You’ve just been referred by a happy client. The prospect at the other end has heard good things. Before they pick up the phone, they open ChatGPT and type your firm’s name.
What comes back?
Most professional services firms have no idea. And unlike a bad Google review- which you’d at least be able to see- what AI says about you often goes completely unnoticed. No notification. No alert. Just a response that shapes someone’s first impression of your firm before they’ve ever spoken to you.
That’s a new kind of problem, and most firms aren’t treating it like one yet.
Why this is worth paying attention to now
Research published earlier this year by BrightLocal found that 45% of consumers now use AI tools when looking for business recommendations– up from just 6% the previous year. That’s a consumer behaviour stat, and it’s worth being upfront about that: it’s about people looking for restaurants and tradespeople, not law firms or financial advisers.
But the habit gap between consumer and professional life is narrowing faster than most people expect.
Senior buyers at the kinds of firms Envision SEO works with — law, finance, consulting, property — are already using ChatGPT and Perplexity in their day-to-day work. For research, for summarising documents, for competitive intelligence. It’s not a stretch to assume that some of them, when handed a referral or spotting your firm’s name in a directory, open an AI tool to get a quick read on who you are.
This doesn’t happen with every prospect. But it doesn’t need to. It only needs to happen once or twice for it to matter — especially when a lost enquiry in professional services can represent a significant piece of revenue.
What AI is actually doing when someone asks about your firm
This is where it helps to understand the mechanics, briefly and plainly.
When someone Googles your firm, they see what you’ve largely put there — your website, your Google Business Profile, review snippets. The inputs are fairly predictable. You have some degree of control over the picture.
AI tools work from a much wider and less predictable pool. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity draw from indexed content across the web: your website, yes, but also legal directories, review platforms, LinkedIn, press coverage, industry forums, Q&A sites, and anything else that’s publicly available and considered sufficiently credible.
Crucially, AI doesn’t read those sources the way a person would. It looks for patterns and consistency. It synthesises a response based on what appears most prominently and most frequently. And where your digital footprint is thin — which is common in professional services — it relies heavily on whatever signal it can find, even if that signal isn’t representative.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. Imagine a mid-sized consultancy: polished website, credentialed team, solid client track record. But their Google reviews are sparse, their director profiles on LinkedIn are light, and their firm name appears inconsistently across directories — one version with “Ltd”, one without, different phone numbers on two listings. No press mentions. No published content beyond the homepage.
When someone asks ChatGPT about them, the response comes back vague. It describes them in fairly generic terms, can’t confirm key details, and doesn’t offer much to differentiate them from any other firm in their sector. The prospective client — who was already on the fence — closes the tab and moves on to the next name on their list. The consultancy never knew the conversation happened.
That’s not a dramatic scenario. It’s a fairly mundane one. And it’s probably happening more than most firms realise.
A quick check you can do yourself
Before drawing any conclusions about your own situation, it’s worth running a simple test across the main AI tools. It takes about five minutes.
Search your firm name directly. Open ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity separately. Ask each one: “What can you tell me about [Firm Name]?” Read what comes back carefully. Is it accurate? Is it specific? Does it actually reflect what your firm does and who it does it for — or does it feel generic and detached?
Search your specialism and location. Try something like: “Who are the leading [specialism] firms in [city]?” Note which firms come up. Note whether you’re among them. If you’re not, it’s worth understanding why — because in many cases it comes down to how much credible, structured content exists about your firm online.
Search the questions your clients ask before hiring you. Think about two or three questions a prospective client typically raises in a first conversation. Search those questions in each tool. Is your firm cited as a useful source? Is anyone in your sector?
The point of this isn’t to find perfect results — it’s to understand what the current picture looks like. Most firms who do this find a mix: some accurate information, some gaps, occasionally something outdated or mildly misleading. Knowing that is the starting point.
What actually shapes how AI describes your firm
Improving your visibility in AI tools isn’t a separate discipline from good SEO practice. It builds on the same foundations — but with some specific areas worth paying attention to.
Consistency across platforms. AI systems are more confident citing information that appears consistently in multiple places. If your firm’s name, services, and location are described differently across your website, LinkedIn, directories, and professional body listings, that inconsistency creates uncertainty. It doesn’t necessarily mean AI will say something wrong — but it does mean it’s less likely to say something useful. Cleaning up inconsistencies across your core listings is often the most straightforward first step.
Content that actually answers questions. AI is, at its core, a question-answering system. It performs best when it can find clear, well-structured content that addresses what people are asking. If your website is primarily a brochure — professional-looking, but light on substantive explanation of what you do and who you work with — AI has very little to draw from. Pages that speak plainly to how you work, what outcomes you deliver, and what kinds of firms you typically serve give AI something concrete to reference.
A review presence that reflects your work. Reviews are one of the signals AI uses to assess credibility. A firm with no reviews, or reviews only on one platform, has a weaker foundation than one with consistent feedback across relevant platforms. This isn’t about volume — it’s about whether the signals that exist are real and recent. Encouraging clients to leave reviews on the platforms most relevant to your sector is a straightforward step that many professional services firms have deprioritised.
Visible expertise from real people. One of the patterns AI systems increasingly look for is evidence that content comes from individuals with genuine, verifiable expertise. Author pages on your website, professional credentials listed clearly, articles or commentary published elsewhere, active LinkedIn profiles from key team members — all of these strengthen how AI understands and represents your authority. A firm that exists only as a homepage with no individual voice attached to it is harder for AI to characterise with any confidence.
Our AI search optimisation service covers these areas in detail — from auditing what AI currently surfaces about your firm to building the signals that improve it over time.
The timing of this matters
The pace at which AI has moved from niche to near-mainstream in the space of a single year is not typical of how most digital trends develop. Usually there’s a longer runway — time to wait and see, assess the evidence, and act when the picture is clearer.
This one is moving faster. And while it would be an overstatement to say that AI reputation management is urgent for every professional services firm right now, it’s fair to say that the firms paying attention to it now are likely to be in a meaningfully stronger position in twelve months than those who wait until it becomes obvious.
There’s also a compounding dynamic worth understanding. Improving your AI visibility isn’t a one-off task. It builds on itself — better content leads to better citation, which leads to more consistent representation, which builds over time. Starting later just means the compounding starts later.
The good news is that most of what’s needed isn’t new or complicated. It’s foundational: consistent information, substantive content, real reviews, visible expertise. Firms that have already invested in solid SEO practice have a head start. The gap to close is usually smaller than it looks.
If you’d like to understand exactly how AI tools are currently representing your firm, an AI and GEO search audit gives you a clear picture — what they’re finding, what they’re missing, and what the practical next steps look like.
What this comes down to
Prospects are doing more research in more places before they make contact. That’s not new — it’s been true for years. What’s new is that AI has become one of those places, and it operates in a way that’s less transparent and less predictable than a Google search.
You don’t need to understand the technical detail of how large language models work. You need to understand that AI is drawing conclusions about your firm based on what it can find publicly — and that the quality and consistency of what it finds is something you have more influence over than most firms realise.
The five-minute test is a reasonable place to start. Run it, see what comes back, and decide whether the picture reflects where your firm actually is.
If it doesn’t, get in touch — and we can work through what needs to change.
