Based out of Ottawa, Auger Hollingsworth is a leading personal injury law firm in the Ontario province of Canada; specializing in car accident, slip and fall, and denied disability cases. The founding partners — Richard Auger and Brenda Hollingsworth — are skilled trial lawyers who literally wrote the playbook on ‘recovery’ in personal injury cases.

Unsurprisingly, the duo have till date recovered over $100M in damages for their clients, along with 1600+ case wins.

Though today Auger Hollingsworth can boast of client roster second to none, the firm had modest beginnings. In 2004, criminal defence lawyer Richard Auger started the firm with just one client file, operating in a shared office space with another law firm. Months later, Richard’s wife Brenda Hollingsworth, a litigation and personal injury specialist, joined the firm and became an equal partner.

The firm grew quickly as a result of Richard and Brenda’s tireless work ethic. Early successes for clients led to word of mouth referrals and a buzz in the legal and business circles in Ottawa. As word spread about the law firm, recognition soon followed — with the firm being named the bronze winner of the Ottawa Business Journal’s “New Business of the Year” Award in 2006.

Since then, Auger Hollingsworth has continued to prosper and grow while maintaining a commitment to providing the close personal attention to clients that made the firm a success in its earliest years. Even today, each client that the firm signs on, has their case worked on by one of the partners at the firm — a true rarity in the age of modern law firms!

Given their commitment to personalization, what Auger Hollingsworth wanted in their lead generation strategy was a way to conversationally qualify & convert each prospective client. This is the story of how Tars Chatbots helped them execute their winning lead generation strategy ⤵️

The Problem of Lead Capture

Auger Hollingsworth is in the business of personal injury law — one of the most competitive domains of legal practice in North America. Thankfully, due to Auger Hollingsworth‘s carefully cultivated reputation in Ontario, their frequent media appearances and their innovative marketing strategies — the firm has had a steady advantage over its competitors for a long, long time.

But leveraging your reputation to actually capture leads is a different ballgame altogether, especially in the domain of personal injury law. This is because victims of accidents & negligence are often hesitant about directly approaching lawyers due to the perception of high costs, long courtroom delays and unpredictable results. What’s more, due to the complex nature of laws in the personal injury field, clients are often confused as to whether they even have a valid claim or not.

From the perspective of a law firm like Auger Hollingsworth, this means that their first point of contact with a potential personal injury lead must 👇🏼

• Be non-Intrusive with its lead capture method.
• Be personal & incentivizing with its conversion approach.
• Be easy to access, and eye-catching.

Auger Hollingsworth knew they needed a lead capture strategy that fulfilled all these conditions, so as to ensure that they don’t miss out on any potential leads. Initially they deployed the following two solutions:

1️⃣ Clickable Mobile Contact on Homepage 👇🏼

However, while some individuals still prefer an on-call conversation, most others, especially the young generation — view calls as an option of last resort. Moreover this lead capture method puts the onus on the client to be proactive. Soon the law firm realised that incentivizing every lead to make a phone call was going to be a tough sell.

2️⃣ Live Chat Module 👇🏼

While Live Chat is an excellent solution for escalating L2 queries, it tends to be perceived as a high-intent process, where the standard of initial commitment is higher than normal. We all know that feeling of avoiding a sales clerk in-person before we have made-up our mind. Many dislike the anxiety or pressure that’s associated with human-to-human conversations at the point of first-contact. What’s more Live Chat is unavailable 24 x7, which further translates to loss of leads.

Auger Hollingsworth quickly realised that while phone calls & Live Chat may be useful for certain leads, the vast majority are simply looking for an always available, quick, easy and engaging way to communicate with their firm.

In other words, Auger Hollingsworth had realised that they needed a chatbot!

The Problem of Lead Qualification

A key pillar of Auger Hollingsworth‘s innovative marketing strategy has a been a 100% free, no-commitment case assessment of potential clients. This free consultation acts as a powerful lead magnet, with their website getting a substantial amount of traffic from potential personal injury leads. Yet, even a successful lead magnet can present experts with unforeseen problems! Here’s what we mean.

Though Auger Hollingsworth receives thousands upon thousands of potential requests for free case assessments, not every case is actually worth their time. Many case requests often come from individuals who 👇🏼

🧑🏼‍⚖️Have different needs: These are individuals who haven’t suffered a motor vehicle accident, slip & fall, disability denial or medical malpractice – the primary areas of personal injury law where the firm specializes.

🧑🏼‍⚖️Have the wrong jurisdiction: These are individuals who faced personal injury or accidents outside the jurisdiction of Ontario, Canada.

🧑🏼‍⚖️Don’t have a claim: These are individuals who were in accidents but didn’t receive any physical, psychological, or cognitive injuries, making their claims for damages unrealistic.

Given the firm’s commitment to one partner for every client, the only way Auger Hollingsworth can do justice to each case it signs on — is by being selective. What this leading Canadian law firm needed was a tool to quickly screen for the right requests, and capturing the lead details from those eligible for their free case assessment!

Enter, Tars Chatbots.

The Chatbot Solution For Qualified Lead Capture

To generate & capture qualified leads that are eligible for their 100% free, no-commitment case review, Auger Hollingsworth chose to deploy a Tars Lead Qualification + Capture Chatbot, as a widget on their homepage, with an eye catching CTA that looked like this (see bottom right) 👇🏼

What made the chatbot special was that it contained a 60-second case evaluation quiz that conversationally filtered out ineligible cases, while capturing the lead details of those eligible. This gave potential clients a quick, easy and conversational route to claim their free case review.

Wondering how it worked? Here’s how ⤵️

How Auger Hollingsworth Qualified & Captured Leads With Chatbot Automation

Step 1️⃣: A potential lead lands on Auger Hollingsworth‘s home page and clicks on the chatbot widget. After a brief introduction, the bot informs the user that they can find out their eligibility for a free case review by taking a 60 second evaluation quiz 👇🏼

Step 2️⃣: The bot asks the user to select their type personal injury 👇🏼

Step 3️⃣: Once the user clicks on one of the four buttons, the bot asks the user whether they have suffered any physical, psychological or cognitive injuries 👇🏼

Step 4️⃣: Once the user selects yes, the bot asks the user to confirm whether their accident occurred in Ontario or not 👇🏼

Step 5️⃣: If the user selects yes, the chatbot will ask the lead if they want to share brief details about their injury. Once the user shares his/her details about the injury, the chatbot confirms that the lead is eligible for a free consultation! This is end of the Lead Qualification flow.

From here the Lead Capture flow starts, with the bot first requesting the lead’s mobile number 👇🏼

Step 6️⃣: After entering a valid phone number, the bot will request the lead to share their full name👇🏼

Step 7️⃣: Finally, the bot assures the lead that they will be contacted within 1 business day for their free consultation, and then asks the lead to confirm the same👇🏼

From here, with the help of an API integration, all lead details are sent directly to Auger Hollingsworth‘s CRM. From here the support staff of the law firm takes over, calling every lead individually for their free case review!

What Was The Impact ?

The impact was stellar! With the help of a Tars Lead Qualification + Capture Chatbot, Auger Hollingsworth converted chatbot visits into leads with a 👇🏼

🌠Interaction Rate of 92.6 %
🌠Lead Conversion Rate of 10%

To put these incredible stats into context, on average the legal sector tends to see a 2.6% conversion rate for inbound calls and form submissions! That’s almost a 4x improvement on the industry average.

And that’s not all! Because Auger Hollingsworth deployed an evaluation quiz to filter out ineligible cases, not only was every lead qualified, but the firm also saved on both time and resources that they would have otherwise spent giving free consultations to unqualified leads.

We call this, ‘The Tars Effect’.

How Do I Get Started?

Book a demo with us today and one of our in-house chatbot experts will personally explain how you can use chatbots to supercharge your lead generation strategy!