Attorney Advertising - Personal Injury TV ads

When your marketing works potential clients are motivated to pick up the phone. They should be encouraged to call 24/7 so that they do it now while it’s fresh on their mind instead of forgetting or putting it on that never-completed to-do list. If you do not capture and respond to the call, it may as well have never been placed.

Existing clients are more likely to contact you during normal hours of operation, but sometimes they will call as soon as something comes up, from the scene of an accident in the middle of the night, for instance. If you do not respond, those clients will seek help elsewhere.

What goes wrong in call capturing?

First of all, some callers will not leave you a voice mail. Sometimes, voicemail systems fail to record or save the message, but don’t expect your callers to think of that when they never hear back from you, and if you say you didn’t get the message they will think it’s due to incompetence somewhere within your firm or that you are lying.

You have a few options to improve your call capturing.

A live answering service will prompt callers who avoid voicemail to leave a message. Make sure you use a service that will record the numbers of any callers who refuse to leave a message so you can get back with them.

If you are willing to take the calls yourself, you can forward your calls to your cell phone or home phone. If you forward to your home phone make sure that you answer in a professional manner and that anyone in your household who answers the phone is instructed to do the same. This is not a good option for capturing nighttime calls, but it can work well when you must be out of the office during business hours and if you want to take calls personally on the weekends.

At the very least, use caller ID. Check it every morning, or have your assistant check it. Write down every number and check that against your voicemail messages. Make returning calls your first order of business every day. If you can’t do it yourself, assign the task to someone who can at least call and say that the message was received and you will be getting back to them personally this morning or by the end of the day. Make sure you do it. If possible have the person who calls back ask for more information so you can prepare for the call.

Of course, your callers should never, ever get a busy signal. Double up on capturing calls that come in while the line is tied up by forwarding to voicemail and using call waiting ID. Every time you get off the phone, check your voicemail and the caller ID to make sure that you did not miss an important call.