When clients call a legal office, the last thing they need to hear is an answering machine or a disembodied voice giving them a list of options to go through. These clients have urgent issues with which they need help. Thus, they would appreciate speaking to a real person who will understand their problem and offer an immediate solution. The problem is that attorneys are busy people who, in most cases, handle other legal matters, with limited time to handle office calls. It can sometimes put off a potential client and significantly affect your business in the long run.
At Best Call Center, we are here to make things easy for personal injury attorneys throughout the country. We bridge the gap between legal professionals and their clients to ensure that nothing is left to chance to offer quality and timely services. With our live answering services, we can handle your calls as you take care of the rest of the business.
Overview of Legal Answering Services
Attorneys are extremely busy people, so they need to put in more hours to get everything done. It is hard to find an attorney who has extra time in their hands, especially those who work in busy law firms. Sometimes they do not even find time to tend to their matters. Thus, it may be challenging for them to pick your calls even if you are trying to reach them for business. Attorneys understand how vital office calls can be because it could mean new business for them. However, managing office work and calls are tricky, especially when dealing with clients and cases throughout the day.
On the other hand, many people call legal offices every day. Some people call to consult about specific services, while others call because they need help on an urgent legal matter. For such people, speaking directly to a person who understands their concerns and is ready to help is all they need. If the call is not received or is answered but not by the right person, these people can be very frustrated. A potential client may never call or contact the attorney again, which could mean a lost business opportunity.
What attorneys need in their office is a balance between what they are doing in the office and the more they can do over the phone. It is usually hard to achieve without a proper customer care center in the office. Even with a well-established customer care center, everyone working in a legal office is generally very busy and may not find time to give their full attention to the incoming calls. Outsourcing is an excellent idea that could benefit both the attorneys, their employees, and the clients in general.
An outsourced call handling service will take the burden off the attorney's back and free their time so that they can give their best to the cases they are already handling in the office. Attorneys will also be able to provide more attention to the clients coming in and out of their offices every day without worrying that they might be neglecting those calling in for help. The solution would be to partner with a call center with professionally-trained receptionists. They understand the legal industry too well to answer all the questions your clients might be having. The receptionist must also be willing to undergo thorough training on the kinds of services the attorney offers to help his/her clients even better.
A legal answering service will ease your work and leave you in open communication with your clients throughout the day and night. Remember that success in any business is measured by a person's ability to communicate with their clients. After a busy day, you may not be in a position to speak to any client. That is why you need someone out there to answer your calls and offer help to your clients in your absence. This will make your clients feel your presence when they need it.
Importance of Legal Answering Services for Personal Injury Attorneys
When a person is involved in an accident, the first thing that comes to mind is how they will get medical help and how they will pay for it. If the accident were due to another person's negligence, the accident victim would try their best to recover some compensation to aid in the payment of their medical bills and other damages incurred in the accident. This is where the need for a personal injury attorney comes in. The accident victim may not be in a position to visit the attorney's office at that instant, and so, the only viable means of communication would be to call his/her office.
When such a call is made, the injured person or his family needs urgent advice and help on what to do to recover compensation from the responsible party. In that case, they will not have the patience to leave messages or go through several options to get the help they need. Their most significant relief would be to speak to a live person, one who will not only listen and understand their concerns but also offer the help they need. If the attorney is not available, his/her employees should be able to pick the call and attend to the needs of a client. However, if the entire office is busy, then the client might feel unwanted, bringing in feelings of frustration.
When any person calls an attorney's office, what they need is help, which in most cases, is needed right away. Most personal injury cases have deadlines within which they should be investigated and determined. After that, the injured will lose his/her chance of recovering compensation. Thus, any delay would mean lost time that may not be recovered soon after. The sooner the injured can get in touch with an attorney, the better it will be to begin the legal process to settle the case on time. That is why personal injury attorneys need a solution to ensure that their calls are received and acted upon as soon as clients call their offices.
Legal answering services for personal injury attorneys have come as a great relief for attorneys who have so much to handle in their offices, and minimal time to receive and act on their calls. Your clients need immediate response every time they call your office. Are you able to offer that? If not, it would be best to partner with a call center providing round the clock call answering services for legal firms. In addition to timely legal answering services, the right call center will ensure that your clients' rights are respected throughout and that the sensitive nature of your business is maintained.
What you get in the end is a fully-satisfied clientele that will always come back for more and refer business to you. If you are in the service industry, the most important thing is the connection you have with your clients. If clients feel that they are valued and listened to, there is at no given point, they will look elsewhere for help. It is crucial for a personal injury attorney that wants to thrive in this industry. Again, you will partner with professionally trained receptionists who will always have the right answers. It minimizes misinformation and mishandling of clients, which might result in unnecessary lawsuits if clients' rights are violated.
The Right Call Handling Services for Personal Injury Attorneys
Not all answering services will be good for your business as a personal injury attorney. There is a need to keep some tips in mind when outsourcing such services to benefit your business in the long-run. Some of the factors you should bear in mind at all times include:
Confidentiality
Personal injury attorneys deal with a lot of sensitive information, and so, their work requires a lot of privacy. Your clients will not be happy to know that their private information or data might leak out. That is why there is a need to be careful when outsourcing calls handling services for your business. Attorneys need to ensure that they can trust the people who are managing their clients' calls. That is why you should consider how you will maintain the confidentiality of your clients after outsourcing. When your clients feel safe, they can bring in more business for you.
Timeliness
How fast you answer your calls is a great deal to your clients. As mentioned above, many people who seek legal services require help at that instant. In that case, you need to be there to pick up the call and provide the answers or help the client is seeking. For that reason, you need to work with a call center to guarantee timely services to your clients. No call must be left unanswered. If need be, let your call handler know that they can immediately redirect the request to the right person, without keeping the client waiting in line.
Professionalism
How best you treat your clients on the phone is important to them too. In addition to efficiency in answering calls, your clients want to experience empathy when speaking to you. They need to feel understood and assured that the problem they are facing will be resolved. In that case, you need to partner with a call center that best understands legal matters and your services as a personal injury attorney. Your virtual receptionist should take time to know how you operate, your clients' options, and your position in helping them recover compensation from the alleged at-fault parties.
Round-the-Clock Services
There should not be any limitation as to when your clients can call your office. Remember that personal injuries happen any time, whether during the day or at night. In that case, personal injury attorneys should always be open to receive calls, even during the weekends and public holidays. It may not work, primarily if your employees only work during office hours. It may be hard to hire more employees for the night and holiday shifts, especially if your business does not have the resources. Outsourcing ensures that your clients are still calling in and receiving help, even in your absence.
It means that your potential clients can still make inquiries regarding your services even when you are not in the office. Your virtual receptionist will ensure that they get the right information and also schedule an appointment at any time of the day or night. When you provide your clients with round-the-clock services, they will always feel free to get in touch whenever there is an urgent matter. This brings you even closer to them and also to new opportunities.
Experience
Experience is vital in ensuring that your clients will receive nothing short of the best services. An experienced call center will know best how to handle your clients than one that is just getting started. A call center that has served several other legal practitioners will understand the legal guidelines and procedures they should take when answering clients' calls. Again, it is only an experienced virtual receptionist that can serve your clients responsively, professionally, and friendly with all the flexibility your clients deserve.
The Benefits
Live answering services are not new in the legal sector. Many lawyers and other legal practitioners have been using live answering services to ease their work and their employees' work. No matter how hard you work in your office, you may not get enough time to handle everything efficiently. As a personal injury attorney, your clients and their concerns will take up most of your time, leaving you with little or no time to answer business calls. However, from what we have discussed above, office calls are as important as those clients coming in and out of your office every day. Engaging the services of a call center will come with more benefits for your business, such as:
Ease Your Time and Energy
The most crucial resources to give to your business today is your time and energy. Investing more time and energy in your business could translate to increased productivity in the end. The same applies to your employees. However, how do you manage this when there is so much to do in the office every day? Allowing another person to handle your business calls could ease some of your employees' time, leaving you with a few more hours to handle other vital matters.
A call center does more than answer calls. Your call handler will pick up all incoming calls, filter out and transfer important calls, pick messages, direct and advise clients, schedule, reschedule, cancel appointments, and dispatch calls on your behalf. That is a lot of work that has been taking much of your employee's time. Once an outsource call center manages the tasks, you and your employees can now concentrate on other essential areas of your business. In the end, all your clients, including potential clients, will be satisfied.
Increased Efficiency
Your main goal as a personal injury attorney is to satisfy your clients' needs best. This is not easy to achieve unless you put more considerable effort into investigating their case and fighting for their rights. If you have so much work on your hands, you may not achieve this. Live answering services help ease more of your time to give you enough time to tend to your client's needs. The same happens with all your employees, which in the end translates to more efficiency. If you worry less about managing your calls, you will have enough time to focus on your business's most crucial part.
Reduced Costs
A legal firm will need more employees and more resources to manage an in-house call center. The opposite is true if you allow an already established call center to manage your calls. The office will only hire legal professionals to handle critical legal matters in the office, and save its cost on hiring more employees. It is also a great way to control the capital cost for a personal injury attorney. You only pay for the services rendered, without paying salaries, space, and other resources to manage phone calls.
Acquire More Clients
Effective communication will also bring in more clients. Professional answering services will not only handle business calls but also handle new business for you. New clients will feel at home when they call and get an immediate response, ready with all the answers they are seeking. A well-trained virtual receptionist will also know how best to sell your services to potential clients. Again, this is easy to achieve since your services will be available round the clock. There is no time a potential client will call and miss out on connecting to your business.
Choosing the Best Answering Services for Personal Injury Attorneys
For all those benefits, the right answering service is vital for a personal injury attorney. Your business deserves the best, and so, a lot of caution should be exercised when making this critical decision. Some of the factors you should bear in mind include:
Service Availability
It is best to work with an answering service that will be available 24/7. It is because no one knows when a client or a potential client will call. It is best to be well-prepared for incoming calls, too, which requires physical availability and mental presence. Ensure that your virtual receptionist is aware of how well you need this done because the relationship between you and your clients will keep you in business for long.
The Services' Trustworthiness
You also need to be sure that you can count on the call center's trustworthiness, whose live answering services you are outsourcing. As mentioned above, confidentiality is paramount in this kind of business. Your clients can only feel safe to work with you if they know that their confidential information and data will be kept secure. A call center that understands the legal guidelines your practice is bound to as a personal injury attorney is the best choice. Again, you want to avoid any mistakes that could land you in endless legal battles with your clients. If clients feel that their rights have been infringed, they will withdraw their services and could even file a lawsuit against your business.
Its Cost-effectiveness
It may not be the main factor to consider here, but it will help your business in the long run. One of the reasons you are outsourcing services for your business is to cut costs. Therefore, the services have to be more affordable than you would have paid if you set up an in-house call center. Consider the kinds of services you will get in terms of number and quality and ensure that they will be worth the cost you will be paying for outsourcing. Again, you want to ensure that every move you make in business is profiting your business in the end.
The Professionalism of Service Providers
How your clients will be treated in your absence should matter if you care about their needs and the concerns that bring them to you. Therefore, your virtual receptionist must be professional in all his/her dealings with them. It helps to work with experienced legal call centers as they understand the legal industry better and the sensitive nature of legal clients' issues. In addition, insist on politeness and empathy even in times when the client is out of line.
Find The Right Lawyer Answering Service
Personal injury attorneys can be quite busy, mainly because of the nature of their work. Their clients expect to have 100% of their attention, even when there are many other office tasks to handle. If part of what is overwhelming you or your employees are office calls, a legal answering service could be just what you need. At Best Call Center, we have the capability and willingness to handle your office calls, to allow you enough time and energy to focus on more important things in your business. Call us at 800-385-4656 from any part of the country and let our virtual receptionist take the burden off your back.