Those of you with personal injury law firms know what it’s like trying to keep up with phone calls and voicemails. When you first started your firm, it was perhaps easier for a personal receptionist to take calls from your earliest clients. Now that you’ve grown, you’re likely overburdening your staff trying to keep up with calls. Most of those calls are no doubt people wanting answers to legal questions or calling to make appointments.

A call center is a major solution, though what should you expect if you outsource to one? You’ll find some standout benefits for personal injury firms like yours.

Take a look at five specific things to look for and how a call center improves legal intake services.

1. Taking an Influx of Calls

The best thing about outsourcing to a call center is you don’t have to perform your own legal intake. Your personal injury firm is likely crowded enough with your team of lawyers. Having a call center in your office could usurp significant space, especially when you need multiple phone agents to handle your online calendar via email, text, or phone.

Your law firm is probably at a level now where you’re receiving thousands of calls daily. An outsourced call center is in another location, yet they’ll efficiently take calls and pass on messages to your legal team.

For personal injury, it’s critical to have a phone center able to relay messages immediately to your office and lawyers. Prospective clients are usually those dealing with various types of accidents and often call on their mobile devices for fast legal help. Many of them expect a personal injury lawyer to come to the site of the accident to gather evidence.

You can expect quick response from the right call center. When you rely on a legal call center to do this, it allows more time for you and your lawyers to focus on other tasks.

2. Taking Calls After-Hours

As you vet call centers, you’ll want to discover whether they provide after-hours messaging, a major component of law firm communication. Personal injuries don’t just happen in the daytime. Statistics show many car accidents happen in the middle of the night, making it more difficult for a potential client to contact a personal injury lawyer.

This is why you need to have an after-hours answering service to help relay messages beyond your law firm. A quality call center should offer this feature and have the capability to send those messages directly to your voicemail system.

You and your team of lawyers should have access to these messages at home as well if you work on call. When someone has a serious accident in the middle of the night, you’ll gain faster access to a potential client before a competitor does.

Of course, this messaging system can work during the day when you’re out of the office. The call center sends you a message to your mobile device if you’re out working with another client or on a break.

Keep in mind this also applies to taking messages from clients on weekends, holidays, and while you’re on vacation.

3. Legal Intake

With the concept of legal intake, your call center qualifies leads (among other duties) to bring a form of customer service.

For qualifying leads, it involves call agents booking potential clients based on whether their case fits your legal niche. Lead qualification needs central focus to determine whether you can logically work with a client. The call team has insight into the realities of the accident, how serious the injury is, and whether you have the right expertise to handle the case.

Your call center should always have a team capable of determining these things. Imagine how much time this is going to save you and your team if you hardly have a minute to take quality calls from new prospects. Call agents have the time to take this slowly and give quality customer service an injured caller deserves.

Also know legal intake goes beyond just lead qualification. It also involves answering FAQ’s about your personal injury services. Personal injuries are going to involve a lot of potential legal questions callers need answered as quickly as possible.

One question out of many may involve what the expectations are for meeting with your legal team.

4. Taking Appointments

Any receptionists you still employ may feel beleaguered lately trying to keep up with client appointments.

Whether taking appointments for potentially new clients, or existing ones, employing only one or two receptionists to handle this eventually leads to burnout.

The last thing you want is missed appointments when you only have one chance to make a good impression. With an organized call center knowing everything about your law firm, they’ll have expertise and the latest technologies to make appointment taking easier. You’ll receive the appointment information without delays.

5. Communication Management

To fully communicate with your clients, it requires offering more comprehensive call services. Certainly 24/7 operation is essential, though this should include client support to help these individuals obtain basic legal information.

It should also include 24/7 live web chat capabilities so those perusing your website receive fast personal injury information when you and your legal team are away.

Responding to email queries needs to become another major feature of your call center. Email messaging is no doubt still a part of your communication system. A fast reply is very important here to show you care about your clients, especially if you don’t have time to answer them all.

Help with expanding your marketing is also often available. Legal call centers do this by setting up different phone numbers for direct mail purposes. These different numbers help you know which campaigns are most effective. In turn, this saves you from having to spend extra money on print advertising or billboards.

These features should make up a full-fledged legal call center for today’s demands.

Visit us at Westpark Communications where we offer these features and more with our multi-industry call center.