Why Marketing Without A Legal Answering Service Is A Waste Of Time

Imagine you’re opening a pizzeria, and you dedicate a ton of time and money to online and offline advertising, trying to get the word out about your new restaurant. Now imagine that your marketing efforts worked, and you get a ton of people to show up to your pizzeria looking to eat, but you have no one at the counter ready to take their order and serve them.

This of course would be a ridiculous way to run a business. Bringing people to your restaurant is nice, but if no one is ready to handle order, they’ll quickly move on to lunch somewhere else. Marketing your law office without a proper lead capturing service is just as ridiculous! Even if your marketing rocks, and you’re a really great lawyer, you won’t make any money if you can’t properly capture the prospective clients that contact your firm.

The level of customer service you provide for first time callers to your firm matters a great deal. In today’s overcrowded legal space, making a positive first impression is a must, in order to keep consumers from quickly moving on to a competing firm for help. And the best way to ensure that you provide a quality customer experience for all of your prospective clients, is to team up with a legal answering service.

What Makes A Legal Answering Service Unique?

You probably already have an idea of what the typical answering service can do for a business. They’ll provide a team of receptionists that answer calls and take messages on behalf of a company, usually from an off-site location. In theory hiring a regular old answering service sounds like a good idea, but the majority of answering services out there struggle to meet the lead capturing needs of law practices. Their receptionists are typically untrained in handling legal phone calls, and too busy handling requests for other types of businesses to give your clients the attention they require.

Where a true legal answering service like Answering Legal separates itself from a typical answering service is that we only serve attorneys. This allows us to offer specialized legal services that you won’t find at any other answering service. Our goal is to operate with the same skill and efficiency that a high level law office receptionist would, while providing your firm unmatched 24/7/365 phone answering coverage.

How Can A Legal Answering Service Help With Capturing Leads?

With Answering Legal behind you, anytime your office is unable to pick up the phone, one of our legal intake receptionists will jump into action and take the call on your behalf. So whether you’re just too busy during the work day, or are enjoying a few rare days away from the office, you can feel confident that your clients are being greeted by one of our highly competent team members. With our service, more of those leads you worked so hard to cultivate will actually be converted. Here’s why.

• Our receptionists are highly trained: Not everyone is equipped to handle a legal phone call. When using our receptionists, a lack of professionalism will never be an issue, as the receptionists we employ have all gone through months of legal phone answering training before picking up a single call for an actual attorney. Nothing will phase them, and they will be prepared to accommodate your callers with whatever issues they might be experiencing.
• Our receptionists are legal intake experts: The ability to execute the legal intake process is perhaps the biggest factor in capturing new leads. All of your first time callers need to be taken through a proper legal intake process, to ensure that you receive all of their relevant personal and case information, and are ready to impress during your follow-up call. Skillfully taking clients through an intake process, will also build their confidence in your firm’s ability to handle their legal matters.
• Our receptionists will remain in communication with you: Depending on your preferred call forwarding preferences, our team can attempt to patch you in on a call if a new client opportunity arises. This can keep you from missing out on a potentially game-changing case for your firm. If you are unavailable, not to worry. The second one of our receptionists finishes conversing with one of your callers, you’ll receive an SMS text message and/or email with details of the call and intake information.

It’s Time To Make Lead Capturing A Priority

Your marketing is crucially important, but it’s only part of the equation. As we stated earlier, spending a ton of money on a marketing campaign, only to not be able to capture any of the leads you generate, is just as effective as throwing your cash out the window.

A recent study says that 42% of the time, law firms take three or more days to reply to a voicemail or web-generated form fill from a prospective client. What this indicates is that many of your competitors are probably sleeping on the job, when it comes to converting their leads. Imagine the remarkable edge your firm would have using a live answering service that ensures all of your calls are answered by a live person right away 100% of the time. This is why signing up with Answering Legal is a pretty obvious decision for your firm.

Before embarking on your next marketing campaign, sign up for a free 10-day trial of our service, and see just how effective our legal intake receptionist team can be at capturing your new leads. You have absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Sign up here today!