amount of work we receive, both locally and from out of area. However, just like receiving a fax, costs have to be recovered,” said Bruce Samuelson, Vice President of Pro-Serv Process Serving, Inc.

To recover those costs, many process servers either charge a per page printing fee or include the cost in the overall cost of the serve.

Utilizing technology can help take your business to the next level. By accepting documents electronically from clients you are providing them with more customer service and increasing your own efficiency.

How are you using technology to help your business thrive? Tell us below.