Legal work can be one of the most time-consuming careers to have ever existed. On top of having to ensure you can acquire clients over time, you will need to do a variety of legwork to ensure your client’s case is concrete in the court of law.
While most law firms will have a competent staff at hand to deal with the immense work that comes with running a law firm, productivity is sapped away when dealing with acquiring customers. However, this does not mean that you cannot make certain aspects of this career more straightforward for yourself and your employees.
Technology has managed to provide many businesses with ways to streamline certain parts of their work.
One of the most crucial things a law firm needs to do is ensure they are capable of booking their clients so they can have work. In the past, booking an appointment with a law firm would require the client to call in and inquire about which day and time they could come in to gain the assistance of a lawyer.
While effective for its time, it does come with some significant cons, such as holding up calls and being incapable of ensuring the person remains notified of their upcoming appointment.
Fortunately, thanks to years of innovation and the introduction of smartphones, apps have become increasingly useful for law firms.
Appointment book apps have appeared in the market and have managed to introduce a way for law firms to remain on top of their daily schedule and ensure they continue to acquire clients. These booking apps are packed with all sorts of features that have assisted law firms in making sure their clients and staff remain in touch with one another and help with the retention rate.
Plenty of law firms these days use software to assist their lawyers in managing their client relationships, schedules, and working day.
That’s why for this article, we shall be going in-depth into why your law firm needs an appointment booking app.
Let go over it, shall we?
Being able to acquire clients at any time of the day sounds ideal for any law firm. Of course, this can be challenging to pull off since closing hours exist for a reason. Your receptionist is most likely to be present at your firm during business hours.
Meaning clients will only be able to make an appointment with you during those hours, which can lead to a loss of potential clients coming in.
Appointment booking apps can shine during this part since they are available for clients at your website, Facebook page, and an email signature at all time.
Plenty of research has revealed that many online appointments are conducted while outside of business hours.
According to information acquired from Getapp, over 70% of people prefer to book appointments online if a variety of booking options are available, compared to the other 20% who prefer booking by phone. While plenty of law firms also utilize content forms on their website, they hold a low conversion rate.
The reason for this is because contact forms don’t gain the instant response clients would ordinarily expect when booking an appointment with a law firm online.
One of the best parts about acquiring and setting up an online appointment app is the automation behind them.
These innovative pieces of software are fully automated, which eliminates the process of manually handling many administrative tasks done by several employees. It’s a well-known fact that implementing an automation system will lead to an increase in administrative productivity along with offering more convenience for clients.
Setting up meetings, bookings, reservations, cancellations, rescheduling, and appointments will be done during any time of the day through any device utilized by the person visiting your site. When it comes to manual entry systems, bookings can only be conducted during the working hours as we previously mentioned.
Having a client cancel their appointment or not even show up can be quite costly for any law firm.
Studies have shown that online booking systems have managed to successfully reduce the amount of non-attendance rate that is more common with traditional booking systems. The apps are capable of reminding the client regularly by sending a message of their upcoming meet through their email address or smartphone via text message.
This automated system is highly effective because your clients will check their smartphones regularly throughout the day, so the chance of them not seeing the reminder is much unlikely.
Furthermore, if your client does need to cancel their appointment for several reasons, they’ll be able to do so well ahead of time.
By merely going to your website on their device, they will be able to easily cancel the appointment and have the appointment slot quickly return to the booking system for someone else to grab it.
Sending out reminders through text messaging (SMS) and emails is considered one of the more preferable contact methods for many clients.
Research has revealed that many people have a preference for text messaging if they can use a digital interaction channel and minimize the number of phone calls.
The best benefit for your law firm is that this method takes up less time than reminder phone calls, which uses up your support staff time from doing other productive and valuable tasks to ensure the firm’s growth.
Plenty of clients have previously stated that it can be challenging to reach out to their attorneys, let alone even capable of seeing them.
When they finally manage to get in contact with the firm, there is going to be tons of chit chat with each other, trying to find the best possible time for both parties. In the case of many clients, being able to make an appointment through an online service is a crucial aspect of their experience with your law firm.
If your firm isn’t capable of providing an option, the chance of turning clients away from your law firm increases entirely, or otherwise spoiling their experience with your firm.
Plenty of clients have previously stated that it can be challenging to reach out to their attorneys, let alone even being able to see them. When they finally manage to get in contact with the firm, there is going to be tons of chit chat with each other, trying to find the best possible time for both parties. In the case of many clients, being able to make an appointment through an online service is a crucial aspect of their experience with your law firm.
If your firm isn’t capable of providing an option, the chance of turning clients away from your law firm increases entirely, or otherwise spoiling their experience with your firm.
Offering your clients a variety of options for appointment booking won’t make you lose anything, whether it be traditional phone booking, walk-ins, or online scheduling. At the end of the day, your client will choose the one they prefer the most.
With more and more people becoming digitally inclined, an online appointment system merely offers them exceptional service and ease.
Along with having successfully improved your client’s experience with your firm, this will allow you to place ahead of the competition.
Not every law firm has managed to catch on to the importance of appointment booking apps, so this will ensure you can position your law firm in a position for profitable growth.
In this day and age, video meetings have become increasingly common thanks to the massive amount of innovation done in the tech field. Talking over the phone is one thing, but being able to see the person’s face adds more impact to their conversation at hand. Sometimes clients will not be able to meet you face-to-face for a variety of reasons.
Maybe the client had gotten into an incident that has made it difficult for them to travel to your firm, and it could be the reason why they require your business services. Most appointment booking apps will offer you the chance to make video meetings with these clients.
Bookafy is a perfect example of this, we provide you with a unique URL from either your Zoom or Gotomeeting that can then be included in the scheduled date of the meeting.
Software like Bookafy automates a video meeting is booked along with the confirmation process and reminders being sent out. The meeting will be automatically linked to the calendar available on the software.
Trying to set up an online appointment can take several steps to put together, from having to agree to the meeting time to generate a link for the meeting software, and manually adding the link to a calendar, sending out email confirmations, email reminders with the said link and so forth. It can be a real hassle, but booking apps have managed to simplify the process behind this.
Have you ever taken the time to see which of your services are the most popular? Which hour of the day is the busiest time for your business?
Plenty of online booking apps will offer booking data and analytics so you can seamlessly answer these questions and gain insight to take appropriate action. For instance, if you become aware of the hours your law firm peaks, then you can schedule employee shifts more effectively. Or, if you manage to figure out which of your services is the least popular, then you can determine the best way to either market them or cut them off your service listing.
While it is possible to pull this off with traditional booking methods, pouring tons of physical calendars and appointment books will make very tedious and time-consuming tasks. Having a booking app that can automatically pull up this information will save you massive amounts of time and effort, allowing you and your employees to channel your productivity to dealing with these issues at hand.
Some businesses feel that there aren’t enough hours in the day to completely manage their business.
If you are someone who also feels this way, then implementing an online booking system will allow you to take more hours back in your day. Due to appointment booking apps allowing both you and your clients to do everything online, you’ll be spending less time having to write down dates and contact details.
This will allow you to devote far more of your time servicing your clients and growing your law firm.
Most law firms use calendar software, such as Outlook or Google, to keep their schedules up to date. Appointment booking apps have introduced a way for businesses to synch up their calendar system of choice with their booking apps to ensure everything remains up to date. That includes transferring over any past bookings that have been conducted before using the booking software.
The best part about these synchronized booking features is the quick update responses they have when picking your dates. From scheduling a day for meeting with clients, blocking out dates due to a hearing, or because you’ve decided to go on vacation during that time. This feature also prevents your clients from accidentally booking twice, so you won’t have to worry about meeting them twice on the same day.
The real-time availability also complicates things less and shows which of your staff members are currently available for a client to reach out to.
Appointment booking apps have become a staple for the more savvy law firms these days, making it easy for them to conduct business overall.
Booking apps like Bookafy provide these useful services that any law firm would need to ensure their business continues to operate at optimal levels.
By integrating an online appointment software to your law firm website, you’ll be able to ensure your business gains more clients and takes the load off your staff, making productivity increase in other aspects of your law firm instead.
If you’re in the market for an appointment booking app that can help you accelerate your law firm’s growth, then give Bookafy’s trial a try!
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