The Difference a Warm Call Transfer Can Make For Attorneys

Go ahead and picture this scenario:

You’re sitting in your law office on a Monday afternoon, and get patched in a call from a new customer. You still have a ton left to do before the day concludes, and now must dedicate time to asking the caller a series of questions regarding their personal information and the issue they are experiencing. And when you do this, you are greeted by an aggravated caller, exclaiming, “I already told all of this to your receptionist”.

This is a situation that can leave both you and your caller feeling incredibly frustrated, and is not the way you want to begin a relationship with a potential client. So what can you do to prevent this scenario from unfolding? Your office needs to improve the way it transfers its calls.

There is one call handling method that is by far the most effective, and it’s known as warm call transferring. It is a strategy for transferring calls that will simplify all of your phone interactions with new customers.

How is a warm call transfer performed?

1. A receptionist answers the phone on behalf of your business, and gathers personal information from a customer, as well as their reason for calling.
2. The receptionist briefly puts the customer on hold, and shares the caller’s information with you.
3. The receptionist patches the customer over to you. With their information in hand, you can immediately begin diving into solving their issue.

Performing these transfers may seem simple, but their success is highly dependent on an attorney being on the same page with his/her receptionist staff. Warm call transfers are worth implementing, because they will help keep your phone conversations on track and indicate to callers that your firm is competent and can handle their case smoothly and intelligently.

Always Be At Your Most Efficient

Time is typically not on an attorney’s side during the work day. Having several minutes wasted with information gathering while you have a full docket of other legal matters to attend to is far from ideal. This is why your receptionist staff needs to be not just a buffer, but a liaison between you and your customers.

Having an active dialogue with your receptionist can make all the difference when it comes to phone conversations with potential clients. Imagine how much time you will save, by entering every legal phone conversation already fully briefed on a customer’s information and reason for calling. By having a receptionist handle the information gathering work for you, you can immediately get right to the heart of whatever issue the caller is having, and begin solving their problem. Your customer will appreciate your heightened level of preparedness, and you will spend less time asking questions, and more time providing solutions. This is what can be accomplished with a proper warm call transferring system.

How To Implement Warm Call Transferring

For assistance with executing warm call transfers, we recommend teaming up with a legal answering service. While an in-house receptionist can be trained to perform them, they will not be available 24/7 and will struggle to answer every call that comes into your office.

A quality legal answering service will have fully trained receptionists available to answer your customer calls at all hours of the day and night. Legal answering service receptionists will also typically begin working on your behalf already well trained in message taking and lead capturing, making them a great fit for performing warm call transfers.

Let Customers Know You Care

Just about everyone knows what it feels like to have a frustrating over the phone customer service experience. You call into a service looking for an answer to a straightforward question, but end up getting transferred from place to place, and having to explain your issue multiple times. This type of experience is known as a cold call transfer.

The word ‘cold’ is a rather appropriate description for these types of transfers, because they usually result in a client feeling like a business can care less about the issue they are experiencing. Cold call transfers can be particularly disheartening to those calling into a law office, since people calling a firm’s phone lines are often going through a difficult time in their life.

People seeking legal aid will not have much patience for dealing with an unpleasant or overcomplicated transfer experience. With so many attorney options to choose from these days, you need to prove from the start they you care about your customers issues, or they will go elsewhere. By providing warm call transfers you indicate that you value your customer’s time, and view them as more than just another paycheck. Sign up with an answering service today, and make sure you always make the best first impression on prospective clients.