How To Optimize Your Client Intake Process

The trouble with client intake is that it’s a vital part of law firm management that lawyers just don’t have that much experience with. You know what you need from your intake: good lead conversion and all the information you need to secure new clients. But unless you’ve answered the phone yourself, it can be hard to know how to get what you need from your intake.

After all, the client intake process is both your first impression and a significant part of your firm’s lead capturing. If your firm has a great quarter, a good portion of your success will be attributable to good intake. And, of course, the opposite is also true; if you’re struggling, it might be because you’re not securing enough leads.

Something that important should be as effective as possible, which is why in this blog, we’ll be tackling how to make your intake optimal before every call, during every call, and after every call. We’re recommending a lot of work, but we’ll also have ways an answering service can make the optimization process easy. Below we have a step-by-step guide on how to make sure your client intake process performs to its fullest potential.

Step 1: Prepare Your Intake Before Ever Picking Up The Phone

Good client intake starts before your phone ever rings. The thing you want most in your lead capturing is consistency, so that you always have a steady supply of new clients. That means you need to prepare to nail your intake every time, and make sure whoever you have answering the phone is prepared. This is the most important step; without proper preparation, you’ll be flying by the seat of your pants, and won’t have consistent results of any kind.

The most important part of preparing for every call that could come your way is to come up with a script for your client intake process. A script might seem like extra work, or else too structured for something that’s supposed to feel natural, but if you’re looking for consistent results, a script is a must-have. We have an in-depth guide to developing a script here, but a good general tip is to make sure you ask for the information you always look for when reading a client’s file.

Next, you have to make sure your receptionist is well-versed in your script. They need to know it well enough that they’ll be able to check off every box, otherwise the work you put into developing your script will go to waste.

Here’s the catch, though: when leads call your firm, they’re looking for a personal experience. Your receptionist needs to be able to stick to the script while still feeling like they’re having a spontaneous conversation with your prospective client. You should run practice calls with your receptionists until even you might have trouble telling when they’re reading from the script.

Delegate Scripting And Training To An Answering Service

If all of this sounds like a lot of work, well, that’s because it is. The process of developing a script and making sure your receptionists know it well enough for it to work effectively can take hours away from your legal work. Those hours will be well-invested, to be sure; your new lead conversion rate will be much higher after you’ve optimized your client intake.

But if you can’t or don’t want to spend that much time on scripting and training, you can always delegate it to an answering service. When you sign up with us here at Answering Legal, we will help you design a custom script for your client intake process before we ever start picking up the phone for your firm. We have sample scripts you can build from, or we can use our countless hours of experience to help you come up with a script from whole cloth.

In addition, our virtual receptionists undergo months of training to prepare to answer for your firm. They receive ongoing training on both new and updated accounts, so if you ever need to change anything, we’ll be able to adapt immediately.

Attorneys are notorious for wanting to control every aspect of their firms, so we understand if you’re hesitant to delegate something as important as client intake. Consider this, however: Wouldn’t a task like training be better off in the hands of experts? Sure, you could spend hours scripting your intake and training your receptionists on it, but those are hours you won’t be spending billing your clients. We have years of experience training virtual receptionists to answer for lawyers. Your phones couldn’t be in better hands.

Step 2: Prepare Your Staff To Handle Distressed Legal Callers

In this section, we’ll go over key parts of the client intake process to focus on while your receptionist is speaking to new leads. This is the part of the process where your receptionist will be largely on their own. Since you don’t have time to be constantly listening over their shoulder, you should be sure they know their stuff before they start.

The number one most important thing to remember is that your new leads are largely looking for comfort. Many legal issues, from divorce to bankruptcy to criminal law, can be highly personal or embarrassing. Nobody likes to feel like they’re filling out a form or a survey while describing their problems.

Your receptionist should practice active listening to make your script feel as conversational as possible. They should be trying to make the caller feel heard, most importantly by retaining information that’s delivered out of order so that the caller never has to repeat themselves. As much as your new leads want to talk to a live person and not fill out a form, that’s essentially exactly what they are doing. That’s the paradox of a good client intake process; what you need and what the client wants don’t exactly align.

It’s not always possible to get all the information you need without asking questions that don’t come up naturally in the conversation. Ideally, however, your receptionist should be filling out a digital form (using any of many webform services, like Google Forms) while speaking with the client, all while trying their hardest not to sound like they’re just filling out a form.

Our Receptionists Are Trained To Handle Every Intake Situation

As we mentioned earlier, when your receptionist is on the call, they’re largely on their own. Even if you were in the room, listening over their shoulder, there’s not much you could do to help, and you’re likely to distract them if you tried. You’re just one attorney, after all. You can’t run quality control on your receptionist all day and get all your work done.

This is where Answering Legal comes in. A significant portion of our aforementioned training process includes training in intake. We go over as many possible questions different legal disciplines might want to ask, while also leaving room for improvisation. And all the while, we have quality control on staff, monitoring calls and responding to client needs 24/7.

Our virtual receptionists can perform intake in Spanish, too. In fact, all of our features are also available in Spanish. Your Hispanic leads will receive the same quality service as your other leads, and will very much appreciate being able to communicate in the language they’re most comfortable speaking.

You can trust Answering Legal because we have only ever answered for lawyers. We have years of experience in training, scripting, answering, and quality control that could be at your disposal. We make sure our virtual receptionists have the lead-capturing skills you need to be able to get your work done without worrying about or micromanaging your phone answering.

Step 3: Make Your Follow Up As Effective As Possible

Just as important as any other part of the client intake process is what you do after the call. The main point of client intake is to buy you time to make your follow up. Good intake will make sure your new leads don’t immediately call your competition. But unless they speak to you soon, they might get impatient and call another attorney, even if you have perfected your client intake process.

Therefore, to ensure you have a swift and effective follow up, make sure your receptionists are taking good messages. You’ll want a copy of the completed intake form, of course, but you should also make sure your receptionist is also taking down a summary of every call, in case an existing client calls in. In addition, there should be an easy way for the receptionist to send you the message as soon as possible. Preferably, it’s sent to you via email, so that even if you aren’t in the office you can still keep up with what’s going on.

Getting your messages as soon as possible enables a quick follow up, which ensures they won’t go looking for another attorney. Leads are, of course, looking for a lawyer, but they’re also looking to feel better about their legal situation. Competent intake and a quick follow up will make your new leads confident that you’ll be able to help them, securing their business for your firm.

We Designed Our Service To Enable A Quick Follow Up

Because we answer only for lawyers, we understand that competition is high in the legal world. While the legal market hasn’t gotten that much more crowded, the internet has made it possible to find another attorney in seconds. That’s why we’ve designed our legal answering service to enable a swift follow up, to give you the greatest chance to secure new leads.

Our virtual receptionists take detailed messages during every call and send them out immediately after the call. They’ll send the message to your text or email inbox (or both), and you’ll be able to follow up on your schedule. You’ll never miss a new client because you don’t have the information you need to seal the deal, and you’ll never again hear a new client say “I already explained this to your receptionist.”

While we can’t directly help you with your follow up, we can give you every opportunity to secure clients whenever they call. Our virtual receptionists are available 24/7; no matter when your clients are calling, they’ll get a live representative of your firm. You’ll receive messages in your inbox overnight, so you can be ready to follow up the next morning.

As an additional bonus, you’ll be able to respond to your firm’s needs wherever you are. If you’ve got a long day at the courthouse, all your messages will be waiting for you when you take a break. If you’re across the country at a conference, you can secure leads when you get back to your hotel room. And, if you really want to save on overhead, our service can enable you to work from home or run a virtual practice.

You Can Lean On Answering Legal

We mentioned before that our virtual receptionists answer exclusively for lawyers, but we didn’t really go into why that’s so special. If you take a tour around the websites of other answering services, you’ll eventually find that many of them also answer for other businesses.

Our virtual receptionists will never answer for dentists or plumbers. Just as you’re an expert in your legal discipline, the receptionists your clients will be speaking to are experts in answering for lawyers. They understand the unique needs of law firms and clients, and are well-trained in responding to both.

If you want to take a peek at what our service can do for your firm, we invite you to check out our free trial. We don’t even need a credit card or very much of your time to get you started. After just a half-hour phone call, our white glove setup team can start preparing your account and working with you to develop your custom scripts and call protocols.

Make the most of every opportunity your lead generation gets you. Click here or call 631-686-9700 to sign up for our free trial. For a limited time, we’re offering firms that sign up with our service their first 400 minutes free.