Surely your firm has already trained the assistants how to answer the phone, but it can’t hurt to use a little “Continuing Education”.
Why is this so important? In my experience, most clients are lost before they even get into your office. How the front desk handles incoming calls is THAT IMPORTANT.
Make sure you and your assistants continue training in best practices for answering the phone.
- Call Tracking: Having a dedicated phone number just for first time callers asking questions and inquiring about a consultation.
- Call Recording: Recording your calls helps with making sure assistants are making a good first impression and HR evaluations and work records for employees. Having every call recorded also helps with training aspects for future improvement. Most important to the bottom line—It ensures that each call is more likely turned into an in office consultation, which maintains a higher average of conversion into paying clients.
- Call Notifications: This cuts down on the missed calls by sending emails and text messages for each incoming call. If a call is returned within 5 minutes, you are drastically increasing your chances of getting that person into your office for a face-to-face consultation.
- Answering Service: If you have a front desk assistant that can and will answer the phone every time it rings, then this section is not for you. The main thing to remember is that each call is a huge opportunity and it has cost you in either time, effort or money—more than likely all of the above. If someone is looking for a lawyer and they don’t get a real person on the phone, they are very likely to call other law firms until they get a real person on the phone and schedule an appointment. If that happens, you’ve probably lost them.
These are some of the rules that make the law firms we work with MUCH more successful in lead generation and converting those leads into paying clients.