Working as a criminal defense attorney can be hectic. This is because your services are in high demand, and you will need to answer constant calls from your clients and potential clients who need assistance. The number of calls you receive at your office may need to be reduced for your staff to handle them. Most people who contact you are in legal trouble, and their need for legal guidance is urgent.
If you fail to pick up their calls, they may feel frustrated and call another firm, causing you to lose a lot of money. Additionally, you may need to train more staff to handle the specific calls from clients, which takes time and financial resources. You risk losing potential clients if you cannot handle all the phone calls.
Although speaking to all your clients personally is nearly impossible, partnering with an answering service can help you handle your calls. The answering service agents are available and trained to represent your firm professionally. Some of the reasons why an answering service could be a great idea to incorporate into your criminal defense law firm include the following:
24/7 Availability
As a criminal defense lawyer, you will likely encounter several challenges in your line of work. Your law firm's services are critical and urgent for the clients. Therefore, it is common that you will receive calls from clients late at night.
Since most criminal arrests occur at night, you may have no choice but to answer the call, or you can potentially lose the client. There is only so much you can do during the day, and by the time you go home, you will be too tired to attend to office work.
Most in-house receptionists at your office have specific working hours, after which phone calls from potential clients could go unanswered. When you work with an answering service, you can ensure that agents are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to assist your clients and convert their calls into contracts.
Ease in Capturing More Leads
When a client calls your law firm, there is the potential to do business with them. When a person calls your firm, and their call is sent to voicemail, they will likely call another firm until they talk to someone. This can cause you to lose business. Unfortunately, not all calls to the law firm are for potential business or clients.
Sometimes, a person could call the wrong number or call to ask minor questions. Answering service representatives can take and prioritize calls. This helps ensure that you know who you need to call back. For some callers, the agents can give feedback and move on. However, for important issues, the call center can write down the caller’s number so that the office staff can deal with them later. Most clients feel valued and at ease when they speak to someone on their first attempt to call your firm.
You can Easily Schedule Appointments.
Most clients who seek legal representation will not be comfortable sharing the details of their cases over the phone. Therefore, you must schedule a meeting with them when an attorney is available to speak with them.
When you hire an answering service, you can allow the answering service agents to access your work schedule. This allows them to schedule appointments at the right time and avoid overlaps.
Boosts your Firm's Online presence.
The role of an answering service continues after answering calls for your firm. Depending on your agreement with the service provider, the agents can manage your social media platforms and respond to messages from clients or others who need answers from your firm.
It can take a while to develop an online presence. Failure to respond promptly to questions and concerns makes it difficult to grow the platform. An answering service has only one role in your business: monitoring communications. Therefore, the answering service agents can quickly respond to messages from all communication platforms. This helps to boost visibility and expand connections for the firm.
Improve the Professional Outlook of your Business
When you deal with clients for a law firm, professionalism is key. A potential client will be more comfortable hiring you based on your first impression. The first impression is how you respond to their calls and answer questions.
Unlike in-house receptionists with mood swings and bad days that affect their tone and response, an answering service can be customized to give the desired outlook. A business that sounds professional will have more clients, which translates to profits.
Save Cost of Equipment for the Business
As your firm grows and the need for more staff increases, you will incur the cost of hiring staff and adding new equipment. Technology is advancing. Therefore, you will need to replace the old equipment and create a workstation for each in-house receptionist. The equipment cost can significantly strain your communication and customer service budgets.
In addition to helping your clients with their legal problems, each business wants to make a profit, which is reduced when you incur more costs. Partnering with an answering service cuts the cost of equipment since the service provider comes into your business with their equipment. If an advancement requires other equipment, the provider adjusts accordingly.
Connection with Remote Teams
Lawyers are only sometimes sitting at their desks. You will often find yourself speaking to witnesses and investigating case details in court. However, sometimes calls are extremely urgent, and the client wishes to speak to a specific attorney. When you partner with an answering service, they can connect calls from clients to remote teams.
This ensures that the law firm continues to offer its services even when the attorney is not around. The advanced technology that comes with hiring answering service providers allows for smooth remote communications.
Offers Bilingual Services
A high percentage of the population in the United States speaks Spanish. When a person calls and does not communicate properly with the receptionist, they will not proceed to work with you. Most people who call law firms are already vulnerable and scared of their pending arrests and charges. Therefore, they will need a place to feel safe. Most answering services have bilingual agents. Therefore, you will capture clients from all language sets.
Increased Productivity
Law firms are often very busy. You must organize paperwork for ongoing cases, organize files, and plan strategies to help your clients beat their charges. Additionally, there are days when you will have to spend the entire day meeting with clients or in court. If your office staff spends all their time answering calls, the most important office work will be left pending, which reduces productivity.
A law firm’s ability to handle existing cases brings more clients to the business. Therefore, partnering with an answering service for the business relieves the burden of handling the calls. This allows the staff to focus on other issues.
An Answering Service Can Give Feedback on Basic Questions from Potential Clients.
Some clients call your law firm to inquire about your policies or other issues unrelated to a criminal case. When your office staff takes time out of their schedule to answer these questions, they waste a lot of time. Partnering with answering services allows you to delegate communication about simple questions to the answering service agents.
Partnering with an Answering Service Helps Keep your Firm More Organized.
An answering service only has one function in your law firm: managing and maintaining communication with your clients. When you inform the service provider what you expect and give them a template of your expectations, they can organize your calls according to their importance. Additionally, they can formulate a way to handle different communications, which makes your firm more organized.
Improves the Quality of Services at Your Criminal Defense Law Firm
As a criminal defense lawyer, you are likely to have many tasks you need to handle from the moment you enter your office. You have no time to answer calls from litigation to paperwork, strategize on various cases, and attend court proceedings. You do not have to do everything on your own.
When you are out there handling the urgent matters of the law firm, you will have peace of mind knowing that someone is handling the incoming calls. Partnering with a criminal defense answering service to handle your phone calls makes it easier for you. You avoid losing potential customers when the answering service agents are on the phone around the clock.
When you delegate the communication duties to professional agents, you give your firm an upper hand and avoid the frustrations experienced when navigating relationships with existing and potential clients.
Reduction of Operation Costs
Answering calls at a law firm requires skills and experience. When a potential client calls, they want to feel hopeful about their situation. Most individuals who contact a law firm will have numerous questions about how you will help their case. For this reason, calls could last longer than expected. Since you cannot hang up on one client to move on to the next, you will require multiple office receptionists.
In addition to the cost of paying the office staff, you must dedicate time and other resources to train them on the appropriate way to handle the callers and get the clients to settle with your firm for legal guidance and representation. Unfortunately, the legal business is only sometimes on the good side. Therefore, you must pay the in-office staff for just sitting in the office, even when there are few calls.
This can significantly increase the cost of operations at your firm. When you hire an answering service to handle your calls, the service comes with already-trained agents to take your calls. If you have more specifications on how you would love to answer your callers, you can give a template to the answering service, which the agents can follow.
Most answering service providers will only bill you for the calls they answer. As a result, when there are no calls or business is slow, you will incur less expense than if you hired a receptionist. Other ways in which you can save money by working with an answering service include:
- Cuts on customer service costs. Dealing with clients is a sign of a law firm’s daily activity. You can downsize your customer service department when you hire an answering service. This is because answering service agents handle most aspects of customer service, including help desk support, scheduling appointments, and dealing with client emergencies. Unlike hiring in-house receptionists, where you will need to add more staff when your firm grows, the answering service team remains the same.
- Avoid overtime payments. The in-house receptionist has a working schedule and has days off. Sometimes, they will call in sick, and you must pay them for these days. If a receptionist works overtime or during the weekend, you will need to give them additional pay. You will save on these costs because the answering service always works. The only way your cost increases for an answering service is when more calls are answered.
Find an Legal Answering Service Provider Near Me
Arrests can happen at any time of the day. Many people understand that contacting a criminal defense attorney is the first step toward winning your case. For this reason, law firms are flooded with calls from current clients, potential clients, and referrals. When a person faces criminal charges, speaking with a legal representative puts them at ease, knowing that someone is handling their case.
Answering all the causes can be exhausting for the office staff and time-consuming. Additionally, the firm will need to put a lot of resources into ensuring that all the receptionists are conversant with the right way to answer professional calls. Fortunately, you do not have to deal with all the hassle.
If the calls at your law firm are overwhelming, partnering with a legal answering service is the best move to keep growing your firm. An answering service will have professional agents available twenty-four hours a day to handle your callers. The person-to-person interaction offered by the answering service to your client can set you aside from other law firms.
