If you run a solicitors’ firm, you must maintain a stellar level of communication with your clients and potential clients.
Things aren’t always that easy, though.
There are lots of things happening in a solicitors’ office that can hold you back from answering the phone. You could be with a client, dealing with an important issue or Reviewing contracts.
Maybe you’re already on the phone when someone else tries to call.
If this sounds familiar, a law firm answering service could be the solution to your problems.
It’s a service of skilled and experienced call handlers who answer calls for your business when you’re unable to. But if you think call answering services are just about managing phone calls, you’d be wrong.Â
- Boost the answer rates of small teams
Your solicitors’ firm might not be the biggest, but that doesn’t mean you don’t receive just as many important calls.
If anything, having a smaller firm can make it harder to manage inbound calls.
And this can quickly become a problem that hits the bottom line – and hits it hard.
Missing just one phone call costs a business £1,200 on average, according to BT Business.
A telephone answering service lifts some of the call load from your team’s shoulders, allowing them to focus on their work, while the answering service collects and relays all the important info or transfers the call to the right person.
This will instantly boost the answer times and answer rates of your calls, leading to more effective communication and relationships with your clients.
This works especially well during busy periods, when you may receive more calls than usual, helping you pick up potential clients you’d have otherwise lost.
- Professionalise your call answering
A solicitor’s office is expected to carry a certain level of professionalism.
If clients reach out to you on the phone, your chance to make a good first impression relies solely on your voice and tone, or the voice and tone of your staff.
Tone of voice accounts for 38% of all human communication, according to Masterclass.
When you’re busy it’s not always easy to maintain a professional tone when you answer the phone and there’s a bigger chance you’ll sound harried or annoyed that you’ve had to stop what you’re doing.
For the customer, this doesn’t create a lot of confidence.
At best it makes your firm sound chaotic and not a place you’d trust important legal work. At worst, you could insult the customer and immediately lose the business.
Plus – customers are likely to share poor experiences with other people so you’ll have compounded losses from the other people who will be put off your business by the bad review.
With a telephone answering service, because your receptionists are solely focused on answering the phone, they’ll be able to retain a clear, professional voice and create the right impression on every caller, every time.
- Improve your reputation
If you’ve been suffering a slew of negative reviews because of your inability to answer calls effectively, now is the time to do something about it.
Almost 100% of potential customers today look at a business’s reviews before making a decision, according to a survey by PowerReviews.
By using a telephone answering service, you could boost your call answering rates and dramatically cut the number of negative reviews you receive due to poor communication and call answering.
Once you’ve turned your review fortunes around, with your reputation restored, you may even receive more business as a result.
- Poor call management and transferring
Technology can be a pain and not everyone takes to it like a duck to water.
This is especially true for some phone systems, which can be confusing and complicated if you’re not experienced in using them.
It’s even tougher now with remote working meaning employees aren’t always in the same office when they need to forward calls to someone else.
If employees don’t know how to use your phones, you’ll run the risk of callers being cut off, calls going to the wrong people, and customers getting stuck in a loop without ever getting what they need.
With a telephone answering service, you won’t have these issues.
All call handlers are highly skilled and trained in using telephone systems, so you can be sure a caller will reach the right person when being transferred without fail.
- Answer important calls at unusual hours
Not everyone works on a standard 9-5 schedule and someone may need to contact your firm at unusual hours.
If your solicitors’ office isn’t open, the only option they have is to leave a voicemail in the hopes you’ll get back to them when you open again.
But telephone answering services allow your firm to accept calls outside of your usual opening hours, so you can serve more clients whenever they choose to contact you.
In a world of instant gratification, being available to your customers whenever you need them can be a huge factor in their choice of whether or not to work with you.
90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as essential or very important, according to HubSpot.
Being more reachable than the competition will help you maintain a constant and reliable presence to your clients and any prospective clients who happen to call during these times.
Plus, your telephone answering service agent will be able to relay or collect important information when you’re not available, limiting the chance of information being lost or forgotten due to your offices being closed.
- Avoid nuisance and scam calls
Most people suffer from nuisance and scam calls occasionally. But successful, professional firms are often targeted by scammers unrelentingly.
This can become a real distraction when it happens several times a week or every day.
In 2021, scam calls and nuisance calls made by robots accounted for 60% of all phone calls, according to TrueCaller.
You can ask your telephone provider to put blocks on your line, to try and stop calls like this coming through, but scammers generally find a way around them.
So why not save yourself the headache and let a telephone answering service handle nuisance calls for you?
Your call handler will screen all calls that are trying to come through to your business, ensuring only serious calls reach your office.
If you’re worried your solicitors’ firm isn’t fulfilling as many potential client queries as it could be, consider outsourcing your calls to professional call handlers that’ll work on your behalf to give your clients a service you can be proud of.
