Screening leads on your website with chatbots

When someone needs a lawyer and they don’t know who to speak to, they will search the internet. If their intent is to “make an enquiry” then they want to find the right person quickly. Your chatbot can do this, it will qualify leads and book appointments with the right member of your legal team – it can engage multiple clients at the same time 24 hours a day.

Where to start.

Think about the content you want to use and what your chatbot integrates with. Chatbots are made up of pre-scripted conversations that you use in real life, you may want to consider who in your team provides the answers to legal questions.

First consider your potential clients mindset, they could have been searching through law firm websites and frustrated by not finding the right person to speak to. It could be a stressful time for them, they will want answers quickly – so your chatbot needs to have an empathetic tone of voice.

The chatbot can start with a short intro then onto basic screening questions. It may be asked about your law firm’s practice area or the expertise of your legal team. The chatbot can screen potential clients based on your own marketing criteria and schedule appointments with the appropriate lawyer.

First steps - how to setup your chatbot.

Think of your chatbot as a real person, what will they need to know about your law firm to answer questions accurately? Day one they will not know much, so the more questions and answers you have the better it will be at answering what it’s being asked. Your chatbot should have a process in place it can use to decide if a potential client is worth talking to.

This will mean gathering answers based on anticipated questions. Where will that content come from and who needs to approve it? You’ll probably have a good idea about what potential clients ask. Remember if a chatbot picks up it’s an emergency it can handover the conversation one of your legal team.

Allow time for your potential client to tell your chatbot about what they are looking for and don’t ask them to for their contact details until later.

Here is a possible sequence you can use;

• Introduce your law firm.
• Ask qualifying questions, for example what practice area is your potential client interested in?
• Or what legal problem they are trying to solve? 
• Is the lead interested in talking to a specific lawyer?
• Is this an emergency situation? 
• Consider up to 10 questions, you can acquire basic information on the way.
• Then don’t forget to take an action of some kind – what appends next? 

How to transfer leads into your system?

A chatbot can integrate to any software that is design to receive this information. Most modern software applications are designed to integrate for example; customer relationship management, practice management software, online payments and document automation tools. There’s almost no limit on what a chatbot can integrate to.

What happens when a lead asks the bot a question that isn’t in the script? 

It’s possible your chatbot will ask a question you haven’t considered. You can create any number of scripted reply’s like; I’ll get back to you with an answer or if you provide contact details we will let you know.

The logs will tell us which question has been asked and not answered. You can then add the question and answer to the system and it will know what to say next time – just like a real person it needs training.

If you are interested in learning more about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning chatbots we’d love to discuss how they can help your law firm.