0:00:05.0 Sarah Zwiefel: Hi, hello! And welcome to the How Client Journey Mapping Helps Attorneys webinar, presented by ARAG Marketing Manager, Sarah Smerage. My name is Sarah Zwiefel. I help maintain the attorney experience at ARAG, and I'm here to introduce our speaker today. The presentation will be about 30 minutes, and then we'll have time for questions at the end, so if you have any questions during the presentation, you can submit those using the questions feature.
0:00:35.8 SZ: So as a Marketing Manager of Attorney Relations and Member Experience, Sarah leads all facets of strategy, development, and execution of marketing communications to build awareness of ARAG and legal insurance among solo and small-practice attorneys, and to support the experience of network attorneys and ARAG members. She brings more than 13 years of marketing experience in the legal industry and 11 years of previous marketing experience with an international e-commerce leader and Fortune 500 food production companies. Sarah serves on the ARAG Attorney Advisory Board, and she provides marketing insights as a member of the Iowa Access to Justice Corporate Work Group. So with that, I will go ahead and pass it off to Sarah.
0:01:28.2 Sarah Smerage: Well, thanks, Sarah, I appreciate that intro. That's very kind of you. I'm happy to be here. As someone who has worked behind the scenes on our communications to network attorneys, I'm delighted to get to present to you all today, and share some of the things that we do on the marketing side, and walk you through a tool that we use in marketing quite often here at ARAG to help us think about how we communicate to different audiences of ARAG. So I'm happy to share this with you and I hope you find it helpful.
0:02:03.8 SS: So let's get started. So what we're gonna do today is talk about journey mapping for the client experience. I'm gonna share a basic marketing tool that I think will help you identify and prioritize elements of your marketing and communications plan to drive client satisfaction and ultimately, new client growth. To give you a little background on inspiration of this webinar, can we skip to the next slide, please?
0:02:34.9 SS: A couple of years ago, I attended a legal industry think tank conference, and it included solo and small-practice attorneys that were early in their career and also, several seasoned attorneys who were looking to innovate their already very well-established practice. In a marketing breakout session, the more seasoned attorneys started to share the various marketing tools and channels they already were using for client development. They were talking about things like lead gen campaigns, blogging, paid ads, surveys, email drip campaigns, and more.
0:03:05.9 SS: A couple of the other attorneys sitting near me clearly looked overwhelmed. One of them said, "I don't know how to do any of this. How would I even get started? Where would I... What should I do first?" And at that point in the group, I was participating in that group, and I asked if we could just stop and step back a minute and talk about journey mapping for clients. And many of the attorneys seemed to be very interested in that and wanna know more about it. So at that moment, I realized that maybe this would be helpful for attorneys to learn how to map the client journey so they can understand and then prioritize for their firm the actions that will help drive client growth.
0:03:44.0 SS: Following that breakout session, I came back to ARAG and we put together an article and submitted it to the American Bar Association Law Practice Today, I can see the little picture there on the screen, that I think that was back in 2019 that we submitted that, to break it down into a phased approach of how to get started in client journey mapping. So what I'm gonna do today is I'm gonna walk you through an exercise of journey mapping. So let's go to the next slide.
0:04:11.2 SS: So what journey mapping is, is it's a process of analyzing all the steps, a perspective, and then eventually, a client will take before, during and after their relationship with you and your firm. So the power of journey mapping is it really encourages you and your firm to stop thinking about what you might be wanting as a firm, and really just put the client hat on, and to really focus during this exercise about what your clients want to know and what you can do to provide information to them at the moments that they need it. It will help you identify opportunities to try some new things and to drive client acquisition. And before we get started, though, I'd like to take a quick poll. I'd like to know how many people on this call have done journey mapping for the client experience in the past. And there's no right or wrong answer to this. I would not necessarily expect that a large percentage have had experience in this. It is considered a marketing tool, but I'm curious if you have. So if you would just answer, "Nope, not yet," or, "Yes, we've done that," we'll just get a little bit of a temperature here on the audience and see. I think that the results should be coming in any minute now.
0:05:33.2 SS: Okay, great! Well, it looks like 93% of the audience has not done journey mapping, and 7% have. That just gets me very excited because that means we've got some great stuff to share with you and I hope that this is something that maybe will be a catalyst to really help your firm get started in the idea of journey mapping, so let's get going, then. Moving on to the next slide. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna break down client journey mapping into five stages. Now, you can tailor the names of these stages to fit your firm and the types of clients that you're recruiting, but for the sake of our conversation today, these stages that we're gonna talk about are: Awareness, consideration, purchase or hiring, engagement and advocacy.
0:06:19.2 SS: Now, imagine that you have one of those big, oversized white Post-it pads that you find in nearly every conference room with the markers that smell so good, and imagine that you're gonna draw a simple table on that Post-it pad listing these five stages of column headers across the top of your tablet, left to right. And then down the left side of your table, you're gonna add core questions and considerations that the client might be having at each stage. And remember, when we go through this exercise, you're thinking about this only from the client perspective right now.
0:06:55.8 SS: So moving on, here is a template we created for you. And after this webinar, we're gonna share this template with you, we'll send it to you, so you don't need to worry about taking notes at all right now. To do this activity, you're gonna wanna schedule, I'd say try to schedule two to three hours with a cross-department team. That means including the person who answers your phone, the person who greets people at the front of your office, your billing person that talks to clients, your paralegals, as well as the attorneys in your firm. So you really wanna include anyone who interacts with your clients or prospective clients. You can do this exercise in person or virtually, but everyone should be expected to contribute their ideas and make it a safe space that there are no bad ideas. For every stage of this journey, the group would talk through each of the questions on the left, and you're gonna focus on one square at a time as you answer, and remember to put yourself in the mind of the client.
0:07:55.8 SS: At ARAG, we like to use Post-it Notes, so everyone usually gets their own color of a Post-it Note, and we record our thoughts on our Post-it Notes, and then we place it in each square as we go through each section. And so the nice thing about that is you'll start to see some redundancy of what people are thinking, and then you know it's really a good idea if three of you have the same thought about a certain cell. So for today's example, I've created fictional journey mapping exercise. I'm gonna lean on real legal industry research and feedback from ARAG Network Attorneys and ARAG plan members to fill in the gaps and give you an idea of how to help understand the client needs at each stage, okay?
0:08:39.0 SS: So let's get started with awareness. So at this stage, we wanna ask ourselves: What are they doing? So let's assume at this stage, for this example, let's assume that this person might be struggling with the traffic matter situation. It might be a speeding ticket or a DUI. They might be worried about getting their license suspended or a moving violation for themselves or their child. So if they have this issue, what might they be doing at this point? Definitely something they might be doing is trying to determine whether they really even have a legal problem. Often, at this stage, people really don't know they have a problem yet; they just know there's something... They have an issue, but they don't know it's a legal problem yet. So they might be trying to learn more. And so what they're going to be doing, their actions would be surfing the Internet and/or thinking about it while they're driving in their car to work or other places. They also might be talking to other people, friends and family, perhaps talking to a judge or the police or social services, depending on what the legal matter is. And certainly, they could be using social media to reach out to friends for help.
0:09:51.1 SS: Some questions that they might be asking could be things like: "Do I need a lawyer? What's the worst that could happen? What's my risk? Can I solve for it myself? Could I even afford a lawyer if I find one? Or should I just ask my friend who's some kind of an attorney? Maybe they know the answer for my legal problem." We hear that a lot from our attorneys, that that happens. And then you need to really think about what kind of emotions would this prospect client have at this point. And so some things they could be considering are they're very frustrated or angry. They might be upset and have some anxiety and stress about the situation. They could be scared and confused about why they have this legal problem.
0:10:32.9 SS: So then we need to ask ourselves: What is the next step we would like this prospect to take? So as a firm who's trying to recruit new clients, and you know that they're searching for answers, some things you might want them to do is read an article that you posted to contact your office to ask questions or send you an email. You might want them to visit your website and download your blog article or read a brochure. You might want them to even watch a video that talks about the attorneys in your firm. And at the end of the day, you want to have them request a consultation meeting.
0:11:07.7 SS: So what types of content would be helpful to a prospect at this stage? There's lots of different things you can do, and I think this is where it's really important to know where is your audience spending their time, and that's where you wanna spend your time and resources to get in front of them. So if someone's spending time on the Internet, things you could look into would be paid search ads. A paid search ad is based on keywords that you think a prospective client would be searching on. Let's say for license suspension, you can determine those keywords, and then you can place an ad that shows up in the search results. In the ad, you could place a link to an article that you may have written about the number of points in the State of Texas at which point you would lose your license, and it becomes a piece of educational information that you can serve up to that person. And at that point, you could ask for their email address in order for them to view the article. And then now, you've gotten some lead gen information.
0:12:10.8 SS: Also, you could serve up web content on your website. And the importance of doing that is that same article I just mentioned, of course, you'd wanna post it on your website because then, when someone searches the keyword of "license suspension", the World Wide Web crawls the web for information, and when they find those keywords embedded in your article on your website, it's more likely to pull your article up in organic search, which is a non-paid type of way to get in front of people. More traditional ways, of course, are radio, billboard, bus, advertising in your courthouse, things like that. And the tone we wanna keep in mind is always to try to be approachable and understanding. We wanna be informative and very reassuring with every interaction. Let's move to the next slide, please.
0:13:09.0 SS: So one thing I really want to help this audience understand is 70% of people don't see that they even have a need for legal help, and they might not think it would make a difference if they got legal assistance. So the reason this is important is if you mostly rely on word-of-mouth for referrals, well, that's great, and word-of-mouth is an awesome way to get referrals, but that's really gonna come from people who are starting to think they have a legal issue. They're the ones asking friends and family for help and a resource. There's a whole another larger audience out there who doesn't realize they need to start asking for help. In this slide, you can just see how often the first big hurdles actually getting consumers to realize they even have a legal problem and that they need professional help.
0:13:53.6 SS: Rebecca Sandefur did this study for the American Bar Association, and it showed that 70% of people that already had civil justice issues didn't see a need for legal help or they didn't think it would make a difference. Rebecca did a follow-up paper titled Why They're Not Calling You, and in that paper, she said they're not thinking about you. The most important reason people don't take their problems to lawyers or courts is the law is simply not considerate to them. People usually do not think of these problems as legal problems, and they often do not think there's anything anyone could do to help.
0:14:26.4 SS: So you might wonder, "Well, where are consumers going to get help?" Other research has told us that three out of five consumers will go online to research or resolve their legal matter, and one in five legal consumers believe, with enough time and research, that they alone can harness the knowledge and expertise of a trained lawyer. Now, we all know that's very rarely would that happen. But that's what you're up against in trying to get in front of people who have a legal issue to help them understand that you can help. And it reinforces how important it is to figure out where those consumers are searching for information, and the questions they have so that you can meet them in that place as a resource.
0:15:07.9 SS: Now, let's move on to the consideration stage. In the consideration stage, the prospect has a legal need and is determining whether you might be the right attorney to help them. So what are they doing at this point? They're still researching their legal issue, and they're still thinking about trying to do it on their own, they haven't committed yet. They're asking friends and family and colleagues for help. They're comparing reviews online. They're going to Yelp. If they're a plan member of ARAG's they're going to the ARAG Attorney Directory. They may be going to their state bar of a website or other places, and they probably are also reviewing your website. They are asking questions like, "Do I need an attorney? Are you trustworthy? Can I afford this? Do you care about me? Do I feel a connection? What does this process even look like? Is this going to be hard for me and complicated? And what are my rights?"
0:16:06.1 SS: So some of the emotions this prospect's feeling is still a lot of apprehension. They might have a feeling of relief once they realize someone can help them, and be excited about that. At the same time, there's still some fear and confusion and they're stressed, and a really important, I think, is feeling disoriented or uninformed. The world of legal is its own world. It's like another language for people who aren't in the legal industry and so people, consumers can be very disoriented very quickly and not understanding the law, and that's where they really count on you as the experts to break it down and help them understand it on their terms.
0:16:46.2 SS: So what's the next step we'd like them to take? Well, we want them to choose our firm. We want them to schedule an intake call and request engagement with us. So what content would be helpful to that consumer or prospect at this point? Some things you might consider would be a digital article and brochure that talks about why to choose your firm, highlighting information about each one of your attorneys. Also, a very client-focused intake process and questions to really understand what their needs are is very important to get that connection with them, that you care and that you're going to help them. And having transparent communications about the process and the payment options. And even if you can't guarantee the process, 'cause I know you can't, every situation is different. But just some idea of, "Generally, in this situation, this is the timeline and process it would be. Now, I know it could change." Things like that still reassure people. They want to know the next steps. And also, at this stage, providing any type of past client references and client testimonials is also a great way to build trust.
0:17:57.5 SS: So as you can see, what they're really most interested in in that stage is finding a connection. But meanwhile, attorneys have told us at this point, often, they're more focused on vetting whether the prospect's a suitable match and if they have the resources to hire you. You might be curious if this person is a tire kicker or a high-need case, or if they have good expectations and a good case. So one thing that's important to note is only about 25% of consumers contact just one attorney before making a decision. 50% or more consumers are going to contact three or more attorneys. So regardless of who manages your initial phone call interactions or email interactions or the client intake meeting, it's just very important that your firm is responsive and making the client feel comfortable, supported and heard. Because the first impression really matters, they're comparing you to a few other options. They wanna be reassured that you can help them and be very clear about their expectations, costs and the next steps. So you can see in this slide that's up currently, there are some more stats that just show you... Excuse me... Some examples of what consumers are doing during the consideration stage.
0:19:10.6 SS: So 62% of consumers are getting a referral from friends and family but a much larger percentage of them are gonna go read reviews online? And even that 62% is going to read reviews online and may or may not follow their friends and family referral after they read the reviews. Consumers read on average 10 reviews before feeling like they can trust a local business. And of the younger age group, the 18-to 34-year-olds, 91% of them actually trust online reviews as much or more as personal recommendations.
0:19:47.8 SS: Going to the next slide, I'm gonna just show you a quick stat here. And this came from... This came from Avo and I thought it was kind of interesting because when asked what information did you want before you first contact an attorney consumers said... Ranked in the top five rate there... They said what was most important to them was cost, of course, but then the free consultation, responsiveness and online reviews, all rank higher than referral from a friend or family member. So if you're relying on word of mouth for your client growth, this is just something to be aware of that you're probably still getting the referrals, but there's probably a lot more opportunity out there beyond the referrals coming from your past clients.
0:20:37.4 SS: Now let's move on to the purchase stage. At this point, the prospects thinking they're pretty sure they wanna hire an attorney. And these could be the first days of that hiring the attorney and that process. So let's walk through some of the questions here. So at this point, what are they doing? They're still comparing... They're still thinking about the cost, that your firm's gonna charge versus doing it themselves, and they may still be getting information from another firm. So just know that. They're also trying to manage their legal issues and the people involved in them, so... Now, at this point now that they know they have a legal issue, there's all of this stuff that comes with it... With possibly having to miss work for meetings or court. Possibly having to deal with communicating to my family members what's going on.
0:21:26.7 SS: Some of the questions they might be asking is, "How much is this gonna cost? What will I get for the cost? What's my chance of winning? What should I do next? How can I help my case? And how much work am I going to miss? And how am I gonna explain that to my employer?" And some emotions that they're feeling are very mixed at this point. They might have a real sense of relief that now I've got an attorney on my side, and they're gonna help me and they're gonna carry the load now and it's a bit of a relief there. But they're also really curious, they wanna understand the process. They're still a little confused and stressed about their situation. So what's the next step you want them to take? Well we want them to sign an engagement contract for sure... And we want them to understand and agree to the terms of engagement. We wanna really set clear expectations for how our firm is going to communicate to them, how often and what channel we're going to use to communicate so that everyone is on the same page and we don't have a lot of confusion and back and forth about what's going on. One thing we hear a lot from plan members is often they say they don't feel like they're being kept informed along the way from the attorney firm about what's going on, and they feel out of the loop.
0:22:42.3 SS: And on the flip side, I've I've talked to attorneys who say there's really nothing to tell them. Things take time. There may be no updates. And I think the message here is, even if there's nothing new to report, having some kind of a feedback loop that's keeping your client up to speed on what is or isn't changing it helps reinforce the trustworthiness with the client. So what content would be helpful at this stage? A handbook on what to expect, a written agreement of communication preferences and expectations, the cost and potential financing options is good to have. You might wanna check in with them on how they're feeling. Provide a hotline or some way that they could ask questions when they want to and feel like you'll be able to get back to them in the next day or so is helpful.
0:23:30.9 SS: And if you're able to give them a general timeline on the process for the types of legal matter that they're dealing with, that would... Is helpful. Just they need to understand it's subject to change, of course. So... To give you an example, even if the person wants to hire you and you've decided this isn't a good case for us, it's still really important to respond even if you don't want the business. For example, one attorney shared with us that they email a written engagement letter with the scope of work to their client to review, or they send a letter declining to represent if the case doesn't fit their availability.
0:24:09.8 SS: So responsiveness is important even when the answer is no, or nothing new has happened. Moving on to the next slide. Here's a quick note about millennials. I don't know if everybody knows this, but millennials who are the 25 to 40-year-old age group, they really read the details and they are saving more money than any other generation right now, and they're very focused on budgeting. This generation perhaps has seen their parents struggle through the different recessions and things, and they've seen the problems it can create. So before spending money on any services millennials are gonna wanna know exactly what's included. They need to see the value of working with a professional and what it can provide them in their investment of time and money. They wanna know it's gonna pay off. And they're also very, very comfortable doing research online, so you can expect they've done a lot of their own research digitally, and they'll have a lot of questions. So this is something to be aware of as this is a generation that will become your prospects... Many of your new clients in the future.
0:25:23.9 SS: So let's move into the engagement phase. At this... In this stage, the client's hired you and your working... They're working with you and your staff. So what are the kinds of questions and what are they doing at this point? At this point, they're trying to visualize their future. They wanna get through this legal process and get to the end of the tunnel. So they're worried about the process. They still might be questioning their decision and they might be talking to friends and family about the fact that they're working with an attorney on a legal issue. Some questions they're asking is, "Did I make the right decision? Is my attorney gonna win this for me? Will I be okay? What's gonna happen next either way? How do I communicate with my other party or family and friends? And how do I handle my work situation?"
0:26:08.1 SS: Some emotions they have could be feeling worried and relieved, certainly anxious, possibly skeptical or confident in their attorney. So these are the range of emotions and the way you communicate can help drive the more positive emotions at this point. So what's that next step we'd like them to take? This is something I hear a lot from attorneys. They really want their clients to understand that you don't need to call us, we'll call you. And the idea being, don't worry if you don't hear from us that nothing's happening, we're doing a ton of things behind the scene, you just don't seek it all. You want... Attorneys really want their client to trust that the process is going smoothly and the attorney is doing their job. And we want the client to do their part when we ask them to do it. So what content could be helpful to them to serve up to your client at this stage? You might consider some kind of an automated weekly or monthly update depending on the type of legal matter and how long it takes to kinda tell them where you stand on things. Even if you just wanna say, "Hey, just checking in to let you know this was processed a month ago. We've heard nothing new... There's nothing new to report here. I hope all is well with you."
0:27:21.3 SS: Also, you want to provide... Be providing very clear and precise directions about the process, repeating it with patients and in multiple channels. That meaning, giving those directions both in a written format, whether it's an email or another format, as well as talking to someone in person or on the phone about it. 'Cause that way they can share that information with a spouse or a partner if they need to, and they don't need to call you to be reminded of what the details were. Another thing... A communication point here is really just a check-in. "How are you doing? Do you have any questions for us at this point?"
0:28:00.6 SS: Moving on to the next slide, I wanna share with you, this is some of our research with network attorneys, when we asked about some of their biggest consumer pain points. And as you can see, common attorney client communication problems happen during the engagement phase. In our research, attorneys noted communication areas as the areas they most struggle in with their firm. And these are the areas of the expectations of the client regarding my response speed, creating understanding of how the process works and the expectations regarding the frequency that we need to communicate. And these three areas aligned with our member satisfaction feedback on the biggest pain points that members have when dealing with attorneys.
0:28:40.6 SS: So it's very clear there's a lot of rub here. And the way to really try to manage that as an attorney is to provide very clear expectations and repeat that information and make sure that they're on board with it. And it's very interesting that of our network attorneys, it didn't matter what size the firm was, whether they're new and just starting out or very well-established, all attorneys across the board reported these same three areas as the areas they struggle with most. Not surprising the attorneys with lower satisfaction from their clients in these three areas also saw the greatest number of complaints from clients related to their ability to provide options and understanding. So that's an important point to be aware of.
0:29:31.1 SS: Now, let's move on to the last stage, which is advocacy or retention. At this point, the client's legal matter has ended, but you still wanna maintain a relationship with them and hope you can get future business from them or referrals to friends and family. So let's walk through what they're feeling at this point. In this stage, some things that they're doing is they're visualizing the future and they're asking questions about the bill. They might wanna... They wanna put this all behind them. They wanna ask about the process of closing the loop on paperwork. They're talking to friends and family about their experience with you and your firm. They may be questioning what those specific charges are for, and who needs to be informed about the legal outcome.
0:30:17.9 SS: Some of the emotions they're feeling could be relief, maybe frustration, happy or sad depending on the outcome. They may feel cheated or indifferent. And hopefully, and often they feel very appreciative and confident in the outcome. And the next step you'd want them to take at this point is to pay their bill on time. We might want them to complete their outstanding paperwork. Hopefully, they'll lead to refer their friends, family or work peers. And so what content would be helpful to provide at this stage? Well from a billing perspective, you really wanna provide a very clearly outlined bill and address any questions. Provide a person that can walk them through the bill and answer any questions they have.
0:31:02.9 SS: These are things you'd wanna handle before asking for any kind of referral in the future. When you are ready to reach out and ask for a referral, it certainly... It's a humble outreach asking if you've been satisfied, we'd love for you to share this information with others. And if you are doing a survey... And we'll talk about that a little bit more here in a couple of slides. But if you do survey them, you're gonna want that to also align with your business KPIs. And then the other thing is, consider putting your past clients into a newsletter loop. Keep them informed about what's going on in your area with changes in law or if they bought a property, inherited a farm that they're managing, you might wanna keep them updated on trust issues and property transfer issues and things. I think about it a lot like a realtor... When you buy a house from a realtor, often you'll get an annual letter from them regarding the climate of buying and selling homes in your area. So as an attorney, you could do something similar with your clients after they've worked with you.
0:32:10.6 SS: In this slide, I just wanna share with you the two sides of the coin as far as advocacy and client communication. So this is a true story here. This is a quote from an attorney who served the client who's in the same slide. So the attorney had written to us, that they were frustrated that they received a five out of 10 rating from their client. He or she said, "I won the case and my client... For my client and they received everything they asked for. So I'm not really happy with this... This five out of 10 doesn't feel fair." But at the same time, the client said, "Every step of the process was painful. They didn't return my phone calls. They didn't tell me what to expect. I never knew where we stood. I wouldn't work with this person again."
0:32:54.4 SS: So I think the lesson here is that knowing the law well is something that your client expects. And that's just expected. They expect you to be a professional, understand the law and be in good standing. Those are table stakes to someone who's not a legal person. That's what they hired you to do. So to make a really good impression with your client, you're gonna have to refine that communication process because we are so used to great communication in all the other areas of services that we have out there, that's what they're comparing you to. So any time you can see how another business or another industry does it and emulate some of those things you see that you like as a consumer yourself, those are the things you wanna bring into the service you're providing so that your customer feels really confident and trustworthy in your firm. Here are some tips on how to encourage feedback.
0:33:55.3 SS: So one thing to know is that 80% of 18 to 34-year-olds, they've written online reviews. And only 40% of consumers over 55 have. So this generation that's becoming your clients here in the future, they're very active in writing online reviews and you need to be aware of that. 89% of consumers are gonna read businesses responses to reviews. So be very cautious and smart about how you respond to online reviews, 'cause people are reading them and they're judging you based on how you handled that situation.
0:34:27.5 SS: So when you've worked with a client, you certainly should be requesting feedback. I would recommend that you create two or three very small, quick surveys that you can send out through the process of working with the client. Because if there's a problem, wouldn't you rather identify that in the engagement phase rather than after you've served the client. So if you send out a brief survey with just three to five questions throughout the process... Maybe you do it after intake, maybe you do it shortly after you begin engagement, and then maybe you do it at the end. And those questions really should align with the core KPIs of how you're managing your business. Things like efficiency, effectiveness, timeliness of your services and the information they're getting, the quality of the service, they're receiving communication, certainly.
0:35:17.7 SS: So those are some of the things you'd wanna have your questions revolve around. And there's many cheap or even free resources that you can use to create surveys. Some examples include Survey Monkey, Zoomerang, SurveyPlanet and others. And I think that we've got a handy guide that we're gonna provide at the end of this too, with some resources for you. And in the survey, if you have an open-ended question, and this is something I would encourage doing. Where they can give you some feedback, ask for permission to share that feedback on your company website or in your social media areas like Yelp and Facebook where there will be reviews about you as well.
0:36:01.6 SS: You wanna own the activity on these review sites. Make sure you're reviewing those sites often to see what people are saying. And if you seem to have kind of a good following... More of a good following on one review site than the other, let's say on Yelp, a lot of your clients have provided great reviews for you, maybe you wanna point your next clients there and ask them if they've been happy with their service, to go on Yelp and provide their feedback. And it really helps you build up your profile, which gives you a lot of credibility for people when they're searching on the Internet for a legal help.
0:36:32.4 SS: Also there's going to be the occasional negative review. And I think to get in a mindset of considering those negative reviews as really a gift. Because those negative reviews often will help you identify where there could be a service gap that you might might not already be aware of. So sometimes those consumers even offer a solution or a suggestion of what they wish you had done that might help you see an opportunity to make changes. And then after you've had time to process feedback, you can reach out to the reviewer and recognize if your team fell short and let them know that you're gonna work to rectify the situation.
0:37:15.6 SS: We're just wrapping up here. I think we got two more slides. This is just a quick slide showing you what one of our network attorney reviews looks like on the ARAG site. So I think many of you are probably aware of this, but ARAG surveys plan members on every type of experience, they have at ARAG whether it's talking to our customer care team or working with a network attorney. And you'll be happy to know that 90% of ARAG plan members say that they are likely to refer their network attorney to friends and family. So congratulations to all of you. We know you just do a great job, and we are really appreciative of that.
0:37:46.9 SS: The large majority of people do leave good reviews. If you don't have a method to collect ratings and reviews, look to ARAG's site and know that we are reaching out to every client that you serve and asking them to complete a survey. And when you have then received that feedback, we share that with you as well, so that you'll be aware of what's working well and areas for improvement. And you should know that plan members have to log in to their plan member site in order to view those ratings and reviews. So it is behind a secure login.
0:38:22.7 SS: So at this point now we have gone through the entire journey map, and this is just one example of an exercise you could go through. And it really helps your team think like the people you want to work with. When you sit down and do this with your staff, one thing I'd like to add is, it's really helpful if you have any important industry trends, client stats, survey feedback or other things that you can... Data that you can incorporate into this exercise to bring a little more color here and help you understand what's going on. So for example, if at intake, you ask people how they heard about you, that data that you collect is something that you should be discussing when you're talking about consideration stage, because that tells you how people are finding you and it would give you an idea of where to more from a content perspective.
0:39:14.3 SS: And moving to the next slide, the results of this journey map are gonna help your firm focus on sending the right information to the right people at the right time and in the right format. And I'm really hopeful that all of that's gonna add up to happier loyal clients and a growing business for you. And with that, I guess I'll conclude and just say thanks again. It's been a real pleasure to get a chance to present to our network attorneys. As I mentioned, I work... My team works quite a lot on the emails and the website and the communications that you see from us. But it's pretty rare that I get a chance to talk to you, so I appreciate that, and I hope that this was helpful for you. If you ever wanna reach out to me, you'll see my contact information there in the last slide, I'd be happy to follow up with you.
0:40:00.4 SZ: Fantastic, thank you so much, Sarah. So we have just about five minutes that we'll open up for questions. Just a reminder that if you have a question, you can submit it using the questions function, in the bar there on the side. One question we had here, Sarah, is: "Will we receive a copy of the journey map with the information on it?"
0:40:25.3 SS: Yes.
0:40:26.7 SZ: So yes. Yeah... Go ahead.
0:40:30.4 SS: Yeah, yeah. We'll be sending that template. We'll send you the blank template and then the recording of this would show you... In the recording, you can see the slides where I kinda filled it out to give you an idea of how to do it. But we're gonna send you the blank template.
0:40:43.4 SZ: Yep. Fantastic. And as Sarah mentioned, it is a really fantastic activity to do with other members of your firm. So another question we had here is: "How do I determine how much money to spend on marketing for my firm?"
0:41:03.9 SS: Oh, that's a tough question. That's a really tough question. I think you have to look at the return on your investment and what you're willing to spend. And I think when... If you don't have any historical spend in a way you need to just... You need to set aside a certain budget to try things. So let's say I'm going to give myself a $250 budget a month to try things... And I would start with the journey map just to answer the question of, what's the most important thing I should try first. And I would start there. And we often do piloting where we do things on a small scale with a small investment initially. And we measure the KPIs and the return to see if it's something we wanna invest more into. So I guess... I don't know... Without knowing the size of your firm and what your potential monthly allocation is, it's hard for me to give you just a round number. I guess what I... Again, I would just say take a small amount of money and start somewhere and make sure that you have some metrics to measure the success of it, and then double down if it's working.
0:42:15.7 SZ: Yeah, that's great advice. Let me see if I have any... Okay. Well, I think that we'll go ahead and end there, but thank you, Sarah, so much for presenting today. And thank you for everyone that attended. If we didn't get to your question, we'll follow up with you directly via email, but... Yeah, we'll go ahead and end it there. And thank you everybody for attending.
0:42:35.5 SS: Thanks everyone. Have a good day.