[Transcript from webinar with Smith.ai, GNGF, and Kenect]
McKay Allen:
We're grateful you're here, my name is McKay Allen, I'm on the marketing team at Kenect. We're going to talk about lead intake and follow up for law firms, specifically focusing on web chat and texting for firms.
McKay Allen:
So why don't we introduce our panelist here. First of all, Maddy Martin, head of growth and education, Smith AI. Maddy why don't you tell us a little bit about Smith AI and a little bit about yourself. We see you on a lot of these webinars and presentations presenting, give us a little background on you and the company.
Maddy Martin:
Yeah, no thanks so much. So this is the third start up that I've created a marketing role for myself in. I like to develop growth teams, marketing teams for innovative companies, that's my thing, I absolutely fit that bill. I basically took the virtual receptionist industry, remote receptionist, and infused it with a lot of technology. So we've got live agents in AI who operate 24/7, and that's across phone calls, chats, texts, and Facebook messages, to do a lot more than call answering and a lot more than the basics.
Maddy Martin:
So not only call answering, chat answering, text answering, but also scheduling and intake, payment collection, deep integrations with your CRM, your case management or practice management software, your phone systems. And basically playing with all the systems that integral to your business so that you can reduce the interruptions and chores, focus on productivity, and really regain work-life balance in a solo, small, or even medium sized firm.
McKay Allen:
Awesome. Well done, it seems like you've done that a couple of times given that introduction. Mark, why don't we come to you. Mark is the CEO, founder, of GNGF, Get Noticed Get Found. Tell us a little bit about you and a little about the company.
Mark Homer:
Following Maddy just makes me look... not quite as good a resume there. But I have been around technology and marketing for quite a while. I am the CEO and founder of GNGF which is also Get Noticed Get Found. We only work with law firms providing strategic marketing and services, mostly digital. We actually wrote a book about, kind of going on almost 10 years ago, called Online Law Practice Strategies, and that kind of I think led to us speaking a lot and being on webinars and CLEs and such. It's actually in it's fifth edition, the book ten years ago would probably be irrelevant at this point because things change so fast in the internet.
Mark Homer:
But I have been around like I said marketing and technology for a very long time. When it comes to websites, I was IBM when the internet kind of happened, so I literally built some of the first websites for large corporations back in the day. And then kind of stayed on the marketing side of that as it went forward which was a lot of fun. And so we've been working jut with lawyers for the last ten years at this point.
McKay Allen:
Awesome. Mark thanks, and then Mike why don't we come to you to tell us a little bit about Kenect and yourself.
Mark Homer:
Absolutely. These guys have mentioned, I've been involved in business development and sales in various technologies for quite a few years coming on a little over 20 years now. Excited to be here obviously with Kenect there are, and if you want to jump one slide there ahead, I'll talk a little bit about what we do.
Mark Homer:
So we're a text messaging platform that really facilitates communication between firms and their clients. As kind of the topic de jure here, we're going to talk about lead intake and capturing those leads. So we'll talk a little bit about that, that's part of what we do. Our platform also helps facilitate payments, and manage your online reputation and generate online reviews. And yeah, that's a little bit about us and what we do, and we're focused on the legal market, we're connected with quite a few of the case management systems out there, so regardless of what you're using we can kind of get data and pull it at our system. But in many cases, integrate directly with your case system, like Clio, File Vine, Practice Panther, Litify, Rocket Matter, quite a few. We're working on a bunch of others, so heavily focused in the legal market as well.
McKay Allen:
Awesome, thank guys, appreciate that, let's jump right into the topics. We're just going to go through these topics and have a discussion about them. I'll try to move us through the topics as we come to resolution on one or the other. But we do again, want you to ask questions if you need clarification on any of these.
McKay Allen:
Let's start first with, if you guys have data around law firms or how law firms are driving leads to their firms these days, Mark I know you specialize in this of course, that's kind of what you guys do, what are you seeing in terms of where leads are coming from in 2020 for firms?
Mark Homer:
So in 2020, believe it or not, there's still a lot of firms that are relying on referrals. But I think a lot of people learned in the last four or five months that's certainly not a growth strategy. And Maddy and I have talked about that in a whole other webinar where referrals are great but it's 50 percent of people find lawyers through referrals and the other 50 percent are searching for them. But if you dig one level down that data, you'll see that anybody 40 and under is skewing way more towards searching, right? So the millennial and gen Z generation.
Mark Homer:
So a lot of people are searching online, so you've got search engine optimization. We're seeing advertising continuing to do well from like pay-per-click advertising online, and we're seeing actually social media advertising really been an uptick over the past probably six months to a year, in terms of success rates on social media advertising. So we're seeing a lot of leads continue to come in from digital. I would say clients that work with us over time, will see more and more from digital, but that's because they're being proactive on it.
Mark Homer:
If they're not being proactive they may get lucky and somebody is finding them on search or they got a referral and they went online and found them. We talked about that on another webinar I think here, where a lot of people, even if they are getting referral they go online to check you out, so reviews and things like that are very important.
McKay Allen:
That's interesting too Mark. I was just going to mention on referral, I think we've all seen the data that kind of indicates that even, like you mentioned, even with the referral people still want to search and learn about the firm. And even in some cases they're trusting reviews more than they trust the direct referral from a family member or friend.
Maddy Martin:
They're even using those touch points to vet against it as like a comparison, if someone is uninformed, not only will they do the research but they'll also have two conversations, one with one firm and one with another. And it's sort of how does this person approach this problem. You may not have the whole world view, but you have the view of two different, you know a Gala apple and a Granny Smith apple, you know which one sort of whets your appetite. It's interesting to see how consumers sort of educate themselves based on their experiences with those initial consults.
Mike Melis:
I was going to jump in there and kind of echo Mark's statement a little bit with a couple of data points there. What we've seen in our data is about 81 percent of clients are going to look at reviews as their first step when they're out there looking for a firm. And they probably are, to Maddy's point, they probably are going to vet a few firms and so I think, we're going to talk through a couple, I think there's a couple different technologies that both Maddy and Kenect provide that I think help you be the last phone call, or the last contact that they make. You want to be that last hand they're reaching out for help for.
Mike Melis:
But as well, to kind of echo Mark as well, about 88 percent of your clients trust online reviews and what they're reading about you, as much as they what they're hearing from their peers and their friends, or from those referrals that they're getting. So that online reputation is pretty important. And one question that just popped up I think Mark, that's salient to kind of what you do, it says, "are yellow pages dead? Even for criminal and PI?"
Mark Homer:
So I think yellow pages, it's very interesting. First of all, being a marketer I always say, "marketing is science not math, so you should test it." We actually had a client, or somebody come to us and say, "hey, I do all the yellow pages." And they found that it worked really well in Key West area, or in the Keys, but not up in their main office in Miami. And so we're like well, that was surprising to me because I haven't heard the words Yellow Pages in a while.
Mark Homer:
And sure enough, we dove into the data, we put some extra tracking in place because they didn't have everything in there. And sure enough they were getting enough business to justify the expense. So I never say never, right? I would say that we do not see much traffic from any Yellow Page online source, and if you do have the tracking number set up, just as a safety tip more than anything, force the Yellow Page to use your tracking number, not their tracking number, we see a lot of phone numbers that are wrong for law firms as we first go in and do reputation management work, and a lot of those came from a Yellow Page tracking number that they didn't control. So now, instead of calling the lawyer, it's calling like a plumber or something.
Mark Homer:
So just a safety tip if you do use Yellow Pages. So I think it is, the criminal cases are the areas where it was working in the Keys for this person. I think it was DUIs and those kind of cases down there. I guess it's just drunk partyers, I don't know. But they did have the data, but test anything.
Maddy Martin:
I think another thing to your point Mark, with respect to tracking and the calls, it's really important to have a system that allows you to track the calls, and also form-fills. Which we know, we just did a webinar with Call Rail the other day, and they're now tracking form-fills as well. So if you own sort of that entire vertical integration, you can track not only the calls but also the website business and form-fills all within the same system.
McKay Allen:
Awesome. So to summarize this, there are some changes even in the last six months, to your point about social media ads, things like that, people do prioritize reviews increasingly over direct referrals. Any other things you want to add to this one at all before we move onto the next topic.
Mark Homer:
So I just wanted to make sure I do clarify on one thing here, because I always forget to mention this and it becomes an nuance later. There are two types of people that are finding you online. There's the people that literally are searching for an attorney, and they know they need an attorney, right? They're going in and saying, "divorce attorney near me." Then you've got people that are just started to research the topic, and trying to figure out like hey, what's going on in this area. Like how much is alimony going to cost me? What is like for child visitation in my state? So those types of people may be a longer cycle, so getting their email, providing downloadable guides, following up with multiple touch points, maybe getting them into a text chain as well. These kind of leads, I know Smith AI, for us, will actually do an outbound phone call when somebody downloads a guide, right? So that's something you can do.
Mark Homer:
But having those multiple touch points for somebody isn't directly looking for a lawyer, because they're not really looking for reviews and those kinds of things, because they didn't realize they even needed a lawyer yet. The person who is looking for a lawyer is going to be probably spending more time talking about that type of prospect on this type of webinar where we're kind of getting into immediacy and following up on stuff like that. But there are still the idea that, getting someone to come in, getting a downloadable guide, getting that email and phone number, and getting them to opt in to whether text or follow up, and then doing multiple touch points afterwards. We're seeing great success for that as well. And that's where I think your social media ads come in well. So maybe estate planning, like dropping in some information about hey have you thought about this? You're kind of interrupting them in their flow of checking out their friend's picture of their dog or something. And now you can drop in your ad, they go there and you're following up with them.
Mark Homer:
There is a set of audience that really isn't even searching, or doesn't realize they're searching for a lawyer.
Maddy Martin:
Two things on that. One, educational retargeting is so interesting. Showing them a video instead of an ad. We used to think retargeting, which means showing people who have expressed some interest or visited your website, interacted or engaged with you in some way, another ad, or a sequence of ads. It doesn't have to be just for product companies, right? It doesn't have to be oh you liked that boot on Amazon, here's the boot again, maybe boots. But you know you can actually show them educational videos, you can continue on with that talk and have themes. But two other things here, one, social media ads have become a lot more valuable now that specifically with Facebook, there are form fills that allow you to automatically generate their contact information into the form so you're reducing friction because they don't have to thumb-in their contact information. And you get it immediately, which is also the issue with social media, which is you have a whole ton of followers but nobody's email. Right?
Maddy Martin:
So you sort of bridge that gap where you're getting meaningful, real personal information that can allow you to follow up and not just sort of target them around the web. And the last thing that I'll say, is that the lack of follow up is what your competition is doing. So your competition is letting those calls go to voicemail, your competition is not picking up, and they're paying for these leads, and those leads are still interested, at whatever degree that we're talking about.
Maddy Martin:
So one thing that you can do, depending on your practice area, is actually get a meter for how ready they are, how urgent they feel. You can do that without directly asking by, if your in a criminal defense practice, you can ask them do they have a court date scheduled, if so when is it? That will give you a pretty good sense of the urgency. Or, you could say directly, how urgent is it for you to hire an attorney? Or, how ready do you feel to hire an attorney, one to ten? That's something that's pretty rarely done, but quite reasonable for you to ask to determine how important it is for you to get in touch with that person, and to nurture and sort of chase them.
McKay Allen:
Awesome, that's great. Guys let's move on to the next couple here. So, Mike for you, how does texting work? Let's start with that one, and Maddy once Mike goes, why don't you give us a sense of how web chat works. And then Mark take the next one once they're done, which is, don't chats or do chats and texts just replace calls? Or is it actually additive. So Mike, go ahead with how texting works.
Mike Melis:
Yeah, I appreciate that. So I think there's a couple ways that the firms that we work with use chat, or use text within their organizations as a way to better communicate. It can be anything from having a widget or having something on a website that allows them to make that first contact with you. Because you're a ton of things that we just talked about, that Mark and Maddy just talked about where, you're trying to drive traffic to you, right? And they're somewhere in the process of looking for an attorney, but capturing that lead, and giving them a way to interact with you that's simple and easy is great. So having a text us or chat function at the bottom of your website is a much less intimidating way for them to reach out to you.
Mike Melis:
Because some of them just aren't ready to pick up the phone and talk to you yet. They're somewhere in that process, they may be early, and having a text us or chat widget on the bottom is an easy way for them to start that process. And for you to kind of capture that conversation and start that intake process with them, that's one way that a lot the firms we work with, with our technology there, they start a conversation and then it shifts them, it sends them an automated message back and you shift over and they're texting you on their phone.
Mike Melis:
That's one way that firms are using texting. But it can be used for a lot of different things. One thing that's really interesting about text, versus phone calls back and forth, phone calls, it takes time for them to call, and if you don't answer to leave a message or vice versa. If you're calling them back they're probably not going to answer that phone call if they don't recognize the number, that's one of the statistics that we find and our clients find interesting. Most people are just not going to answer a phone call that they don't recognize the telephone number.
Mike Melis:
And we get so many spam calls. I don't know how many you guys get, but I probably get ten spam phone calls a day from unrecognized numbers, I let it go straight to voicemail.
Mike Melis:
But text is just a much more direct form of communication. Where there's less noise in that channel. I occasionally will get a spam text message, but it's pretty infrequent. So 98 percent of text messages get read, and 95 percent of them get read within three minutes. So people, if you think about your phone versus, your phone app and even your voicemail, email, versus text. One of my neighbors was really excited to show me her phone, she had reached 100,000 unread emails. So she was really excited about the little red thing on the top of her email that said 100,000 unread emails. And two buttons over was her text app that showed one unread text message.
Mike Melis:
So it just kind of shows you the difference between those channels, and how effective text can be to communicate with your clients. It's how they want to communicate with you. It's simple, it's clean it's easy. And text, it facilitates a lot of really easy communication, they can send documents, evidence, photos, videos. And you can do the same, really easy to kind of get up dates and send updates.
McKay Allen:
Awesome. Maddy talk to us about chat as well, and how it's used by firms.
Maddy Martin:
Yeah. I mean the fact of the matter is, that texting for businesses is being used whether you like it or not, and it's really just a matter of steering it so it's not a nuisance for you and it's a net benefit right? So if CVS is going to text me if a prescription is ready then I'm going to expect with uber, with Amazon with package updates, I'm going to get a text message from FedEx that I have a package that requires signature. You're just being pulled into that.
Maddy Martin:
And there's now an app driven culture, where on Yelp, on Uber, at the click of the button, I can ask for not just a product but also a service. So, what you can do with chats specifically, is on your website have a capture opportunity for people who either find the convenience for chat beneficial. Back when we were working for offices times, it would be discrete method for having a conversation without having to leave your desk, or having a coworker overhear you talking about a DUI or divorce matter, right?
Maddy Martin:
So there are personal and sensitive issues that, now even back at home, to Mike's point with text to chat, it's a silent method of communication which also is to the benefit at home, when you have multiple generations. Maybe you're doing estate planning and there's an elderly parent, maybe there is a divorce or separation matter and you have a young child. And these things need to go the way [inaudible 00:23:20] course of business, and you need to have these conversations and explore your options with the law firm. But overhearing it is sometimes inappropriate or not possible. So, keep that in mind when we talk about both text and chat. But really the way that chat works is it can sit on any website, no matter what your website platform is, it works on mobile, on desktop, and it also can integrate with text and with Facebook.
Maddy Martin:
And basically you get live agents, and/or AI. So there are simple questions that can be answered with stock answers, and there is always this human element, at least with Smith AI live staff chat, where there is monitoring, there is stepping in, there is engagement at a human and personal level. So what don't we like about sort of the AI, we don't like that it pretends to be a human, so let the AI work with sort of predicted responses based on the context of the conversation. What do we think the conversation is going towards. And then, when you have live staff, you can do things that evoke the experience you want with your firm, which is a sensitive, professional, in-tune law firm or lawyer, right?
Maddy Martin:
So if you have someone who says, "I am so unbelievably stressed out. I'm dealing with this criminal defense matter, or immigration matter, or estate matter, and I'm way over my head, and it's super urgent." You don't want someone on chat to say, "alright, let me book you for an appointment." That's rude. You want someone today say, "I'm so sorry you're dealing with that." And what we want out of chat, is that connection, but also the steering and guidance for, all right, I understand you're going through this, I'm going to ask you a few questions, and then if we determine this is a good fit for this firm, then we're going to schedule you for an appointment, and by the way an appointment cost $100 and it's going to credited to your first bill. Or whatever expectations you want to set up front. And then you predictably steer that conversation based on whether or not that lead is a good fit.
Maddy Martin:
The nice thing is that chat allows for someone to continue doing work, or continue doing something else, and you never lose touch with that chat agent, it's in control and there's also a full transcript, that if you have someone doing this for you, you as the attorney can refer back to entire transcript, be fully in-tuned with the conversation, and have a really productive first consultation seeing the entire context. Not only that, but also taking, and you can do this with text as well, those key words, that initial question that came through and prompted the chat, you can also say, "how can I build content around this? How can I create better landing agents, with more relevant key words? How can I reference the phrases that my leads are using in their own voice?" Are they saying "car wreck" or "car accident" right? It's important that you look down to that, sort of nitty-gritty level and say, "how can I hack my growth?" I can do it by taking more of the common parlance of my leads, and integrating it into my website, into my ads, into my Facebook page and stories.
McKay Allen:
That's great, that's awesome, I think the biggest key that I would say for both texting and chat is that it removes friction, and allows people to communicate in the way that they naturally want to communicate in today's day and age. So Mark, let's come to you, what about the concern that these methodologies just replace calls. Which I suppose in itself wouldn't be a terrible thing because it's quicker and easier to communicate this way than a call. But what are your thoughts on that, do you have data around that?
Mark Homer:
Yeah, so we're strong believers in different people want to communicate in different ways right? So why force people to communicate the way you like to communicate when you're trying to get a new client? I get it. Like, if it's your staff person, you can tell them to communicate how you want to communicate, but if it's somebody who is paying you, or you're hoping they're going to pay you, right? You need to kind of be a little bit more flexible.
Mark Homer:
So we really pushed chat early on, on our client's websites. And we did get a little push back early on, kind of saying, "well I don't want to pay for another thing because, you know, it's not like I'm getting any more business. Because they're just instead of calling they're going to chat." So I'm like, that's an interesting concern, let's go to the data, right? So we did a bunch of testing around it and found that over the course of six months when we added chat it was a net increase of 25 percent more leads than we had with the client that didn't have chat.
Mark Homer:
Okay, 25 percent is actually a pretty big deal. The interesting thing is how much came after hours. So that was also something fascinating for me. So then we started relationships with Smith AI and stuff where we started saying, "hey, even if you're not even doing chat, you're probably getting calls after hours and on weekends." I think it was another 30 something percent or whatever, of calls and chats and stuff were coming in, and form-fills, were coming in over weekends and after typical office hours.
Mark Homer:
So, not only is it not replacing calls from our data. Maddy and Mike you guys might have some other data on this. But we did it on our law firm clients sites, years ago, to see that it wasn't cannibalizing. The other thing we can see is that just from all the general data out there of generationally, right? So, like Maddy was talking about how people's expectations because of these apps. Well, so pretty much anybody under 40 years old is using Uber, Lyft, food delivery, grocery delivery, shipping notification, I want my stuff everywhere on my phone. So the expectation that I can't... and you're texting your doctor already. Right? Like I can go on and do a direct text with my doctor about things. The idea that you can't do that with an attorney I think is kind of crazy for some people. Especially, in that 40 and under generation.
Mark Homer:
If your target market is over 40, it's still an issue though. I just had an anecdotal conversation with my Dad the other day, where he's in one of those active retirement community he calls it. It's like a 50 and over retirement community somewhere. And he said that they had some people, everybody got masked up and somebody walked people through how to use online shopping. So they had to pull up the app, and they were using their phones, and so now he goes, "everybody in the community can do online shopping." And these are 60, 70 year olds. So I think the expectation of what people can do and can't do when they can't leave their home is quickly changing.
Maddy Martin:
I'll say another thing which is like you probably, if everyone here, put a one in the chat if you've got a VoIP phone or Cloud phone, because I'm guessing it's a vast majority. Because you have texting and you have chat but you don't have it integrated in the ways that we're talking about. So like, I would be shocked if you don't have a text enabled phone number. And you better after this, go check how many text you've missed if you don't realize you have a text enabled phone number. So that's sort of the number one thing.
Maddy Martin:
You want to make sure that you have the channels, that they're open, and that someone is paying attention to them, right? So a lot of these systems also offer the opportunity to have shared notifications, you're not the only one, because it's not just your phone, it's actually like an app that multiple users can have access too, right? So the burden is not what it once was. But the communications are going to come through whether you like it or not. So right now, what we're saying is, how do you get the most out of these communications, how do you leverage them, and how do you get ahead of your competition?
McKay Allen:
That's a good segue, and Mike let's jump to the response, the conversion, the best practices around that. Because someone coming to your website and filling out a contact us form, or calling you, like the internal processes are very different than if someone texts you for example. And your ability to respond is different too. Like we talk to attorneys who say, look they're between hearings at a courthouse and they can just text, whereas they wouldn't have time to call, right? So they're able to stay in touch with their clients in more immediate ways, is probably the best word. But let's talk a little bit about that response time, Mike what were you going to say relative to that?
Mike Melis:
I was just going to say, kind of in reference to replacement and I think it leads right into that next question is, I think it's not a replacement for phone calls, but I think it does give clients another way to communicate with you, like both Mark and Maddy have eluded too, it's so funny we have three "M"s here, Maddy, Mike, mouthful. But, giving them the channel that they want to communicate on with you, it just gives them a better way to reach you. And as far as that intake process goes, giving them a way to reach out to you that allows you to capture that lead. And if you'd just flip up one slide there, I think seeing an inbox is helpful to kind of talk through the collaborations there.
Mike Melis:
So regardless of whether it's chat or text, giving the team a way to collaborate on that communication is helpful, and Maddy mentioned with chat, it's a very similar where, you have the capability to go and see that entire history of that communication, and also the team can collaborate. So, it doesn't necessarily have to be you, I think people here text or chat and they think, "I don't want to get that, I don't want to do it from my cell number, or I don't want to have to man that all the time." And I think, giving the team, or in Maddy's case, outsourcing some of that, is a great option, right? Where you give the client a way to communicate with you and manage some of that intake process.
Mike Melis:
But more not entirely fully responsible. You're not the sole person responsible for that communication. But the team as a whole has got access to do that. And you can assign those out to various teams or even groups within your organization that maybe the intake team handles those first conversations and then they get handled off to an attorney paralegal duo team that takes it after that initial conversation. And they take it from text to, hey let's set up a conversation, right? Let's set up a time to talk where it is appropriate where you've moved from that text, that initial conversation where you need to start having some deeper conversations. And that's really where that transition I think happens, in that intake process.
Maddy Martin:
Yeah, I mean there are a couple things that you can do that really benefit your productivity here, whether it's outsource or whether it's across your team right? So there are tools like text expander, which are amazing which allow you to save phrases, and snippets, and contact information, links that you use really often. They'll tell you if you're on Facebook and saying thanks so much for the referral so often and writing everything out every single time, text expander is your friend. And there are even some native apps for the iPhone that will allow you to do that too.
Maddy Martin:
But, there's also the ability to sequence these conversations so that you have a text that comes through, you could say, with Smith AI, like on chat or on text, queue this playbook basically, if they answer the question a certain way. Okay are you looking for a family law attorney? Yes. A divorce, okay then ask these questions, they're right for our law firm. You could say, how long have you been married, are there any children, have you ever worked with another attorney? If they've worked with three you sort of say okay see you later.
Maddy Martin:
But you know, how do you screen them, and vet them, based on that set sequence of questions because guess what? You're in control of this conversation, and I think that's the thing that's most overlooked. Always, texts and chats are seen as an interruption, as noise, as people who are not serious, like we're totally debunking that right now and saying, these are people who are serious leads, they are coming in at a rate of one chat for every four calls. I think it's like four or five chats for every nine form fills. Not something to laugh at right? That's a substantial number, think about your call volume. That's a substantial number of increased leads that you're getting.
Maddy Martin:
These are people who are saying for one reason or another, it's convenient for me, it's within my comfort zone, but I still need you to walk me through what information you're going to be looking for me if I need to talk to your law firm. Tell me am I in the right place or not, because they don't have the experience, and you can do that in a sequence, in a predictable way, with these platforms. It doesn't have to be off the cuff every time the same way that when your friend or so and so texts you, it's not like that, it's a whole different thing.
McKay Allen:
Yeah there are custom replies, and things like that. And I think, Mark this slide is really, we were talking about this one before the webinar started actually. And this is from a webinar that Maddy and her team built... or from an infographic I think that Maddy and her team built. But Mark, you were really intrigued and I think you feel this is super important, the ability to respond to a lead immediately is in a weird way the most important factor on whether or not they're going to become your client or your competitors client.
Mark Homer:
Yeah, and I kind of alluded to some of this in the beginning where I say, if you kind of separate the two types of people that are searching for you, people that are coming across and finding you almost on accident, didn't realize they needed and attorney. Versus the people who say, "okay I'm looking for an attorney, you came up in search somehow, or I was referred to you somehow and I looked you up online, and I got your website" right?
Mark Homer:
Then they either call, fill out a form, we're saying text and chat, why wouldn't you have that on there? Many people are already doing it. So, what we found though is we would have clients that would get, let's say the same amount of leads as another client, but would complain about their business not really... seeing business or the leads must not be good. And the other client is just praising us because their business is going gang busters and they need to go hire people.
Mark Homer:
But when we really dove into it it was, and we record calls right, if you're in a state that allows it we always recommend it on one party call rail Maddy mentioned earlier, can just set that up automatically. So we go in and listen to some calls, and you see everything going to voicemail, or going to a really, really bad admin. Like the raspy voice, and then just kind of like grumbling through a little bit and then hanging up, and the person's like "okay, I'll just go find the next person because they didn't even schedule an appointment right? They barely asked me any questions about what my problem was." There certainly was no empathy there right?
Mark Homer:
And so we started realizing that it's not just even the timeliness, the timeliness is important, but it's also how you handle that intake. From the empathy, like Maddy talked about, you don't want to just kind of say "do you want to schedule an appointment." You want to say, "oh I'm sorry to hear that, that really sucks that that happened to you." And now let's talk, and how can I be there to help. So having the right person there, or the right service or firm, and then having that information tracked, so it goes from one person to the next person, to the next person, so everybody's kind of seeing the same thing.
Mark Homer:
In other industries we call this CRM by the way. Legal is unique in that we have an intake process and we don't use the word sales, and CRM, and stuff. But everybody else treats this as a customer relationship management system. Where the intake comes in, it's in a system, and then the next person can see it and do something it. Or, an email can go out based on it, or a text can go out. This is a very standard way of doing things, I think legal is just finally catching up because we got on the practice management bandwagon first, which is great. We helped out internal office, but we didn't help getting new clients into the door.
McKay Allen:
That's awesome Mark, because I think what you said is totally right, which is that I think sometimes, and tell me if you think I'm wrong, but it feels sometimes that firms want to believe they're being chosen based on their expertise and the expertise of the attorneys that are at the firm. And that may be true in many cases, but often it is like the basics of, did you respond quickly? Did you respond with empathy? Like they'll overlook all the degrees on the wall if you respond slowly, they'll find a competitor, which is I think kind of what you're getting at Mark. And that seems to be really-
Mark Homer:
And I don't know which slides we have in here Maddy, but I think it's somewhere in that infographic where, and you put a link to it there so thank you, but there's something about, yeah... so here it is. It's people just want to know that somebody is helpful, that's one of them. It wasn't, "I want to know that they win all the time." Which is by the way what a lot of lawyers lead with their website. But it's like, "are they going to listen to me, and are they helpful." So the clear legal trends report, there's some really... especially when you peel back the data and go into the demographic side of it and see that the rising population that is going to be your clients here, or already is your clients and going to continue growing into your clients more, really, really cares more about that.
Maddy Martin:
Yeah, and not only that, but I mean to Mark's point specifically, what he's drawing on here. Informing up front potential clients, it's only to your benefit to have more informed leads who can make a better decision. Because most people have no legal experience, and they even need convincing. And if you look at the CLEO reports two years ago, many people said, "I'm going to try my best to not work with an attorney." Because if you look at the NPS scores, they're somewhere down near telecom and the airlines, that's really not the company that you want to keep.
Maddy Martin:
And why is it? It's because there is a long standing history of people using voicemail to screen, and sort of passive aggressively make someone wait for them, and they're worth the wait. Well right now, the consumer mindset has completely changed. And you will stand out and you will compete more readily in the market if you deliver exceptional service, you're upfront, and you deliver something of value, it doesn't have to be legal advice. It can be something of value that helps them evaluate whether or not they're ready to have a case or pursue legal matters with your firm.
Maddy Martin:
And what we see is that it's actually not just in the speed of communications but also in the content, right? It's in the channel, are you across the channels where they're behaving which is what we're talking about here. Where they're interacting, and asking for recommendations on Facebook. Take that as one example. So where do people ask for recommendations? There's literally a tool on Facebook called "Asking for recommendations." You better have your Facebook game ready to be mentioned, and respond to any time that you're recommended. And have a professional presence that is a business that people feel personally good about referring to.
Maddy Martin:
And when you get that lead, what are we hearing? We're hearing that potential clients don't get enough information. And that alone can be enough to not hire the firm. They are looking for an expert to steer them, they know they don't have the questions, and you can answer them in any which way. And the other thing I'll say is that these channels also offer the opportunity to put disclaimers. So we find that some of our clients are concerned that on chat, on text, Mike I'm sure that you guys hear this, how do I engage in a conversation where they may be expecting legal advice?
Maddy Martin:
Well, you put a disclaimer up front that says, "this does not establish an attorney client relationship, this does not constitute legal advice." Very, very important to do so, and look for solutions that already have that baked into the system. You know, are they anticipating your needs as a law firm because they are specific and unique compared to other businesses.
McKay Allen:
That's a good point Mike, I want you to hit a couple topics here Mike. The first one is, you've done a really good job at Kenect of integrating the Kenect platform into practice management solutions. So that's everything from the actual text conversations showing up in file vine or whatever tool you're using to contact syncing that kind of stuff. How critical is that for a firm to manage relative to their intake process, making sure those things talk to each other?
McKay Allen:
And then the second piece is kind of what we were talking about here, which is, we hit this a little bit, but the silence is golden idea on the slide, which is, you can text in many instances where you're potentially not going to make a phone call. So, maybe hit both of those Mike.
Mike Melis:
Yeah, I think to the first point around integration. I think it's critical, I think it's really important to be able to have that information all in one place. Because most of the firm, whether you've got chat or text or whatever communication tools you provide, having that all in the client record, the place that you're looking for all the information around that client and their case or their matter is important. It's important for the team to be able to see that, it's important for documentation purposes as well.
Mike Melis:
If you're texting right now, which many attorneys are using their personal cell phone. If you ask them, "hey, is that information making it's way into the client record?" The resounding answer is no. It's very, very difficult to do that. It would take someone screenshotting or printing, or however you get that off your mobile device, and decide to put it in that client record, which is a laborious task, it's probably just not going to happen, it's the reality of the situation.
Mike Melis:
And then, if that device gets lost, that's whole... stolen or lost, there's a lot of other issues around security and protecting of the client record and things of that nature as well. I think that integration and having a chat or a text system where those communications are a part of that record and become part of that record, it's an important piece.
Mike Melis:
And to make it easy, having those contacts, if you're using multiple systems in multiple ways to communicate with clients, having those systems communicate with one another is an important piece. We've found, and it's one of the most requested functionalities that we find, that our clients ask for. "I would love this connected with system, X." And like we mentioned before, we're connected with most of the larger systems, but adding more every day just due to client requests.
Mike Melis:
And then too, to the kind of the silence question Maddy touched a bit on this as well, but I think there's many many times when being able to communicate via some sort of text or chat function, there's just many situations where it's just a much easier more appropriate way for those conversations to at least start, right? Sometimes those conversations need to transition into bigger conversations. Whether they be, now a days whether they be Zoom meetings, or in person meetings, really depends on the firm that you talk to and what stage they're at in their location. But chat and text facilitate a lot of those hard conversations.
Mike Melis:
And whether it's a divorce where one partner is thinking about it, and the other may not be. And they're kind of starting those conversations, or custody issues, things of that nature. Texting is a really great way to do it and it can happen really from anywhere. So, often times as Maddy mentioned, we're sitting at our desks in the office texting about various things and the same thing can happen around legal issues as well to get those communications started and progressing as well.
Mike Melis:
Because that's one thing that's really I think helpful, and I can speak specifically to texting here, Maddy can speak to chat. But texting, often times people think of it at kind of the beginning and we're talking about conversion and intake here. But, texting really helps moving conversations along and case updates and things you need from a client, and things they need from you along they way. Text is a really great way to get those simple updates to and from clients along the way.
McKay Allen:
That's a really good point, and I'm curious from Mark and Maddy, you to chime in on that topic as well which is, it's interesting with chatting and text because you find in a professional setting... in a phone call or meeting you might waste time, in chatting and texting you're getting straight to the point. You're really hitting the salient issues rapidly. Do you guys see that as well Mark and Maddy? When you look at your clients in your case Mark, or Maddy your chats and your texts?
Maddy Martin:
It's predictable. It is direct, right? But it's also patient. So it's everything that you want it to be. The beautiful thing about chat is that our agents, your firm staff, are not going anywhere if they have someone who they're waiting on, it's your job to wait for them to answer, same with us. It's our job to wait for the answer, so they know that they have the ability to think about or go get their credit card to pay for the consult, or whatever the case may be.
Maddy Martin:
But there is also this predictability that's really nice, a phone call you can get carried away, with set answers, with a playbook so to speak of sequenced questions that you're going to ask and then lead, you gather the information that you need every single time, there is nothing forgotten. It's already programmed in which is really beautiful. And you can do that with processes, it doesn't have to be programmed if you have your own staff who are answering the text from Kenect for example.
Maddy Martin:
The other thing that I'll mention here is that you also want to look at your funnel. So if you have this set of questions that you're going to be asking on text or chat, you want to look at where's my drop off? Are you asking a question and you're not really using the right language, the right words, that speak to where your customer is, where they're coming from? Are you talking about things like probate and no one knows what probate is? So use the words that your customers are using, and make sure that when you ask them, "hey, why are you contacting our law firm today, what brings you here today?" You're using the common language words. And then you'll see conversion improve.
Maddy Martin:
And one thing that we added is the funnel performance in chat, so you can see out of everyone who starts a chat, yes how many people finish it, but where along they way are they dropping off or getting sort of caught up? Or stumbling? And focus in on those points where the drop off is greatest. That's a bottleneck right? And how can you keep them moving through the funnel. Otherwise, maybe you're sort of mis-targeting your market, or there's other issues, and Mark can talk to that.
Maddy Martin:
But that's a clear signal, if you get to a point where you're asking a question that you know that your potential clients need to be able to answer, and they're not answering, how are you asking it? Are they the right clients? There's a lot of things to look at there. So that's why we sort of added this sort of chat, funnel analytics.
Maddy Martin:
And lastly before I forget, if you're chatting with existing clients, make sure you have a way to log the time, because if that is actual work for clients, and you bill by the hour, or you at least want to log that or your own sort of recognition of how much you're really billing for a flat fee. Make sure you have something like time minor, or time tracking tools that account for your time spent texting. Because that's not insignificant anymore, to our greater point here.
McKay Allen:
Mark, let's come to you, we've only got a couple minutes left, so Mark let's give you the last word on this because Mike and Maddy and myself, working for chatting and texting companies are admittedly biased. So Mark, let's come to you, you help law firms get more leads, you help them build their websites, final thoughts on any of these topics here. We've talked about intake, we've talked about lead response time, we've talked about where leads are coming from, bring us home, any final thoughts on any of these topics?
Mark Homer:
Yeah, and right before I do that I just want to make sure, Jeffrey had a question there, and I think we kind of covered it. And Jeffrey you're still on and want to say I'm good with the question, I just want to make sure we don't leave somebody with a question. But I think we covered that. Look, the three of us believe that a platform that's going to have integration points and other things like, Mike was talking about, you know. Maddy said text expander or Kenect has some of that pre-built texts that you can send. The three of us all believe that's better than just having texting on your office phone.
Mark Homer:
Certainly way better than having texting on your personal phone.
Mark Homer:
So I just wanted to make sure that was clear and answered. So in terms of I guess, where we stand is, our goal is to help our clients grow their business, not just get more leads, right? So this intake issue, the speed, how hast you need to be responding. I mean like you really should be responding in minutes, not days. And that really is the difference you know.
Mark Homer:
I'll be honest, for a lot of our clients, if we can actually get them to focus on intake we'll drive more leads, but even just on the same amount of leads that they're currently doing, they'll probably be doing better. Because unfortunately, the bar is really low. You know out of all your colleagues out there, and I think Maddy you kind of alluded to this earlier. For you to compete, and be significantly better, just having these solutions to communicate faster, be more helpful, and then kind of track that information through, so you're having multiple touch points with your prospective client, you're going to be night and day difference from people that 60 something percent aren't even returning.
Mark Homer:
So if you need help with getting new leads and stuff like that, yeah go grab our book, that'll be plenty helpful for that. But for this, and I'm a personal user of it. Like, for GNGF we have a chat function, we have outsourced calling, we want it as fast as possible for somebody coming in to get scheduled with one our sales people, to kind of like walk through a consultation. So like that is something that not only do I say it's important for law firms, but I mean we do it. We use these kinds of technologies.
Maddy Martin:
And I would also just say, to Mark your point, I mean you know how much it costs, you can probably tell me off the top of your head for a number of demos but I won't put you on the spot. Like legal leads are super expensive, right? I mean these are not cheap leads of other industries, these are some of the most expensive leads, especially depending on metro area, or practice area, it is wildly expensive to get that PPC budget, that Facebook budget to deliver a quality lead.
Maddy Martin:
So when we're talking about communicating and responding to them, standing out from the competition. The bar is pretty darn low, to be honest with you. Secondly, it's really cheap when it's compared to the overall cost of the lead. And we know that on average, 30 percent of attorneys who are the most interested in answering their calls still can't get to them. 39 percent on average are letting calls go to voicemail. And it's darn hard to chase a lead and they're not going to pick up, because guess what we all deal with spam.
Maddy Martin:
And you see an unknown number, and you don't remember what the law firm is that you haven't ever worked with, you're going to factor in that they're spam. Maybe you pick up and maybe you don't. Whose phone even rings anymore? Let alone, that you notice your phone is ringing, right? But if they're calling you and that was the most expensive thing that you had to pay for, is to get that lead, the incremental cost and the time investment of setting up these systems will prove to you on day one.
Maddy Martin:
Like my strong recommendation is that you try before you poo-poo anything, because you may be shocked at the conversion value, and then the secondary values that we talked about around SEO, and getting those keywords that are of value to your business, you know your law firm entirely.
McKay Allen:
That's great, Mike any final thoughts from you before we conclude?
Mike Melis:
Absolutely. I completely agree with Maddy, you're doing all the work to drive traffic, capture those leads. And I think whether it's chat or text, it's a really great way to connect with them and you're not playing that voicemail game.
McKay Allen:
All right, guys, thank you so much, Mark, Maddy, Mike.