Legal Marketing & PR

Get Calls from Clients via the Web with Chat For Lawyers

By Larry Bodine

I just discovered a impressive new service called Chat For Lawyers that allows visitors to the your website to click an icon that generates a call directly to you.

I just started using it myself -- visit www.LarryBodine.com and click on the "Click to Call Me" graphic at the top right corner of the web page.  The method combines the best practices of business development, web marketing and voice-over-Internet technology.

I highly recommend it for law firms that want to get calls from prospective clients.  Chat for Lawyers capitalizes on the innate curiosity of website visitors  to click on something new, and the "impulse buying" behavior of human beings, who see something new and want try it.

Here's how it works: a visitor clicks on the icon on my website, which runs a software program to initiate a free call over the Internet.  Standard phone company land lines are not used.  On my end, I hearing a telephone ringing sound coming from the speakers on my computer.  I click on a pop-up window to accept the call, and in a moment I am speaking to the caller via the microphone built into my laptop. It works like Skype, in that the caller talks into their computer microphone and I hear what they're saying via my speakers.

The sound quality is excellent.  I've been using a headset plugged into my computer for perfect, land line quality audio. 

Frankly, people are impressed that I answer my own phone.  (This has been my practice for my entire work life.)  If lawyers did this, it would be a big business development plus.  Callers tell me that they had no idea such technology existed.  I immediately inquire as to who they are, where they're from and what they had on their mind when they clicked the icon.  It's an excellent way for a lawyer to convert a person who had idle curiosity into potential client who may have an assignment for the lawyer.

So far I haven't gotten any crank calls. J I simply log in as an "operator" first thing in the morning, which sets me up to take a call. I also have my assistant login to act as a backup for me.

Chat for Lawyers is much better than a similar Google technology, which first makes your land line phone ring and then dials out to the other person, who has to complete an onerous form to start the process. Besides, the Google technology is by invitation only, and they are not inviting anyone new.

If you want to find out more, visit http://www.chatforlawyers.com/ and then contact Lance Watkins at (646) 6391002.  Lance and his team set up the technology for me and it worked on the first try.

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on June 24, 2010 (boomark / email).