What Makes A Great Answering Service System?

It isn’t easy to be an expert. It takes training, time, study, and practice, and is a constant process of learning and keeping up with changes that never really ends. And expertise is not often transferable. Even lawyers, experts in the law, usually specialize in one or a few legal practice areas to narrow down their expertise, rather than serving more generally.

So it’s not surprising that most people don’t know what makes an answering service system great. After all, to a novice’s eye, don’t most law firms look the same, whether they handle immigration or family law?

If you’re looking to learn about answering services, however, the Answering Legal blog is the right place for you. Whether you’re trying to figure out what service would be a good fit for you or are just starting out in your research, this blog will help you get to know what makes an answering service system great.

Flexibility Is Key

First and foremost, an answering service system should be flexible. You’re looking for phone support. You need people to answer the phone when you’re not available, because clients are going to go with the firm that answers them first.

Only 1 in 3 phone calls to law firms are picked up live.

You never know when a prospective client could call, and you always want to make sure you pick up if you want their business. Therefore, the first quality of a flexible answering service system is 24/7 availability.

Even if you just handle your own phones and have someone taking calls overnight, you’ll find the extra phone answering a relief in your off hours. Imagine going to bed knowing you’ll be able to secure any leads that call in while you get your much-needed rest! And the more you’re using an answering service, the better your results will be. You’ll be able to get more done and spend more time with family when an answering service has your back.

Part of making sure an answering service system is flexible is making sure there’s an emphasis on customization. Every law firm is different, and has different needs. For example, you might need total coverage, or rollover call forwarding. Whatever you need, a great answering service system should be able to provide; you should look for a service where just about everything is customizable.

Finally, an answering service is not flexible unless you can receive your messages in as many different ways as you need. You might want your messages to contain certain unique information your firm uses to get an edge, or be delivered straight to your CRM. You should be able to fit your answering service into your firm’s workflow, and not have to change the way you run your firm to fit the service.

24/7 Support Is A Must

You should never feel on your own when you have an answering service handling your calls. After all, you’re looking for the opposite experience. You’re hiring them to help manage your firm’s phone lines. The virtual receptionists are backup for your firm, there to support when your phone lines get too much to handle.

It’s a common misconception that answering services make things harder for businesses, not easier—click here if you want to learn more. The truth is, if an answering service causes you stress, it’s not working for you. In fact, you should feel more relaxed once you don’t have to worry about missing a key client’s phone call.

That’s why one of the hallmarks of a great answering service system is 24/7 support. It can be something as simple as changing something about your service at a moment’s notice. Or, it can be as complex as, in the event that something does go wrong, being able to resolve whatever issue arises.

You may not appreciate 24/7 support until that happens, but when it does, it might save a valuable lead. For example, if you delete a message by accident, you should be able to get it back through the answering service system so that you can call that lead back and secure their business.

The purpose of an answering service is to support your business. In many ways, that means the customer—your firm—is always right. Within reason, you should be able to get everything you need from your answering service, as long as it’s within their purview.

Thorough Training Makes It All Work

The legal system is a complex beast, with philosophical influences spreading far and wide across centuries. The law is largely regarded as a neutral party, requiring arbitration and argumentation between two parties with different ideas about its implementation. Without people trained in the law, the system would not do very much for the people.

In much the same way, an answering service system is nothing without its operators. A great answering service system will have highly-trained virtual receptionists operating the phones 24/7. After all, the answering service is going to have a big responsibility in your firm.

According to the Legal Trends Report, 70 percent of clients prefer to conduct the first meeting with an attorney over the phone.

The virtual receptionist’s job is to make sure to get that prospective client to that meeting, and that job requires certain skills.

Of the skills they’ll need, legal intake is the most important one. The legal intake process is different from similar processes for other industries. Legal issues are incredibly personal; If a client feels like they’re not getting a personal experience, they will leave. If they’re just filling out a form, they will try to find a firm that treats them like a person, not like a case.

Virtual receptionists can receive training for general answering anywhere, but legal intake training will only happen at an answering service that specializes in answering for lawyers. That’s why specialization is the key ingredient in a great answering service system. The answering services that specialize in answering for lawyers that do will be able to afford deeper training regimens to make their operators experts.

You Can Rely On Answering Legal

How do we know so much about what makes a great answering service system? Well, we operate one!

Here at Answering Legal, we’ve been answering calls exclusively for lawyers for over a decade, and we’ve learned a thing or two about it along the way. We train our receptionists for three months before they ever pick up the phone for a lawyer. Much of that time is spent preparing to be able to perform a custom legal intake for any law firm that uses our service at any time of day or night. To read more about our training regimen, click here.

Our legal intake process is 100 percent customizable. Firms using our answering service system can change every step of the process, from using one of our pre-generated scripts to customizing every piece of information they’ll receive. Read more about how we handle legal intake here.

And our messages are deliverable via CRM and via our mobile app, so no matter where you are, you’re covered. You can read more about our direct integrations with popular legal softwares here.

Go with the best legal answering money can buy. 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.