The legal sector is “missing out on business” by failing to follow up potential customers, a new study has revealed.
Shopper Anonymous, which published the study, contacted a variety of law firms on 400 different occasions in person, by telephone, and online to test how they dealt with enquiries based on common issues such as property purchases, wills, and commercial business.
It found that just 10 per cent of telephone and 12 per cent of website enquiries received a follow-up email after the initial response.
The study found that just two-thirds of law firms responded to an email within four hours, while 22 per cent took more than two days.
The message was not personalised in more than half of the responses, and contained spelling or grammatical errors in 28 per cent of cases, it found.
Meanwhile, zero per cent of firms that received a walk-in enquiry followed the customer up after initial contact.
This finding was hardly surprising when it was revealed that just 14 per cent of firms took the contact details of the customer. This is compared to 47 per cent in telephone enquiries.
Likewise, just 15 per cent of firms were able to “sell” to the customer and outline the benefits of using the firm.
The secret shoppers, however, responded in reverse. 65 per cent of those who physically walked into the law firm said they would contact the firm again, compared to 55 per cent for telephone and web customers.
Jim Smith, a regional sales director at Shopper Anonymous, said the survey showed that firms were “almost certainly missing out on business”.
He said lawyers were missing out on potentially thousands of pounds of work each month purely by not following up on customer enquiries.
“With the market tightening, and more legal issues going to non-lawyer sources, they need to get better”, he added.