It’s no longer sufficient to simply practice law and expect clients to find their way to you.
Now, it’s about being a savvy business owner, a visionary leader, and an effective marketer. It’s about ensuring that clients choose you over your competitors and, once they do, providing them with an exceptional experience from start to finish.
To achieve this, you need reliable, scalable processes. You must choose the correct intake team,
The client’s intake team plays a crucial role — they’re at the forefront of your business growth.
Here are the 7 mistakes that you need to avoid:
- You’re Still Dependent on Manual Paperwork
The success of your law firm largely hinges on the efficiency of your team. When time is wasted on manual tasks such as paper-based intake, your team cannot focus on higher-priority activities like client follow-ups, evaluating campaign effectiveness, or performing case research.
This also means you’re losing valuable billable hours.
Assume you work for a tiny company that processes thirty monthly intake requests. You have to manually enter all client data, including their personal details and more, each time you conduct an intake on a new client.
- Your Intake Process is Inconsistent
Consider this: one intake team member asks prospects a general question about how they found your firm, while another inquires specifically about whether they heard about your firm through a social media ad, word of mouth, or a Google search.
The latter approach is more targeted and jogs the prospect’s memory, providing you with more detailed and actionable data to refine your firm’s marketing strategy.
When different team members handle intake with varying methods or questions, you lose data consistency across all prospective clients.
Moreover, you might overlook crucial questions like, “How was your experience speaking with us? Did we address the issue you’re facing effectively? What ultimately led you to choose us?”
These questions are essential for gaining insights into enhancing the client experience and encouraging them to refer your firm to others.
- Your Intake Process Takes Too Much Time
Nobody has the patience or time to complete a form with twenty-five questions.
Qualifying new clients is the aim of intake, not holding them on the phone for a full hour and a half. For both of you, it’s not the most efficient use of time.
The prospective client needs to know that you’re approachable, and you won’t be able to convey that if your intake form has too many questions.
- Your Follow-Up Time is Delayed
You cannot leave someone waiting one or two days after they phone your office or fill out a form. It is highly likely that they will choose the company they speak with initially.
In actuality, your chances of getting in touch at all, much less winning the case, decrease the longer you wait to return calls.
To call back clients who submit an online form at one in the morning, you don’t necessarily need a full workforce working through the night. However, it does mean that in order to guarantee that leads are consistently followed up promptly, you must put efficient mechanisms in place.
- You’re Not Monitoring Key Data
This information can help you determine whether your brand is drawing in the proper kind of customers or how well your marketing is performing.
One of the main problems with using a paper intake procedure is that you won’t have access to reliable information about your clients’ residence locations, the reasons behind their calls, or how they learned about you.
If you don’t know how many leads you’ll need to double your firm’s caseload, how can you develop a strategy to do so? And wouldn’t you need to know the pace at which you’re converting leads into clients to respond to that question?
- You’re Not Setting Your Firm Apart
You have to keep in mind that there are other competitors and you have to win the race.
Remember that the intake process goes both ways — it’s when you qualify clients, but it is also when you need to convince prospects that you are the best firm for the job.
Your intake team should be focused exclusively on selling your firm to that prospective client. They should be laser-focused on getting them to come in and choose you above all other options.
Now is the time to ensure your company is working with the proper intake process and place your law firm apart.
Ask yourself this question: What makes your company superior to the hundreds of other law firms providing the same services to clients?
- Not Choosing Vocatum Intake
The Vocatum call center can help you increase your caseload. We have a team of professional, knowledgeable operators who can help screen your calls and identify potential cases. We also provide follow-up services to help you stay in touch with your clients and keep them updated on your progress.
Vocatum Center is Your Client Intake Team!
To keep up with the latest changes and ensure that your clients’ needs are being met, you need a call center that can provide you with the most up-to-date information and services. That’s why you should choose Vocatum’s legal conversion call center. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you meet your client’s needs.