One of the things we have learned in these intake process reviews is the necessity for a culture shift to occur in law firms so that the person or persons responsible for the firm’s intake process is chosen based on a background in sales, not customer service.

I recently illustrated why in an interview with the Intake Academy:

If your computer breaks, or your cell phone has a problem, you call customer service. You don’t mind being put on hold for an inordinate amount of time – well, you do mind, but are willing to put up with it – because you need to get your problem solved and, frankly, you don’t have a choice. If you’ve got your cell phone with AT&T and want to get it fixed, you don’t get to call Verizon if AT&T puts you on hold for 45 minutes.

But when it comes to law firms -- especially personal injury or any kind of consumer law -- there is an intensely competitive environment where consumers have hundreds, if not thousands, of choices. All of them are easily identifiable with the click of a mouse or the turning of the page. It is amazing how much competition there is.

You don’t want people handling your intake process who have a customer service background; you want people who have sold stuff over the telephone. Most of the time, even if they have people in a formal intake center, most law firms have the wrong people. The rest of the law firm sees it almost as a necessary evil instead of this is a money-making function.

Most law firms that we’ve worked with over the years don’t even have an intake department – not a formal one, at least. They basically have a receptionist and somebody who’s a rollover person in case the receptionist gets too busy.

The purpose of having an intake or call center is to really transform that culture from being an intake one to a sales-oriented center. What I mean by that is going from order taker to rainmaker. I don’t want a bunch of order takers in the law firm; I want a bunch of rainmakers – a bunch of people who are committed and dedicated to getting people from being a potential client to being a retained or assigned client.