The first rule of both marketing and advertising is to make it as easy as possible for your customers, or clients, to contact you, yet some law offices are actually turning away new clients.
Last week a large personal injury law firm, interested in advertising on TV, found my other website and sent me an e-mail requesting that I call with more information about 1-800-HURT-911. I called them from my private phone line, instead of my office phone line. Because my private line has caller ID blocked, I heard “Your call has been properly delivered but the party you are trying to reach is not accepting calls from callers who do not allow delivery of their telephone number.”
No matter how many times I encounter this, and its happened several times, I am still astonished that a business could intentionally present an obstacle to potential new clients and existing clients when trying to call.
Some people will hang up, unblock their caller ID and call back. The key word is some! Many people do not even know how to unblock their caller ID. My parents do not. Some people will not want to unblock their caller ID and some people will not want to be bothered. These people will simply call another law firm.
I unblocked my number and called back. I asked if it is their main office number and was advised that it is. I suggested that they unblock the number and explained why. I tried calling that law firm again the next day and found that they were still blocking callers!
If your law office doesn’t advertise, you should never block people from calling you. If your law office is advertising on TV, in the yellow pages, or anywhere else, blocking people from calling you will not only result in losing potential clients, but will also waste your ad dollars. You will never know how many clients you failed to sign up.
If you need to know who is calling you, speak with your telephone company about passing through the caller ID information from blocked numbers to your office phone. Callers can not block their number to a business. Callers can only block caller ID information to another residential phone. Most toll-free telephone lines will pass through this information. I license a vanity phone number for personal injury advertising and ALL phone caller ID info is passed through to the law offices whether or not the caller’s phone number is blocked.
Don’t let your law firm turn away new clients!
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