Our client Grupo Defensoría was born as a project by a group of lawyers graduated from the Universidad de Chile, who sought to democratize the law and facilitate processes thanks to the use of technology. It consists of different areas: Defensoría Deudor, Defensoría Consumidores and Defensoría Salud. And we have participated in all of them!
One of its founders is Erwin Moller, who in 2022 was the lawyer who filed the most protection resources against isapres. In addition, he participated in the judicialization by the table of factors, representing Defensoría Salud. We spoke with him about this venture that has acquired so much relevance and how at YOPPEN we help promote it.
Y: What inspired the idea of Grupo Defensoría and what were its beginnings like?
E: It is an idea that has been built along the way, so perhaps I can talk a little about its beginnings. At first I thought of this activity as something to generate income beyond my salary as a beginning lawyer. I still didn’t have the degree, I felt inexperienced and a friend who did digital marketing told me: “You have to take the plunge, you would do much better than my clients” (who were lawyers and handled mass trials).
That’s how one day I cheered up. I started this project and together with my partners we boosted it with digital marketing. We noticed how we rose in the organic positions of Google, reaching the top positions (currently we are in third if they are looking to “stop the increase of Isapre”).
In this process, we began to receive so many, many clients that we realized that it is difficult to carry out procedures without technology, because the management of deadlines ends up being bad and communications as one would like. Because naturally human beings tend to save energy. One always starts off very inspired, being thorough, precise, clear. But when you have been answering emails for 6, 7 or 8 months, you begin to lower that intensity. But technology does not do it, it does not lower that intensity.
So, in concrete terms, what is our mission? It is being able to bring justice closer to people through technology, because technology allows us to solve problems of quality of service, which tends to be deficient in lawyers. The second thing is the costs, which with technology can be greatly reduced.
Our proposal is to break the paradigm and that desire comes with branding. We are not “Moller y Abadí” – who is my partner -, but rather we are “Grupo Defensoría”. Something that is close. It is not about selling itself as a study for upper-middle and upper-class people, but for ordinary chileans, who cannot access justice. So, it is not that we are taking away the market, but that we are creating a new one. From people who are not reaching technology at the moment.
Y: So, the use of technology is playing an essential role?
E: Yes, do you know what differentiates us from other studios? That the same people who are in charge of the developments also participate in the operation. We do not have programmers, but rather lawyers who learned programming. Therefore, if one day we have a problem, we solve it in 30 or 40 minutes. Unlike other studies that have to notify the development team, which takes 4 or 5 days to have a response that may not be satisfactory.
Y: How has digital marketing contributed to your growth?
E: It’s elementary. Selling, as my partner says, is not everything but it is our oxygen. It is important to have an accounting or welfare department, but for everything to work the essential thing is to generate sales. Marketing from the beginning was our main virtue, which allowed us to attract thousands of clients. And thanks to that attraction, a new challenge was presented to us, which was to improve. Have the capacity to carry 6 thousand clients.
So, marketing for me is oxygen and it also allows you to constantly challenge yourself. The starting point of any project is marketing.
Y: Has YOPPEN been a good help?
Yes, I am infinitely grateful for everything they have done for us. When I read your SEO positioning blogs, I said ‘I wish I could write like you do.’ They are constantly a challenge for me, I always try to live up to the service they offer, to be able to make the most of them.
There is a point for me and the rest of the clients who hire agencies: marketing must carry the dreams and hearts of the partners. We have to get involved. No one is going to understand the business better than ourselves.
It is a message that we have to convey, at least in the initial part of working with agencies.
Then, perhaps when the agency already understands the role it has to play, we can let go and let it unfold. But not before. In that sense, I thank YOPPEN because it always gave me the opportunity to intervene and get my hands on things, make comments. I never felt that we were seen as “oh, the problem client”, they always told me “very good idea, very good message, let’s make these changes”, which at the end of the day is appreciated because it is important for an agency to have those things to give the next step.
YOPPEN is not regular or basic marketing, but something very special, very unique, that allowed us to be number 1 in the market, in what we do.
Y: The meetings we have also helped capture the message that you want to promote.
That’s how it is. Understand what our star service is, what we want to emphasize during the month. And at the end of the day, perhaps if you weren’t asking us, we would move forward in those discussions much more slowly than we have to date. So that feedback not only comes from us to you, but also from you to us and to our own project timing, which goes beyond marketing.
Y: What do you highlight about the service and what has led you to continue with us?
E: Well, the first thing I highlight is proactivity. I get to feel bad when I don’t comply with the requirements, because there are emails, after emails, after emails. Since I am looking at emails all day, it happens to me a little that first I get distressed at feeling that I am not honoring the proactivity that you have. But at the same time I feel calm knowing that I have an agency that is constantly putting pressure on me to move this forward.
There are many agencies that throw in the towel when you don’t send them the content. Unlike them, you don’t release the client until they send it. And that’s what I’m most grateful for. That’s why I wouldn’t change agencies, because there is a guarantee of proactivity. Anyone who hires their services would know within a week that they are worth it. That happened to me.
Y: Has the management of social networks been significant in increasing the number of clients?
E: I really loved the publicity we have done. In RR.SS it has been an enriching process. I realized that when we sell services, we also have to deliver valuable information. All the graphs that Defensoría Salud and Defensoría Deudor made have fulfilled that very well.
Our content has a lot of reaction, a lot of comments, people feel challenged, they feel that there is valuable information just by looking at the graphs they make. Debate is generated. We are amazed to see how dialogue is taking place among the same people.
There are other points to improve, which do not depend on you, but on us as clients. For example: intervene more in the stories and that has been something that you have encouraged us to do. Although so far we have not had the capacity, yes or yes it is a pending item on the list and when we start to function like this I believe that social networks are going to explode.
Y: Regarding the websites and blogs, have they been significant in attracting new clients?
E: I see my website and I feel like a son. It’s great that you care so much about the user experience of “our clients”, after all. They empathize, understand the service and the journey that Internet users take. They transmit that to me as well. I have incorporated everything they have told me as advice and I try to ensure that the information is precise, to the point and is discovered step by step.
For example in emails: we already know that we do not have to send an eternal text, but rather send content little by little and thus generate dialogue…
I feel the same thing is transmitted on websites, which are super elegant, functional and intuitive.
And well, the blogs: perhaps it is because of us that we are dedicated to providing civic and financial education, but they have been everything. For me YOPPEN is the standard for how to behave with blogs.
Y: Have we helped strengthen your digital presence?
E: Yes, I always asked Ny for advice when this started. She has always been very willing to have these conversations, send me to watch a video, make technical recommendations. You were kind enough to participate in our automation process, incorporating the CRM and the form on the web, which was the starting point for our clients to join the automation as well.
Y: How did this social vocation come about, to defend debtors, users of the health system, etc.?
E: I always had social sensitivity, because since university I was involved in politics. Now, political organizations have many vices, and I came out very frustrated from that, but I did not lose the spirit of being able to do things well, transcend and generate help for the rest.
For me, one of the greatest achievements was obtaining the jurisprudence that ordered the Isapres to return 2,500 million dollars to their members. That was the success of understanding that the world I am living in would not have been the same without me. That is a motivation that has radiated to the entire team, these values are in all of us.
As a team we deal a lot with self-management. The interns are bosses of the tasks assigned to them and do not have to wait for our orders.
We can advise them, there will always be room to listen to them, but they are free to make decisions. And this means that as workers they get involved, understand the pain and are not thinking about what is or is not more profitable, but about how to solve a problem to improve a service.
I cannot ignore that in the end 95% of the social vocation of the project comes from the workers getting involved in the clients’ problems.
H2: Y: In all this development, marketing has been important
E: Yes, the essence of Defensoría is marketing. As they told me in college, a lawyer is nothing without his clients. There are many lawyers who come out without whistles and we have to specialize based on what we receive. And the magic of marketing is that you can very well guide the process of which clients you want to have. We have attracted clients with a certain profile.
We look for standard violations, which many people suffer massively, where the case does not vary much. Then we automate that process and make a flow. With this flow we manage each case excellently, but it is a job that requires a lot of brainpower, time and equipment, so at the moment we cannot handle personalized causes. But we have created the laboratory we want thanks to marketing.
Y: What can we expect from Grupo Defensoría in the near future?
E: Now we are working on a project with an accountant named Alejandro and he is a machine. He recently came into our lives and has a culture very similar to ours, of automating processes. And with him we are working on a surprise in the tax part. We are going to put a lot of heart into it, because it is also exactly the specialty with which I wanted to develop professionally: my first diploma was taxation. So, having the possibility of doing it with our own project, yes or yes we are going to enjoy it 100%.
Y: We are happy to know it! Finally, any recommendations for other entrepreneurs?
Never give up on marketing or thinking about how to improve sales. It’s never enough. One can always bet on more and better. Define what we want to do and where we want to go. And that at the end of the day is power. Marketing gives you power and you have to take advantage of that.
