What Is The Intake Process?

Intake in the marketing world refers to the process where legal leads go through your firm’s sales funnel. While your law firm’s marketing and advertising may encourage prospects to take a specific action, such as filling out your site’s contact form, many law firms need to improve how their leads are cultivated. This makes it more likely that the legal prospect becomes a client.

Converting leads into clients is not an accident. Prospects become customers when they feel that a law firm will help them solve their legal problems. The decision to sign on the dotted line is driven partially by marketing and advertisements. But the human factor in your law firm is often needed to get the client to sign up. It falls on your law office intake staff to handle prospects effectively, answer their questions, and position your legal service as the answer to their problems.  

Why Is The Intake Process So Important?

Your law firm cannot afford to allow legal leads to slip through the cracks of your intake system. Therefore, your law firm intake staff must provide the best customer service to ensure that leads become clients. Microsoft Dynamics 365 reported recently that 90% of consumers decide to do business with someone based on their customer service experience.  

Can you imagine losing up to 90% of your law firm’s potential business because your customer service and intake system are inadequate? While your current clients need to feel they are essential, your firm needs to make the best impression when it nurtures legal leads. 

That is where your lead intake system comes into the picture. Your intake staff needs to have the right attitude, ask the correct questions, and offer the best legal information to ensure leads become clients.

Troubleshooting Your Intake Process

Do you need help getting some of your legal leads to become your following clients? If you receive plenty of good leads from Legal Locator, but conversions are down, there could be something awry with your lead intake process:

Do You Have A Friendly Legal Staff?

People skills are a huge deal in the legal profession. The personnel who answer your phones, respond to emails and texts, and meet with prospects need to be polite, compassionate, and committed to offering the best legal services. Take note if anyone on staff is not unfailingly polite and helpful when speaking to clients and prospects.

Is The Phone Answered Quickly?

Mitel, a telecommunications business, notes that people usually hang up if a phone is not answered within three rings. So answering the phone in your office in one or two rings will set you apart from other offices. Also, when people get someone on the phone immediately, it makes a fantastic first impression.

Do Prospects Get Connected With An Attorney Quickly?

Once your intake staff determines that the legal lead is a good fit for your business, getting the prospect on the phone with an attorney is imperative. Talking to the attorney as quickly as possible to address their initial questions is essential to getting them signed as clients. If the person cannot get an attorney on the phone promptly, they will likely go elsewhere.

Do You Have Your Brand Aligned?

A significant part of legal brand positioning is developing your firm's legal persona. It needs to convey a clear message and a strong customer service experience. But if your intake staff does not reflect your marketing branding, you will lose conversions.

Suppose you are a Boston personal injury firm that focuses on truck accidents. Your staff should be trained and positioned to reflect the truck accident legal branding in your advertisements. They should be able to talk about your firm’s large settlements and verdicts in truck crashes and answer the most common truck accident questions. If they do not have this critical truck crash-related information at their fingertips on the phone, you will lose many conversions.

Does Your Staff Answer Legal Questions Correctly?

The best legal lead intake procedures ensure that staff is ready to answer common legal questions in your specialty. While your non-lawyer staff cannot answer in-depth legal questions on the phone, they need enough information to provide prospects with helpful information. Therefore, they should quickly get an attorney on the telephone when they have determined it is a good lead for your firm.

Do You Check Legal Reviews?

Online legal reviews allow clients to tell others in the community about their experience with your firm. If you check your legal reviews in Google and other sources, your clients will tell you how well your services are perceived. Also, you will learn if there are any problems with your intake and customer service processes.

For instance, if your law firm does not pick up the phone quickly, it will likely be mentioned in negative online reviews. Or, if someone is rude to prospects on the phone, it is almost guaranteed that someone will mention it in a review. If you do see negative reviews, it is ok. Every lawyer gets a negative review from time to time. Just be sure to address the matter quickly, both publicly online and privately, with the client.

Contact Legal Locator Today For Assistance

If your law firm needs more legal leads, Legal Locator has you covered. We will provide you with all the legal leads you need. In addition, if you need assistance with your intake process, we can help with that. So contact Legal Locator today at (888) 499-3212 to get your legal lead marketing started.