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Legal Marketing: Is the phone call an outmoded communication tool?

Guest post by: Tom Matte

Article Overview: A growing number of people consider phone calls to be interrupting and annoying. The phone call is rapidly fading as e-mailing, followed by an explosion in texting and social media, has pushed the telephone conversation into serious decline. The debate is raging. Is the phone call dead for law firms and their clients? Most attorneys keep in touch with their clients through phone calls, but is that out of date now? Should they be combining phone call with new technology? Read more and figure out where you fall in this debate.

Legal Marketing: Is the phone call an outmoded communication tool?

A growing number of people consider phone calls to be interrupting and annoying. The phone call is rapidly fading as e-mailing, followed by an explosion in texting and social media, has pushed the telephone conversation into serious decline.

The debate is raging. Is the phone call dead for law firms and their clients? Most attorneys keep in touch with their clients through phone calls, but is that out of date now? Should they be combining phone call with new technology? Read more and figure out where you fall in this debate.

TechCrunch writer, Alexia Tsotsis, recently wrote an insightful article that has been stirring a lot of debate, “The Phone Call is Dead.”

She writes, “Less obsolete, but more annoying than a handwritten letter, the phone call is fading as a mode of communication even if the nostalgic will be singing its praises for a while.”

While Alexia points out that saying something is “dead” in the tech industry actually means it’s on the decline, she provides some good points regarding the fall of the call.

• We reached a breaking point in 2008, when text messaging topped mobile phone calling in usage, and we’ve been living in a world dominated by text-based communication ever since.
• According to Nielsen data, voice usage has been dropping in every age group except for those past the of age of 54.
• 78 percent of teens recognize the functionality and convenience of SMS, considering it easier (22 percent) and faster (20 percent) than voice calls.
• Voice activity has decreased 14 percent among teens, who average 646 minutes talking on the phone per month.
• Interest in voice calling is, and few technological advancements have ever survived while failing to capture the interest of 22-year-olds.
• The fall of the call is driven by 18 to 34-year-olds, whose average monthly voice minutes have plunged from about 1,200 to 900 in the past two years, Nielsen research shows.
• iPhone users (and to greater extent smartphone users in general) are not primarily using our phones to make calls.
• We now have access to a plethora of free, internet-based calling options like Google Voice.
• Not only are people making fewer calls, but they are also having shorter conversations when they do call. The average length of a cell phone call has dropped from 2.38 minutes in 1993 to 1.81 minutes in 2009, according to industry data.
• Between 2005 and 2009, as the number of minutes people spent talking on cell phones inched up, the number of cellphone messages containing text or multimedia content ballooned by 1,840 percent.
• Cellphone industry group CTIA saw text messaging double from June 2008 to June 2009, when Americans sent a staggering 135.2 billion text messages, and its data backs up the idea that phone calls are declining.
• Land lines are disappearing. Verizon, the country’s second-largest land line carrier after AT&T, says its hard-wired phone connections have dropped from 50 million in 2005 to 31 million in 2010.

“The fundamental way we people communicate is just about to change again,” said Delly Tamer, CEO of Letstalk, which sells a variety of cellphones. “We humans will now start to rely less on our mouths and more on our heads and our fingers.”

Alexia Tsotsis, is LA Weekly’s internet culture reporter, and SF Weekly’s web editor. Before she joined TechCrunch, she ran the SFweekly website while staying on top of memes, the tech scene, and human behavior in the digital age. Read here entire article: "The Phone Call is Dead."

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Article Tags: Atlanta, law firm marketing, legal marketing, phone call, social media, The Matte Pad



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Re: Those Annoying Telemarketers - Not answering the phone is fine if you can ignore a ringing phone. Unfortunately I am far too curious about everything to let it ring, I just have to know who is on the other end. If it is a telemarketer, usually say can't talk now call me (and I give a specific time.) the call never happens. MichelleJ
I hate cold calling! - Hi Darryl, I hate cold calling. I always have and always will. What I found though was that the hardest part was picking up the phone and making the phone call. Once I had a prospect on the line there never seems to be any issue for me. Nowadays I tend to send a very brief email first asking for permission to contact them. I have never had someone take the time to email me to say 'no' and if they don't respond within a week chances are they have forgotten about the email anyway so I go ahead and call them.
Re: Voise SMS feature on mobile...Yes/No - [quote="Ashish":1j8d830z]As far as spam is concerned, how about if you are aware of the destination from where it's arriving. I myself believe if I had to use this form of communication and I have to choose any one of them by spending same, I'd go for the Voice SMS. Anyone else thinks the same or majority people likes to avoid SMS communication.[/quote:1j8d830z] Hi Ashish, If I registered for something like a business seminar or social event, I can see the benefit of being reminded via text message on my cell phone. However, I'd still prefer text over voice SMS because even if you hired a person with the clearest voice to deliver your voice SMS... I'd still need to listen to that message twice to write down the contact person's info/phone number (if it's different than the one used to leave the message). That's a hassle as I may not have a pen and paper down with me.
JW Site redesign - I agree the Font is a little small. Also on the homepage I believe it will be effective for you to display an offer to sample your services - I believe you had one in your previous site. This is only constructive feedback.... I'm not sure about the length of the "quote" page - possibly too many questions. I wouldn't fill it out after seeing it but would pick up the phone to call you and deliver my thoughts over the phone. Maybe if you reduce the questions down to three/five questions without me having to explain in detail what I am looking for - I would complete it. One of your final questions would be: what's the best time to contact you? You can call the prospect then to get more details and you would record it during that session. I did this when I ran my webdesign company and it worked really well. my questions were: Name? Telephone? Email? Briefly describe your ideal website? Best day and time to call? I captured the details during the call-back.
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