Plaintiff Firms Are Missing the Boat on Text Messaging

By Denny Newberry

06 Apr 2017 | Lawyer Marketing

We all use text messaging daily. For a lot of people, it is far and away the primary avenue of communication. Why then, do law firms shy away from communicating with potential clients via SMS?

Before I get into why I believe firms should leverage text messaging, I want to share five statistics related to SMS:
1. Over 389 Billion Text Messages are Sent Monthly
2. 95 to 98 Percent of Texts are Read Immediately
3. 65 Percent of Smartphone Owners Check Their Phones Within 15 Minutes of Waking Up
4. 91 Percent of Adults Have Instant Access to a Smartphone
5. 86 Percent of Consumers Send and Receive Texts Every Week

Based on these numbers alone, consumer focused practices should seriously consider adding text messaging as part of their daily offering and process. The question becomes, how best to implement and monitor this service?

At Captorra, an embedded text messaging tool within the framework of a comprehensive intake solution has been a primary focus of ours. It allows our clients to not only leverage SMS during their lead follow up process, but also for appointment reminders and even sending eSign documents directly through text. As opposed to having a staff member use a cell phone or text software to manually send and respond to text messages, Captorra allows all that communication to be automatically sent and correspondence tracked within the solution.

Once a lead hits Captorra from a website, chat service, 3rd party lead provider or call center, users can see the lead immediately and start following up. If the first call out attempt concludes with an unsuccessful connection, Captorra will automatically send a customized text message directly from the firm to ask the claimant to call back. Response rate for a text message follow up versus a voicemail is consistently three times higher. It seems to be engrained in our DNA that we just must respond to a text message right away and this allows staff to not have to concern themselves with multiple follow up attempts.

On top of lead follow, text messaging is also a useful tool for appointment reminders. The dentistry industry has taken advantage on this for a few years now, and it’s now time for law firms to do the same. The amount of money and time firms spend scheduling and meeting with potential clients is lost so often due to no shows. To be able to remind the claimant of the meeting is extremely important.

A new feature in the system, but one that has transformed our client’s ability to sign up more cases, is the ability to directly text message an eSign document to the claimant. A lot of people still do not have an email address, and even if they do, even more of them do not have their email connected to their smartphone. Allowing the claimant to receive the eSign document via a standard text has drastically increased conversion for Captorra clients and even allows them to sign up new clients on the very first phone call.

Not only is it important to start leveraging text messaging as a form of communication with claimants, it is equally import to make sure you have a system that can help you automate and manage this process. Captorra is designed to do just that!

Get help with growing your firm

  • Please tell us a bit about your legal practice and what product(s) and service(s) are of most interest to you. To better assist you, please include your area of practice, specialization, and any additional information you'd like for us to know.