Finance company 6x business growth with Outreach Campaigns

Incorporating company values all along the way

Aaron R. Winston

Express Legal Funding

Outsourcing is a big reason businesses grow and become successful. It has a number of advantages, and as Aaron R. Winston, Strategy Director at Express Legal Funding, found out, it helped his business free up time and increase profits in a remarkably cost effective way. Businesses of all sizes are quickly adapting to a model in which employees focus on key tasks while outsourced service providers help supplement the rest of their staffing needs. Outsourced receptionists give the customer the best service possible while keeping overhead costs under control. Smith.ai is one of those game-changing companies that allows flexibility to businesses in critical stages of growth. As the first point of contact with new leads and clients, Smith.ai handles calls, chats, and text messages 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and then schedules appointments with potential new clients, conducts new client intake, takes payments for consultations, makes outbound calls, and so much more. All of these activities lead to a better client experience and accelerate business growth. For Winston, the services he finds most valuable from Smith.ai center around his business phone and website, where Smith.ai’s team of remote receptionists enables him to grow revenue at a lower cost than in-house, providing him with a reliable, scalable sales machine.

Express Legal Funding

McAllen, Texas

The problem

Legal financing business needs prompt responsiveness

Our solution

Outsourced sales agents to improve customer engagement

Express Legal Funding initially needed a virtual receptionist company that could handle the outbound calls to leads completing website applications for legal funding. They left their former answering service for Smith.ai because Smith.ai was able to effectively handle the outbound calls with ease.

Winston was so pleased with the job Smith.ai was doing with outbound calls that he moved everything over to Smith.ai, including inbound call answering and live website chat. His biggest surprise so far has been how much his clients have engaged in live website chat.

Before hiring Smith.ai, Aaron and his staff at Express Legal Funding were doing less business with more stress. Aaron saw signs of his business strategy working, but knew Express Legal Funding needed to find a steadfast partner that they could fully rely on 24 hours a day to help them achieve their goals. He knew his company was positioned to grow exponentially, but he had to find and integrate a better receptionist service before taking their growth to the next level, or he’d risk overwhelming his team.

24/7 phone answering

24/7 website chat

Appointment booking

“Assuming we have Smith.ai’s infrastructure, which we don’t have, it would probably take at least 12 employees a day to do, on the low end, what Smith.ai is doing for us. So that’s really not feasible, and also it would take a couple more employees to make sure it is up and running at all times properly, and it would not be running well even then.”

“Smith.ai did a great job incorporating our company values, as both companies align well in that area. This should not be overlooked, as those values have become central to Express Legal Funding's brand identity,” Winston mentions. He goes on to say, “Within the first few minutes of speaking with Smith.ai, I knew they were the virtual receptionist company to put my trust in. Smith.ai is the perfect combo. They are upfront, transparent, and have a ‘we can find a way to make that work’ mindset. That has been of great value to us.”

Since hiring Smith.ai, Express Legal Funding has seen massive growth in their business volume. They have more than tripled the number of law firms whose clients have received funding, and in the second half of 2021, the total amount of funding and loans they provided were six times what they did in the same period in 2020.

Winston attributes this incredible growth to the work of Smith.ai’s virtual receptionists. The detailed call summaries and quality of the information collected through Express Legal Funding’s intake forms has helped to reduce the time needed on their tasks and has allowed their staff to make more informed decisions about which clients to fund. In several situations, they have avoided costly funding mistakes because of the detailed intake forms Smith.ai receptionists completed. Repeatedly, Winston praises the receptionists for “excellently handled” calls and chats, and whether it’s for correctly qualifying or accurately disqualifying leads, the impact is felt on a daily basis.

Aaron R. Winston is the Strategy Director at Express Legal Funding, a company that provides legal cash advances while attorneys wait for cases to settle. For as fast as Express Legal Funding was growing, Aaron needed the right virtual receptionist company that could keep up with the growth by making outbound calls and completing thorough intake forms. Winston’s biggest praise for Smith.ai was the ability to request a call-back anytime, on any type of matter. He says this feature allows his team to keep their momentum going and focus throughout the day since they don’t have to worry about all their call backs, which can be time consuming and draining.

Winston goes on to say, “Trust them [Smith.ai] because they’re good at what they do. They specialize in the legal-type fields, which have high risk involved with outsourcing. So if attorneys are willing to do that, it’s a pretty good sign.” The team at Smith.ai saves Express Legal Funding time, money, and headaches. There isn’t anything he’s put in Smith.ai’s court that the receptionists haven’t been able to handle.

Smith.ai is a superior 24/7 call answering and intake service for small businesses. Our virtual receptionists help you build better relationships with new and existing clients. We will help save you money and time, give your clients the personalized attention they deserve (don’t we all prefer to talk to a human!), and capture more qualified leads (bye-bye spam calls!).