Making the Most of Your Attorney Answering Service
Partnering with a team of virtual receptionists to handle your law firm’s incoming calls is probably one of the smartest business moves you can make. Ensuring a high level of customer service in a consistent, affordable manner without interrupting the important work your in-office team is doing means you can devote more attention and more resources to your clients, living up to your own ethical and professional standards while establishing yourself as the go-to legal authority in your clients lives. That’s what building an effective practice is all about.
But are you making the most of your attorney answering service? Have you looked at all of the available features and services they offer and figured out how to customize your plan so it works best for you and your clients? Are you still devoting more resources to your phone calls than is necessary, and are you missing out on some of the data-backed benefits your inbound call professionals can provide? Read on to make sure you’re making the most of what your legal answering service has to offer.
An Answering Service is More than a Backup Receptionist
While many attorneys turn to answering services simply as a means of achieving greater cost efficiency over in-house receptionists, and/or as a way to provide backup call answering during peak hours or for after-hours calls, the right service can do a whole lot more than simply answer your phones. Call coverage is just the beginning, the essential first step towards the wider world of call management improvements.
Appointment setting is a big time drain for many law firms, and an attorney answering service can fix that problem with the push of a button. Empower your virtual receptionists by giving them availability schedules for you and your partners, and let them sit on the phone with clients to find the right time for you to meet. Get detailed and organized updates about new appointments as they are made and about the imminent appointments you need to prepare for, and free your mind for the legal work while your off-site team keeps you on track with every client.
An attorney answering service should also be able to process payments from clients, gather necessary case-related information in a secure and confidential manner to ensure accuracy and to save you time, and handle a lot of other communication tasks that are necessary but that don’t require the specialized knowledge of a licensed legal professional. At the same time, many modern call centers are equipped with the capabilities to record metadata about incoming calls, helping you determine the success of various marketing efforts, tracking the time from first client contact to a signed contract, and determining which types of clients and calls are most profitable based on revenues and expenses over time.
An Answering Service is the First Partner Your Law Firm Needs
You won’t have to put a new name on the door when you partner with a legal answering service, but they can help bring you as much business as any newly-minted associate. If you still think of answering services as little more than off-site phone operators, it’s time for you to think again.
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