The importance of making a great first impression cannot be understated. It helps you to build trust with a client from that very first call. The legal sector is one of the most competitive industries when it comes to winning business. Looking at recent research, the legal industry has an average conversion rate of just 1.6% for inbound calls. This means there is plenty of room to turn prospects into clients from the very first phone call.
When you begin with a positive and warm interaction (rather than letting calls go to voicemail) you reduce the risk that a prospect will go on to call a competitor. You can increase your law firm’s conversion rates and improve your ROI from marketing efforts. But how do you make this great first impression? In this article, we’ll explore what law firms can do to convert contacts into valuable clients.
Spend your money in the right places
It’s common for law firms to spend marketing budgets on websites. Client care is another area often in focus. While these are crucial areas, the in-between – the process of converting prospective clients into actual clients – often gets overlooked.
This oversight is costing law firms money and not optimizing marketing strategies effectively.
For some brief context, focusing too heavily on the top and bottom of the marketing funnel and ignoring the in-between looks like this:
Top of the funnel: Spending money and attention on attracting potential clients via website design, SEO, and online advertising.
Bottom of the funnel: Providing excellent service to existing clients.
The middle of the funnel (where lead conversion happens) focuses on nurturing leads who have shown initial interest, but are not yet ready to make a purchase.
This stage bridges the gap between attracting potential customers (top of the funnel) and converting them into paying clients (bottom of the funnel). Ignoring the middle of the funnel creates a grey area where potential clients are lost despite showing initial interest.
The first thing to do is explore what your prospective clients experience.
1) Mystery shopping
Mystery shop your own firm to learn the client experience.
A mystery shopping approach gives you important insights and a baseline understanding of how your firm operates.
By acting as a potential client, you can identify strengths and areas for improvement in your firm’s intake process.
In particular, pay close attention to:
- How quickly your firm responds to calls
- The call routing options
- If your firm is available to take calls throughout the day
For example, assess how efficient and clear your call routing system is. To do this, check if calls are directed to the appropriate departments or individuals without unnecessary delays. Going through the call routing process yourself enables you to discover how easy (or difficult!) it is for callers to navigate your system and reach the right person.
2) Call routing
To ensure your firm answers all calls, don’t rely on voicemails.
When receptionists are busy, on lunch, or out of hours, a call routing option is a great way to take caller information, enhance client satisfaction, and provide reassuring communication experience.
For effective call routing, integrate your firm’s phones with other tech, such as your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and practice management system. This creates cohesion across your systems and ensures information is easily discoverable by the people who need it.
It’s also important to establish clear goals for your call routing system. Typical goals include reducing average wait times and increasing first-call resolution rates. Regularly review these goals to ensure continuous improvement.
When implementing call routing systems, be sure to conduct thorough staff training. It’s essential that all team members understand how to handle different types of calls and intake scripts.
A note about intake scripts: Purposeful intake scripts go a long way to delivering a positive first impression. Take your time to prepare your intake scripts – they will allow you to filter the clients that are the right fit for your firm more easily.
3) Responding at speed
Prospective clients don’t want to wait around.
A rapid response time between when a web form is submitted and when your firm contacts the potential client is critical. The quicker you respond, the more successful you’ll be in converting leads into clients.
After all, a quick response time gives a great first impression of your law firm. It sets the tone for your client relationship moving forward.
To improve your response times, consider the following strategies:
- Automated notifications: Set up a trigger to notify your team of newly completed website inquiry forms. Your team can then respond promptly (and ensure the caller doesn’t go to your competition).
- Set incentives: Your team will respond positively to incentives you set for responding at speed. Reward team members who consistently meet call response targets according to your set goals.
- Develop SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures): Establish specific SOPs to outline the steps to be taken when a web form is submitted. This can include assigning inquiries to appropriate team members, prioritizing urgent cases, and ensuring follow-up within a set timeframe. Working with SOPs help standardize your firm’s processes and ensure that everyone follows the same protocol.
Conclusion
The client experience can be challenging to get right; but it’s certainly worth the financial and time investment. Standardizing your firm’s processes right from the initial call through to concluding client matters significantly helps your operations.
Viewing your clients’ experiences through their eyes is a worthwhile task; it enables you to spot the gaps in your client journey and improve them. Which will ultimately help your firm to gain more trust and more clients.
About LEX Reception
With receptionists working across North America, LEX Reception offers a 24/7 legal answering service, supporting law firms with professional call handling, intake services, appointment and consultation scheduling, and other outsourced phone services.
