Three Misconceptions About Legal Intake Call Centers

When you hear the phrase “call center,” what do you think? If you’re like a lot of Americans, you think of the phone company or the credit card company. Without going too deep in the weeds, let’s just say that the average experience with a call center is not one people enjoy having. Therefore, call centers do not have a good reputation.

But what if we told you that was wrong? That it is bad actors, seeking to minimize costs and maximize gain, that give the call center industry a bad reputation? The difference between a low-quality call center and a premium one is clearest when it comes to legal intake call centers.

You might think that speaking to a legal intake receptionist from one of these call centers means talking to a poorly-trained offshore agent. In this blog, we’re going to correct some of your misconceptions about legal intake call centers.

Legal Intake Call Centers Offshore Their Jobs

As we mentioned above, most Americans’ only interactions with call centers are frustrating, nebulous navigations through cable company operators until they finally reach someone who can help with their issues. To keep their customer service costs low, those companies often offshore their call centers to other countries.

Despite U.S. calls making up a vast majority of call volume, American call centers only account for 29.5 percent of the global industry!

The problem there, however, is that it doesn’t matter how good the offshore call center is; consumers don’t like having to navigate a language barrier when looking for services.

A Purdue University study found that regardless of their satisfaction with a call center, 65 percent of consumers would alter their behavior or perception toward a company after finding out they used an offshore call center.

That means that, when you seek out the services of a legal intake call center, you should be outsourcing, not offshoring. And there’s nothing wrong with outsourcing! If you talk to any consultant who works with lawyers, the first thing they’ll recommend to reduce your workload is to outsource some of your work, often to a contractor or other third party. It’s a good way to keep costs low while delegating tasks that other people can do just as well as you can.

But if you’re going to outsource to a legal intake call center, you have to beware offshoring. Choosing the right call center means choosing one that is 100 percent U.S. based. Of course, therein lies the issue: offshoring your staff is cheaper.

That reduction in quality will be reflected in the price. If you’re paying dirt cheap for a call center, the likelihood that your virtual receptionists aren’t U.S.-based goes up, and your client satisfaction will go down. Investing in a premium legal intake call center is the right way to go.

Legal Intake Call Centers Answer For Any Industry

When you reach a call center, do you often wonder what other industries the operators might be answering for, besides whatever you’re calling about? The cable company might be able to afford in-house dedicated call centers, but many smaller companies cannot.

That means when you call the mechanic, or really any smaller business that needs answering assistance, the receptionist who picks up might not be an expert in the issues you’re calling to report. Even for less complex industries than the legal world, that can be an issue. Imagine you’re calling a mechanic, and the receptionist can’t tell you if the strange noise you’re hearing from the engine is an actual engine issue, or just a wrench left in there by the last person to work on it.

Now imagine that process for lawyers!! Other than perhaps answering for the medical field, there isn’t an intake process more involved, full of complex, sensitive issues, than legal intake. Even if the legal intake call center is just supporting in-house staff, untrained receptionists is a huge liability in your lead capturing process.

After all, only 1 in 3 phone calls to law firms are picked up live.

Imagine two in three prospective clients describing a difficult divorce or a bankruptcy issue to a receptionist who isn’t trained to handle those topics. You can rest assured those clients won’t stick with that firm if they think the receptionists with whom they’re speaking aren’t specialists.

But here’s the thing about premium legal intake call centers: they only answer for lawyers. That means they’re not answering for plumbers, dentists, or even doctors. Specializing in legal intake affords the time for training in handling these sensitive subjects. If your legal intake call center is only answering for lawyers, that means you’re in the right place.

Legal Intake Call Centers Are A Low-Quality Alternative

Finally, when people think of outsourcing, they think of lower quality results. After all, in a world where you get what you pay for, how can you possibly get in-house quality for less from a legal intake call center?

Of course, with in-house staff, you’re certainly paying a lot. There’s wages, benefits, and the hidden costs of the hiring and training processes.

A 2022 Training Industry Magazine report found that the average cost of training a worker was 1207 dollars.

By outsourcing to a legal intake call center, you’re not just outsourcing your answering. You’re outsourcing the hiring and training of your receptionists as well!

And training a specialist is no easy task. That’s the first step to ensuring that your legal intake receptionists are providing in-house quality experiences to your clients. Some legal intake call centers train their virtual receptionists for months before they ever answer for lawyers.

The next step is customization. As we mentioned above, you don’t have time to train a receptionist, so the call center handles it for you. But they’re trained to answer for many law firms, not just yours! To give that personal touch, premium legal intake call centers will allow you to customize your service so that your outsourced, virtual receptionists are answering just as well as an in-house receptionist would.

The final step in assuring in-house quality is making sure you get results instantly. Premium legal intake call centers won’t make you wait on messages for hours, letting the opportunity pass you by. You’ll want to make sure you get your messages digitally, and can respond on your schedule based on the urgency of the call.

Hire The Best Legal Intake Call Center Around

How do we know so much about premium legal intake call centers? We are one!

Here at Answering Legal, our legal intake receptionists only answer for lawyers. They train for months to become legal intake experts before ever answering for a lawyer. If you’d like to check out that training process, click here. We train our receptionists to be legal intake experts, with roleplays,tutorials, and even shadowed calls answering for Answering Legal on the phone number below!

Our staff is our number one asset, of course. But we also own our own call center tech, and are constantly updating and improving it! We integrate with many major legal CRMs, and are always working on adding more to the list. And we have our own mobile app, where our customers can organize and follow up on messages, basically running their firms from their phones!

Don’t take our word for it. Click here or call 631-686-9700 to sign up for our free trial. For a limited time, we’re offering firms that sign up for our service their first 400 minutes free.