Did you know 62% of no-shows occur simply because your client forgot? We get it. People are busy. Combat forgetfulness with an appointment reminder strategy that works. We have 5 easy ways for you to improve your legal client appointment reminders.

  1. Don’t rely on email. Send text reminders.

    Text reminders have an average 53.5% higher response rate than voice calls. Why? It’s easy to respond when you are at work or on the go. The average U.S. adult checks their phone 52 times a day. Take advantage of that screen time with timely reminder messages.

    If you’re worried that a text message may be intrusive, don’t be. Your peers in the legal industry are already sending SMS reminder messages to their clients and seeing a response rate of almost 30%. (As opposed to voice calls, which have a response rate of just over 20%)

  2. Send your reminders at the right time of day.Chart showing the best time of day to send an sms reminder text, voice reminder or email reminder with the expected confirmation rate

    Though we highly recommend incorporating text reminders into your strategy, many of our clients choose to also use email or voice messages to provide additional details (i.e. court dates and instructions, documentation to complete and return, etc). To get the best result, use best practices to send client reminders at the most effective time of day. For instance, SMS test reminders sent at 6 p.m. have a 41.4% higher response rate than SMS reminders sent at noon. The chart below shows response rate by time of day for SMS, email and voice calls.
    Line graph showing confirmation rates for sms reminders versus email reminders

  3. Include the correct information.

    Are you struggling with what to include in a client text reminder? Remember: this isn’t anemail so only include what is necessary. You can always schedule an automated email that includes more detail if necessary. Always include the date, time and timezone of the appointment. Majority of the time, reminder messages should include the name of your business, the appointment type or service to be conducted, confirmation and/or reschedule instructions and the location/address of the appointment.Chart showing the information and details to include in client appointment reminders

  4. Send more than one reminder.

    One reminder isn’t enough. You need to send 3 client appointment reminders: an initial booking confirmation, a reminder a day before and a reminder 1-2 hours before. Feel free to mix the mode of communication to match the information included, but make sure at least one of (preferably 2) are SMS messages.

  5. Keep it short.

    More is not always better when it comes to client communication. Make sure your reminders aren’t too long. The best length for a text message is between 140-175 characters. For a voicemail, keep it under 30 seconds. And for an email, between 50-125 words will get you the highest response rates.

The ideal text reminder is between 140-175 characters

 

Make sure your legal clients show up on time and prepared for their appointment by following these simple best practices. For more tips, tricks and legal industry benchmarks, download The Complete Guide to Appointment Reminders.

Download the Complete Guide to Appointment Reminders

The robots are taking over. Well, maybe not. But automation certainly is changing our lives and will only continue to play a larger role in how we accomplish our tasks. After all, there isn’t enough time in the day as it is, so why waste time doing administrative tasks that can easily be handled by technology?

As you look towards 2020, consider automating these five tasks.

  1. Scheduling: No one likes to send multiple emails back and forth to try to secure a time and date for your client meetings. With online scheduling services, you can easily send clients a link to schedule time that works for you. When looking for an online scheduling service, make sure that it integrates with your current calendar and legal management practice software. You also need to look for a system that allows you to customize your availability and appointment types to keep your calendaring process efficient. For instance, if you only want to take initial consultations on certain days of the week, you need to be able to designate those times in your online scheduling tool.
  2. Appointment reminders: Did you know decreasing your no-show rate by as little as 1% could save your firm $1700 per attorney? Even if no-shows aren’t a challenge for your law firm, you need to ask yourself how much time and money you and your staff spend on ensuring that your clients arrive on-time and prepared for their meeting or court date. Many firms employ front office staff that spend hours each week simply calling, emailing or texting clients to remind them about important meetings or court appearances. By sending automated appointment reminders to your legal clients, you not only can free up your staff’s time to work on more important things, but you also will decrease no-shows and late shows.
  3. Client Intake: There are many software options that can help you easily automate your client intake process. It can take 5x’s as much money to acquire new clients as it takes to keep the ones you’ve got, so when a new qualified leads arrives on your desk (or in your inbox), it’s imperative that they have a seamless experience.
  4. Marketing: Most small firms don’t employ a marketing team, which means that marketing tasks usually fall to the back burner. For social media, tools like Hootsuite make it easy to schedule your posts on multiple platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Although email marketing tends to get a bad rap because of SPAM, using email marketing tools like Constant Contact or MailChimp to nurture your leads will absolutely pay off. Simply create useful nurture tracks that will continue to educate and qualify your cold leads. Then, when they are in need of legal help, your firm’s name will be the first that they think of.
  5. Software Integration: This may sound like it will take a software engineering degree to complete, but with tools like Zapier can make even the technologically illiterate look like a computer whiz. For example, you can create a new Zoom meeting for any new calendar appointments scheduled and automatically add that information into the calendar event. Another great example is if you want to create a new contact in your email address book anytime a new contact is added into your legal practice management software. (For instance, turning Clio Matters into new Google contacts.) Zapier is incredibly easy to use and has pre-built “Zaps” for many of the commonly used tools for attorneys.

Make a New Year’s Resolution that you can actually keep. Using technology to automate your legal practice is a ‘set it and forget it’ task. Your calendar is full enough as it is, use these simple tips to save yourself a little bit of time in 2020.