How can the best answering service for law firms help your practice?
Statistics indicate that attorneys spend more than 50% of their time on administrative tasks like answering phones, invoicing, and recovering from interruptions due to ill-timed phone calls.
Being unavailable to answer calls could mean losing current or potential clients, which can dent your income and reputation in the highly competitive legal market. Hiring a full-time receptionist to field calls or take messages may not be viable when you have budget challenges.
Lawyer answering services can help your law firm streamline client calls, engage with them at your convenience, and save on hiring a full-time receptionist.
With its multi-level auto attendant, Community Phone's automated attorney answering service can streamline your calls and route them to the appropriate person or voicemail, ensuring your clients know you care.
Read on to learn more!
Top 5 Answering Services for Law Firms
Smaller law firms have a tough choice between hiring expensive answering services, upwards of $100/- a month, to answering calls themselves. The monthly cost of these services may considerably increase based on your specific needs.
Allowing a 3rd party to answer your client calls may not be a great idea when you are trying to grow your business, as the reps handle multiple customers simultaneously. They may not know how you interact with your clients and may not feel as passionate about your business as you do.
Learn more about how automated answering services for law firms can streamline your call handling and help you scale your business.
1. Community Phone
You can program the Community Phone automated answering service or custom dial menu to route calls to the appropriate person, answer frequently asked questions, or route the call to voicemail if you are busy or during off-business hours.
This multi-level auto attendant can be programmed to greet the caller and share the critical information you want your clients and prospects to know.
Program the answering service for attorneys to take action based on your business priorities. If your priority is customer acquisition, you can program the answering service to route potential client calls directly to you, even if you are busy, instead of routing them to a voicemail. The possibilities are endless!
Here are some law-firm features from Community Phone that can help you increase your billable time and reduce fee burn.
Law-firm Features from Community Phone
Call Routing
Streamline incoming calls to reach the right person or a voicemail depending on your business necessities, with the Community Phone call-routing feature. Here's how you can do it:
Simultaneous Ring
Never miss another client call with the simultaneous ring feature. You can program multiple phones in your business to ring simultaneously to ensure you or an available person can answer the client's call.
Ring a Second Number
You can program phones in your business to ring subsequently if the first line is busy or does not answer.
Voicemail-to-email
The voicemail-to-email feature allows you to access voicemails as audio files or transcripts in your email, giving you the freedom to respond to missed calls based on your convenience or the issue's priority.
Landline Texting
Send text messages from your business landline to your clients without sharing your cell phone number. 2-way messaging from Community Phone allows your clients to interact with you via texts when you are in court and cannot answer their call.
Call Forwarding
Have Community Phone forward your business calls to your cell phone when unavailable at your office to ensure you don't miss calls from clients or potentials.
Talk to your Community Phone account manager today to discuss call forwarding and other law firm features.
Spam Call Blocker
Save your time and bandwidth by blocking unwanted calls with Community Phone's spam call blocker services before your phone rings.
Number Choice
Your phone number says a lot about your business. Get your business a vanity number to help them remember your phone number, leading to more referrals for your business.
Get a local number to build trust in your local community and grow your client base. A toll-free number makes it easier for clients to reach you without fearing their mounting phone bills.
A vanity number makes it easy for customers to remember your phone number, leading to more referrals for your business.
Call Recording
Record calls when you have meaningful discussions with clients over the phone. This recording feature can help you revisit the discussions and note important points.
Backup Battery: Maintain Your Communication During Power Outages
Harness the power of the cloud and combine it with the reliability of cell towers so you'll never miss a call. The 12-hour backup battery keeps your phone working even during a power outage. In the worst-case scenario, if all the towers in the area are down, you'd still know who tried contacting you with Community Phone’s Voicemail-to-email feature.
Benefits of Choosing Community Phone
1. Unlimited nationwide calling: With Community Phone's unlimited nationwide calling, you can keep in touch with existing customers and win over new ones from all over the nation without worrying about astronomical phone bills.
2. Number Porting: Community Phone hand holds you until your number has been ported successfully. A dedicated support rep will handle your number porting, and you can schedule calls with reps on their calendars to know the status of your request.
Community Phone has a quick porting process that will port your number in 3-5 business days without disrupting your service.
- Customer-friendly cancellation policies: Some service providers make it impossible to cancel their service once you have signed up with them, as you can see from customer reviews on review sites like Trustpilot.
If, after the 14-day trial, you think Community Phone is not for you, you can cancel your services hassle-free.
Other Answering Services
2. Vonage
Vonage is meant for small to medium-sized law firms and offers features like law firm answering services, tracking call recording, and logging.
Unhelpful customer support and the reliability of the phone lines seem to be the most considerable challenges customers have faced with Vonage.
Vonage Pricing
Vonage with multi-level auto-attendant starts at $29.99/month/line and includes the desktop and mobile apps.
3. Ooma
This cloud-based software platform provides VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone services for small and enterprise companies. It also provides more sophisticated unified communication solutions integrating voice, business software applications, video, messaging, and even call center operations.
But, as Ooma customers complain on review sites, the service is very patchy unless you opt for high internet speed, and hidden charges and unhelpful customer service are the critical challenges with Ooma VoIP service.
Ooma Pricing
Ooma Office Plan is $19.95 per month
Ooma Office Pro Plan is $24.95 per month
4. 8x8
A VoIP solution with business texting and video conferencing can help small to medium-sized law firms.
Customer reviews indicate challenges with number porting, unhelpful customer support, and businesses having a tough time canceling their service with 8x8.
8x8 pricing
The basic communication package for small businesses costs $15/per user /per month.
5. Nextiva
Nextiva is a business communications company that provides VoIP-based phone service for law offices. They feature services such as an auto attendant, business phone service, business email, video conferencing, and more.
Customer reviews indicate complex cancelation policies, with customers struggling to cancel their Nextiva service. Several customers have also complained of huge losses because of continuous call drops and unhelpful customer support on review sites.
Nextiva Pricing
Plans start at $18.95/month/user when paid annually.
FAQs
How much is an answering service for a business?
An answering service for a business may cost upwards of $100 monthly, which may be too expensive for a small law firm trying to scale its business.
Community Phone offers an automated answering service as part of their business landline service that you can program per your business needs. Contact Community Phone at 855-768-2055 to know more and get your custom quote.
Are answering services worth it?
Answering services may seem worth it from the human touch perspective, but they may not suit all businesses. The 3rd party may not mirror your knowledge, passion, and commitment to treating your clients the same way you do.
Instead of entrusting your clients and brand reputation to a 3rd party, check the Community Phone automated answering service. You can program this feature to greet your customers, route your calls, share important information, and much more.
Talk to Community Phone's business specialists at 855-768-2055 to know more.
What is the purpose of an answering Service?
An answering service is like your virtual receptionist who takes care of your calls when you are busy. A 3rd party may not connect with your business the way you do and have the same passion, which can prove detrimental if you are trying to grow your business.
The best option would be to program an auto attendant as per your business needs to enhance your business reputation among your clientele and bring in more referrals.
Conclusion
Small law firms must focus on customer acquisition and retention and spend more time on their practice. Intelligent automation can help take a huge load off your law firm's administrative tasks.
Community Phone is the best business service provider for law firms in the U.S. With their automated answering service, you can let them take care of your calls when you are busy with your clients.
Talk to Community Phone's business specialist to sign up today!