How Quickly Do You Respond To The Inquiries From Your Website?

Jeff Berman
April 1, 2011

Properly marketing a law firm online is a lot of work. It takes time, money, and resources to build a presence that delivers phone calls and requests. I am amazed when I hear stories about law firms investing resources to get website visitors, who request to speak with the firm......and then don't bother to have anyone contact them back right away.

There are simply no excuses for this. In my humble opinion, the business side of a law firm is just as important as the service side. In other words, the excuse that you are too busy practicing law to respond to a new inquiry doesn't hold water. Now don't get me wrong, for a solo attorney busy wearing many hats it may be an impossibility to respond right away if you are meeting with a client or in court. However, my view is not that a lawyer should drop everything to respond. Instead, your firm should implement a system that touches the potential client, lets them know you received the request, and that you will be contacting them shortly. Since your competitors are only a click away on the web, don't kid yourself that a potential client will wait around for 24-48 hours without a response. What happens is that they are going to the firm across the "virtual" street.

A Few Suggestions

Virtual Receptionist - I spoke with a client the other day that mentioned he had stayed late at the office a few days over the last week and noticed a large volume of phone calls coming in after hours. Since normally no one is in the office, the machine was picking up. However, there were rarely any messages with potential client inquiries. That means all those after hours calls were falling on the floor.

I understand that hiring an in-house receptionist may not be in the cards for every firm, but that's ok. There are solutions out there for virtual receptionists that can make a big impact on on the bottom line. Even converting one or two more clients a month can make a big difference. Having a live person answering the phone, even if it is just to take a message and assure the potential client that someone will get back to them shortly, will keep the searcher from bouncing to the next firm immediately. If you are looking for a reliable virtual receptionist service, that has experience with law firms, I recommend Total Attorneys Virtual Reception Service.

Auto-Response Email - When someone submits a request through your website, setup an auto response email. Use the email as an opportunity to let the client know you received their request, that it is important to you, and that you will get back to them as soon as possible. Provide your direct contact information as well and possibly another person to try if the matter is urgent. Most forms or email clients have the ability to send an auto responder, so it shouldn't be difficult to setup.

Live Chat - Live chat services are becoming more prominent on law firm websites. Not only can they help convert more visitors into inquiries, but they also provide a way for the client to interact with a live person. It's the instant message equivalent of a virtual receptionist. Services such as ngage provide the live chat software for your website as well as 24/7 support to answer inquiries through your site.

With the various options available to help you nurture a potential client request until you are able to contact them directly, there should be no excuses for not responding right away.

Jeff Berman
Jeff Berman, is co-founder of AttorneySync. "Properly marketing a law firm online is about producing relevant content that helps a prospective client understand your expertise and how you are able to help them. Finally, it’s about getting that content found by the people you are trying to help."
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
shane
12 years ago

Lost calls mean lost business.It’s very important to have the most effective virtual receptionist.When a customer or partner calls, you want to give them a live and warm voice human than a voice mail system.Nowaday's a lot of company’s reputation and new business is on the line, how quickly and professionally you answer and respond to inbound calls is extremely important.Having an alert communications' virtual office answering service helps you capture new-client opportunities and provides best-in-class service to all your customers.

shane
12 years ago

Lost calls mean lost business.It's very important to have the most effective virtual receptionist.When a customer or partner calls, you want to give them a live and warm voice human than a voice mail system.Nowaday's a lot of company's reputation and new business is on the line, how quickly and professionally you answer and respond to inbound calls is extremely important.Having an alert communications' virtual office answering service helps you capture new-client opportunities and provides best-in-class service to all your customers.

Let's Discuss Your Growth

Helping law firms grow profitably with digital marketing and can prove it.

Barry Conybeare

We are so impressed with AttorneySync and their digital marketing services. We started with an audit of our digital presence and hired them thereafter. Fixes to the website and other platforms quickly followed and we have seen a substantial increase in online traffic, new client calls, and new client contracts. Strongly recommend AttorneySync!

Let's Talk

How can we help?

More From Our Blog

June 8, 2023
On Local Law Firm SEO Rank Tracking and Reporting

Over the years, law firm prospects have sent us reports from just about all of our competitors. Unfortunately, even today, some law firm marketing agencies still mislead their clients via "reporting." One particularly egregious example comes in the form of ranking reports. Which prompted this LinkedIn post. To my surprise, I received a lot of […]

Read More
June 7, 2023
On Attribution

John Wanamaker supposedly said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." In an an effort to figure out "what half is working," attribution was born. Coupled with a transition from traditional, offline ads to digital media, attribution became the holy grail for analyzing advertising spends. But […]

Read More
March 22, 2023
I asked ChatGPT to Recommend a Personal Injury Law Firm

I recently asked ChatGPT, "What are some of the top personal injury law firms in Chicago?? Actually, first I ask "who are some of the top personal injury lawyers in Chicago?" ChatGPT couldn't handle that one, so I modified the prompt. ChatGPT listed five very well-known firms downtown. Can you guess the other four? That's […]

Read More
February 17, 2023
My Take on Google Search's Guidance on AI-Generated Content & Law Firm SEO

If you're like me, you have some degree of AI, ChatGBT, Bard, exhaustion. Now don't get me wrong, this is stuff is remarkable and is changing, well, a lot. But before you hook up the ChatGPT API to your WordPress API and crank out 10,000 pages, here are a few things to think about. Let's […]

Read More
February 16, 2023
Google Adds New SEO Best Practices for Links

If you know me, you know my opinions about links and SEO advice from Google. If you don't, here's the TL;DR: Meh, links! Meaning, all things being equal, links still remain a competitive difference maker for ranking. Take Google's SEO advice with several grains of salt. Google has no economic incentive to help your site […]

Read More
February 1, 2023
Authenticity & Engagement

The best marketing advice I can give you is to be authentic. Of course, you don't find that very helpful in terms of meeting your growth goals. So, you might decide to game the system. As I'm writing this, one of the more popular ways to gain the system is to pay for engagement. This […]

Read More
January 19, 2023
ChatGPT for Legal Marketing

The following post was written by ChatGPT. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a state-of-the-art language model that can generate human-like text based on a given prompt or context. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that businesses, including law firms, market themselves to potential clients. One way that a law firm could use […]

Read More
May 26, 2022
SEO Expectations for Law Firms

How long does SEO take? When can I expect to see results? What results should I expect to see? These are all reasonable questions that we field from lawyers every day. And, like many legal answers, the answer is: It depends. Yes, I know that's not the answer you wanted. But it's the most honest […]

Read More
May 6, 2022
Who Should Do Marketing?

And how much time should they spend doing it? I recently had the privilege of chatting with Tyson, Jim, and Conrad for an upcoming episode of The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. If you're not familiar with The Maximum Lawyer community, you should definitely check it out. Jim asked a really great question about who should do […]

Read More

Let's Discuss

Questions or comments? Let's discuss on social!
envelope
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram