How Call Centers Improve Conversions of Legal Leads
by Robert Wilson | Last updated Mar-08-19
How Call Centers Improve Conversions of Legal Leads
So, your law firm is generating inbound personal injury attorney leads and social security disability leads.
If so, here are your most common options:
- Live call
- Live transfer
- IVR transfer
- Web form fills from landing pages
If you’re receiving inbound transferred calls, like the first three above, consider yourself lucky. That’s because there aren’t as many of those available, especially in smaller states. And, it’s especially difficult when you’re only willing to target by county or zip code.
On the other hand, if you’re receiving inbound leads via web form fills, which generate a much higher volume of the claimant pool, you’ve got your work filled out.
The reason is because as you begin reaching out to these prospective claimants, you will notice the following issues:
- They aren’t all answering the phone
- They aren’t all responding your voicemail messages
- They aren’t all responding to emails and text messages
- By the time you reach them, they’ve hired another attorney
So, if you’re an attorney interested in growing your practice, this likely has been a dilemma you’ve faced. But don’t fret because you’re not alone.
Significantly, there’s a way to dramatically improve conversions from the biggest source of inbound personal injury, auto accident, workers compensation, and social security disability leads: Use a qualified and experienced legal intake call center.
Call Centers Provide Consistent Quick Response Times to Accident Injury and Disability Leads
Let’s face it.
If you’re running a law firm, then you’re focused on countless other tasks unrelated to contacting prospective claimants.
For example, if you’re a personal injury or social security disability firm, you’re likely involved in the following:
- Negotiating with insurance companies
- Drafting pleadings
- Drafting discovery requests
- Drafting discovery responses
- Drafting motions and briefs
- Responding and updating current clients
- Representing clients at court and hearings
- Organizing paper and electronic files
- Etc., etc., etc…
The fact is, when you’re an attorney with existing clientele then you’re involved in the practice of law. But, if you want to grow your firm with inbound legal leads submitted from landing pages, you’re stepping into the business of law. And more specifically, SALES.
So as it is, many attorneys seem to underestimate the degree of influence inbound sales has on conversion rates. Moreover, the magnitude fast response times has on the retaining more clients.
It’s all about who contacts the person first.
Check out these statistics that corroborate this tenant.
When a prospective claimant submits their information, they are expecting a follow up. According to one survey, only 7% of businesses are meeting the five-minute threshold. But here is a startling statistic from InsideSales.com: They have advertised that responding to web generated leads within the first 5 minutes increases contact rates by a staggering 900%.
According to Karl Norman, Business Development Director at Lead Connect, “the ideal time to contact a potential customer is exactly when he enters his phone number into the form.” The premise is based upon the present availability of the prospect who is currently considering an attorney. Accordingly, inbound leads contacted within 60 seconds they submit a demo showed a 391% increase in sales, according to Leads360. As expected, a slow response time will push them to pursue another law firm.
The likelihood of qualifying your prospect after 5 minutes and less that 10 minutes can have an 80% decrease in sales. One strong possibility is, as mentioned, the prospect has moved on to another attorney. I’ve seen this first hand. After submitting forms from high ranking Google My Business directories there were many times when it took days to receive a contact from a paralegal or attorney. So, what happened? They didn’t get my business because they took too long to respond. And, I thought it could be indicative of how quickly they would respond to to future inquiries I may if I were a client.
 The faster a web based lead is called, the better the contact rate. This is important and it reemphasizes the point #2 above. A separate statistic from Lead Connect mentioned that 78% of potential prospects purchase from the first person to respond. And, according to Leif Peters of IntelliChief, a prospect will see the most value from the first person who contacts them. This is because the sales person – or legal advocate in this case – has the ability to provide value, context, solutions, and frame the situation properly. The bottom line here is that if you want to improve your conversions of legal leads, you’ll have to be the first to respond. And typically, that’s not going to happen when you’re in court, the lead arrives over the weekend or after hours, or you and your staff are otherwise too busy. |
Call Centers Are Poised To Generate A Higher Frequency of Calls
If you run a law firm and you’ve got clients with pressing issues, how can you expect to reach out to prospective claimants multiple times in a day or week?
And, if you’re pursuing auto accident victims, you’re time to convert likely needs to be within the first 7-10 days.
Because if you don’t, they likely will hire another attorney.
To get a better idea, think about the experience of a potential legal claimant who has submitted their information.
- They submitted their information during a work break
- They submitted data on their mobile device in between tasks or errands
- They submitted their inquiry just to “get the ball rolling”
- They submitted their information to multiple firms to see who would respond
- They submitted data intending to gather information from the law firms
There a number of reasons prospects don’t immediately respond.
But it’s your job to work these legal inquiries as fast and as frequently, without harassing them.
And, even if you provide auto-response text messages and emails, as well as electronic drip campaigns like our lead generation company does . . . you still need the best follow up process possible.
Otherwise, you’re leaving business on the table.
Here are some stats that may be more convincing of the importance of a frequent follow-up process.
According to KyLeads, not only do most conversion happen after over 6 contacts, sales people stop reaching out 85% after the first 1 or 2 contacts. The point is that sometimes a prospective injury claimant may answer the phone, but may not have the time to effectively be qualified. And, a law firm generally doesn’t have the ability to reach out multiple times over the course of the first few days the inbound inquiry arrived. Notably, this is where email drip campaigns, ringless voicemail, and auto-response text messages may assist the call center’s success. Attorneys will need to follow up with different messages across different platforms to increase contact rates. We provide these services while integrating with a qualified and experienced legal intake center. This enhances the overall opportunity to contact and transfer prospective clients to the law firm, thus generating higher conversion rates. But many may rightly believe the most important aspect is the call center agent who makes the proper frequency of calls required to get in touch with the claimant.
 Calling personal injury leads 6 times improves conversions. Law firms should strongly consider legal intake call centers for reaching out to web based leads. It is important to reach out to prospective legal clients quickly. Yet, over 50% of people are not reachable after the first attempt. And what is surprising is half of leads among virtually all verticals are not followed up beyond the first attempt. The question remains: how many times should a legal lead be pursued over the phone? Generally, it takes the sixth call attempt to convert leads within all categories. This should provide context when an attorney or call center agent pursues personal injury claimants.
Another interesting statistic is that prospects needing 7+ calls to make initial contact are half a likely to convert.
Leads360 conducted their study based upon close to 3.5 million randomly-selected leads spanning over 400 businesses operating in a number of verticals. Based upon the results, a best practices or strategy was developed for call timing. Importantly, this strategy may work well – at least for the first three calls – for attorneys pursuing personal injury, social security, auto accident, and workers compensation leads. The reason is the inherent urgency and competition involved in the legal field. And for the same reason, the next three calls within this strategy may need to be adjusted. Nonetheless, the strategy suggested that the following:
Although this was an extensive study, another study based upon 15 million leads showed the same degree of persistence also indicated six call attempts produced the highest efficiency. Surprisingly, the study also revealed half of the leads generated failed to have a second follow up call. This is unfortunate since a second call improves the contact rate by an impressive 87%, while only about 60% of sales people pursued leads 6 times over the phone. |
Legal Intake Call Centers Are Best Positioned To Time Calls That Generate Higher Contact And Conversion Rates
The timing of calls is incredibly important and cannot be understated.
The section above touched on this topic when it discussed the studies that suggested calling three times within the first hour was ideal.
Well, below is more data that should convince attorneys that call centers are better poised at timing calls properly and positively impacting contact and conversion rates.
This information is based upon the Lead Response Management Survey, but using “more precise data…to fill the knowledge gap that exists between marketing and sales.”
The study’s focus was to determine the best time and day of the week “to call web-generated leads for optimal contact and qualification ratios.”
The study, which was overseen by Professor Oldroyd who is now a Faculty Fellow at MIT, used information from InsideSales.com. This data spanned 3 years, included over 100,000 call attempts responding to over 15,000 web-based leads from 6 companies.
The best days to contact prospective web originated leads are Wednesdays and Thursdays, but almost 50% compared to the worst day. When attempting to qualify a client, Thursday is the best.
The best time to make contact with is between 4pm and 6pm, which is 114% more efficient than the worst time of day. Qualifying leads are best done either in the morning between 8am and 9am or in the afternoon between 4pm and 5pm. Between 1pm and 2pm is the worst time to qualify a lead.
The likelihood of contacting a lead after the first hour decreases by 10x. For qualifying a lead, the odds decrease by more than 6x within the first 60 minutes.
The likelihood of contacting a lead within the first 5 minutes compared to 30 minutes decreases by 100x. As for qualifying, the odds are 21 times less likely between 5 minutes and 30 minutes. |
Legal Intake Call Centers Can Maximize Conversions of Web Form Fill Personal Injury, Auto Accident, Workers Compensation, and Social Security Disability Leads
After reading the studies and statistics within this article, it should be clear that an experienced and qualified legal intake call center can amplify contact and retention rates.
What that means is your cost per case drops, which should be among the primary metrics law firms should be reviewing.
Significantly, what attorneys fail to review is the cost of labor required to maximize conversions.
Most attorneys don’t likely have sales backgrounds. Hence, they often underestimate the required level of labor required to convert today’s web based legal leads.
Rather, there is too heavy an emphasis on the marketing side, which is generating the lead. This leads to a significant lack of focus on converting legal leads.
Ultimately, an attorney who is an astute business man will consider all factors of his company when it comes to both marketing and sales. Too many times we see law firms fail to consider that it is not just about generating the lead but converting it.
If your law firm is interested in generating and converting more personal injury clients who have suffered physical harm or disability, contact our legal lead generation company today.
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