Before partnering your personal injury practice with a legal answering service, it is essential to analyze all the aspects of the call center. Finding the right one for your practice can be challenging with the market flooded with call centers. You should understand your expectations and look for particular elements in a virtual receptionist.
Definition of a Law Firm Answering Service
Personal injury attorneys, primarily those working for big law firms, deal with many injury cases and new and sophisticated problems, including the shift in client expectations. Therefore, injury law practices are searching for techniques to enhance operations and customer service. Answering companies is the best option to resolve these issues. The call operators will take up the following duties in your business:
- Give feedback on common personal injury questions from clients.
- Take note of and answer incoming texts.
- Gather caller data.
- Schedule appointments.
- Jot down details about possible injury law business leads.
- Respond to electronic mail.
Injury law call operators can perform many functions in your business without being physically present on the premises. Legal call centers have all the necessary equipment, including telephones and communication facilities. A team of call operators with knowledge and experience in injury law cases is posted in these facilities to handle the calls. When existing or prospective plaintiffs call, they speak to live human call operators with knowledge of injury law practice; hence, the caller will not need to leave a voicemail.
A reputable injury attorney call center will be available to help your clients in their hour of need. When you are in a meeting, court, or at home resting, you will know that professionals handle all your callers' needs.
Finding the Appropriate Personal injury Law Call Center
Not every legal call center out there provides quality answering services. You need professionals to help generate personal injury leads and turn them into businesses. To find suitable call operators, you must consider the following elements:
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24/7 Personal Injury Service Availability
Your clients should call your practice at any time. You should not limit them on when to reach out because one can sustain personal injuries anytime, whether during the day or after hours. With this in mind, your injury attorneys should be available all year, even on holidays and weekends. Full-time availability means you will capture all personal injury leads and not lose clients to your competitors.
Today, most call centers have 24/7 accessibility, but the service comes at an additional cost. You must pay an additional fee for live call services past 9 pm or on weekends and holidays. Besides, a call agent can offer you live support until a particular time when they shift to an automated call answering system. Find an answering company offering all-hour call services at no extra fetch because their goal is to assist your practice in growing. If the call operators you are considering have additional fees for 24/7 accessibility, they are after profits and are not in business to genuinely increase your law firm.
Furthermore, when the call operators you want to hire cannot offer 24/7 service without charging an extra fee, you can find an after hour service to save the company money.
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Cost Effectiveness to the Personal Injury Practice
Managing an in-house call center requires multiple resources to purchase communication equipment and recruit personal injury call operators. An already established answering service has the staff and equipment. You only need to pay them for the calls they answer, reducing your expenses significantly.
The right personal injury call center will offer a free test, after which you can decide whether or not to hire. Some services charge flat rates, while others provide services based on calls answered and in-line vigor. If your call center choice has heavy traffic, they will tend to charge higher prices than their competitors in the market. Therefore, depending on your budget and the traffic, you decide the type of personal injury call center you want to enlist.
Also, you will find legal call centers with contrasting price categories based on the quotas being utilized. Monthly call capacity sanctions are more sensible and economical. Depending on what you want to spend on the services, how you plan to use the call agents, and the volume of calls, you should pick a quotation or pricing representing your injury law practice.
Regular call center billing consists of two forms of billing systems. The first billing is the pre-minute, where you pay per minute. You pay for a monthly minute package. And if you exhaust the package before the month ends, you can pay for dregs. When picking a call center, choose one with several offers depending on your call volume.
The other billing system is the per-call plan. Here, you pay for the number of calls the personal injury answering service answers, regardless of the call’s duration. Nevertheless, you must pay extra fetches for the additional messages and calls described in the contract as separate billable calls.
When you encounter virtual receptionists offering these two billable systems, you must pick the system that will profit your injury law firm more. The right call center should provide standard periodical statements on your monthly consumption to ascertain which billing structure best suits your injury law practice's needs.
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The Professionalism of the Call Operators
The treatment your clients receive in your absence is critical to the success of your injury law practice. The virtual receptionists you enlist must treat clients professionally and answer calls efficiently. Your callers are looking for empathy, politeness, and a professional who understands them to fight for their interests throughout and ensure they receive sufficient compensation.
If you want your call operators to sound like your injury attorneys, you want a legal call center that understands personal injury law and claims. You should explain to the operators how your practice runs, the client's options when seeking personal injury damages, and your law firm’s position in helping them obtain maximum reimbursement.
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Answering Service Confidentiality
People with personal injuries want their medical reports to remain confidential because the information is sensitive. Also, when they make payments through debit or credit cards, they want their card information to remain hidden. Your callers will be unsatisfied knowing their data or information is not secure and can be leaked anytime.
Therefore, when outsourcing an answering company or service, their privacy policy should be one of your primary considerations. It would help to have trustworthy call operators to keep the plaintiff's information confidential. A service that can do this understands the guidelines of personal injury practices. If clients suspect their data is not secure because you use virtual receptionists, they could withdraw their services and hire a more trustworthy injury attorney.
A secure and confidential call center complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Payment Card Industry (PCI). If you hire a legal call center that is non-compliant, your injury practice will be held liable for the infringements, and you could lose clients' trust and pay hefty court fines. Sometimes the court can even sentence you to jail for the crime.
So, prioritize the security the service offers for the plaintiffs’ data. If a call center is PCI compliant, they have completed the annual self-assessment and passed the quarterly security scan. These kinds of call operators will be helpful if your injury law practice accepts credit card payments and needs to secure the plaintiffs’ card information. A confidential and secure call center is paperless and turns off call recording when receiving payment information from a plaintiff or client.
Similarly, the choice of an answering firm should be HIPAA-compliant to ensure the private health information of your clients is well managed and secure. The call agents should not share patient health data through text messages, email, or voicemail. The calls and texts should be stored in an online portal that requires authentication. Ensure you sign a Business Associate Agreement with the legal call center you are considering, agreeing to disclose personal details actively.
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The Capacity of the Caller to Talk to a Live Operator
As an injury law firm, you need a compelling emergency call dispatching system to make it easy for the call operators to verify with your team of injury attorneys on the schedule. Your choice of a call operator should have a dispatch system available around the clock. With this system, your clients will appreciate that you acknowledge personal harm can occur anytime, thus being open full-time to address their needs. If the call center is not always available, outsourcing is not worth it.
Similarly, the emergency call dispatch system must be able to upload an authentic schedule to save legal practice time and eliminate the chances of doing a task twice. Further, the call service must be HIPAA compliant so they do not forget a patient’s health information on voicemail or messages.
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Review the Personal Injury Call Center’s Features Before Purchasing
It would help if you found a company offering your injury practice a free trial. It is essential to understand the operations of the center before hiring. Therefore, find answering services that extend free trials, and during the period, ensure to test the features of their services. Call centers provide other services on top of answering phone calls. You must acquaint yourself with these features and decide if your injury law practice needs them.
Also, you should conduct test calls during the trial period to understand the caller’s experience. With this experience, you can recognize a particular call center's complexity in answering calls. Even if the answering company has difficulties, if you are interested in hiring, you can iron out the glitches before going live.
Benefits of Finding the Right Call Center for Your Personal injury Practice
Law firms have been relying on call centers for a long time. Personal injury law requires you to spend much time with clients to understand their injuries and the party responsible. You want the plaintiff to focus on healing as you handle their case in court. Nevertheless, virtual receptionists will be beneficial when you cannot balance answering phone calls with handling the claim in court or with the liable party’s insurer. The benefits of partnering with the right call center are:
You Save Your Time and Energy for the Plaintiffs and their Injury Claims
Investing your time in the claimants and the facts of their injury claims will grow your practice. Call service for your legal practice will handle your customer service needs. They will free you and your team of personal injury attorneys to focus on investigating injury claims, negotiating with opposing parties, or representing you in court.
Virtual receptionists offer other services on top of answering phone calls. They do call filtering, direct clients, provide legal advice, schedule and reschedule meetings, and report calls. There is a lot of work to be done by your in-house staff, which could consume most of your time. Nevertheless, a call agency will free up your injury attorneys and enable them to focus on your main objective of the business: helping victims of personal injuries obtain compensation for their damages.
You Grow Your Client Base
Meeting the needs of every client is the objective of every personal injury practice. The best way to meet these expectations and conditions is to investigate the injury claim’s facts and fight for the plaintiff’s right to obtain compensation for damages. Virtual receptionists will address most of your customer service needs, giving you time to satisfy the client's needs and build your reputation and customer base.
Also, efficient communication brought about by the right call center will bring in more business by selling your practice.
Hire a Attorney Answering Agency for Your Injury Law Practice
The right and reputable call center will respond to calls, answer queries, identify personal injury leads, and schedule appointments like a conventional receptionist. Excellent call operators will ensure efficient communication and customer service, allowing your injury attorneys to address injury claims. Now that you know what to consider when finding the right call center, your law firm will adequately benefit from the service.
