Posts Tagged ‘virtual receptionist’

High Praises to Our Legal Receptionists

Friday, May 7th, 2010

This past weekend I attended a tradeshow promoting Alert Communications’ attorney answering services. Based on the traffic at our booth, I’d say it was very successful. Many well-qualified candidates interested in using our services stopped by to ask questions and learn more. But since I would like some sales figures to confirm our success, I won’t make a final decision until we’ve done some follow up, and I see those final numbers in a few weeks or a month.

As I said, we had a lot of traffic. The people were very nice and had a lot of great questions to ask us. Are you available 24/7? Do your agents speak Spanish?  Can you schedule appointments for me, and how do you do it? What makes your service different from other call centers/answering services?

All the visitors spent a lot of time explaining their situation and gave us a chance to tell them how our lawyer answering services could truly help them. But guess what the most popular question was — How much is it?

That same question was asked in a variety of ways. I quoted rates, explained our services are month to month and did my best to help them see our value. I made a point of explaining that our attorney answering services are designed to help them capture new clients they might otherwise lose. And I pointed out that  additional business would pay for the cost of our services. I was doing a good job, but not nearly as good a job as my existing clients did for me.

It was great! THEY were great! Many of our clients stopped by our booth to say hello and tell us what a great job we do. On several occasions, I had 5-10 people at my booth when an Alert client stopped by to sing our praises. This was live, word-of-mouth advertising that was better than anything I could possibly say to prospective clients.

Our current clients explained how great our staff is, how friendly they are, how our account managers help them and — best of all — how they had no idea how many calls they were missing until they started using our services. They went on to say their practices were growing because they were no longer missing those calls. If only my cell phone shot video, I would have some great video testimonials for our Web site!

While there are any number of effective online, electronic and printed ways to advertise in today’s business world, I have to admit there’s still nothing that beats the impact of word-of-mouth advertising.

If you don’t know what your clients are saying about you, it’s time to go find out.

Frances Starr, Director of Sales & Marketing for Alert Communications.  Alert Communications is a 24/7bilingual inbound call center, specializing in professional attorney answering, virtual receptionist, Spanish answering and business answering solutions.

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Posted in Attorney Answering Services, Community Service | No Comments »

Cost Benefits of Using Specialized Lawyers Answering Services

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

 

Sometimes it’s difficult to make the decision to choose a specialized service over a general service, especially when your first thought is whether or not it’s cost effective. If you’re an attorney, you may wonder about the differences between a general answering service and one that specializes in offering lawyer answering services. Consider this.

If you’re a bankruptcy attorney, hiring a company that specializes in lawyer answering services can eliminate you handling client creditor calls. By providing a client list to the company, a receptionist can verify representation and notify you of the call details via e-mail. With a general answering service you might just get a message with a call-back number.

A personal injury practice also can benefit in both time and money with specialized lawyer answering services. The receptionist can take potential-client calls, complete an intake form and deliver it to you in csv format to import to your case management software. Some lawyer answering services can immediately connect the caller to you as well. This can reduce the time your practice spends on the phone with an unqualified caller.

If you choose the right lawyer answering service as a criminal defense attorney, you could retain a client on the first call. For instance, a receptionist can immediately connect potential traffic-violation clients to you and remain on the line to transcribe the conversation. You receive an e-mail from the receptionist that documents fees, credit card information and pertinent case facts. You’ve retained the client on the first call and have a detailed transcript of your conversation.

Immigration attorneys can benefit from a specialized lawyer answering service where potential clients are taken care of on the first call, giving them no reason to continue to shop for legal services. In this type of practice you want to be sure the lawyer answering service offers multi-lingual support as well as intake processing and appointment scheduling. 

When you shop around for lawyer answering services here are a few questions you should ask:

  • Do they provide 24/7 service?
  • Do they offer bilingual or multilingual services?
  • Can they provide customer referrals?
  • Do they have specialized training?

 

A specialized lawyer answering service will cost a bit more, but it’s a smart investment in your practice. The applications mentioned above are designed to either reduce your work load or help you capture potential new clients. Paying a bit more so your client calls are handled professionally and successfully the first time the phone rings is definitely worth a lot more.

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A Customer Service Paradox-Can a virtual receptionist help you be the exception?

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Here’s a paradox for you. Customers want more from the people they do business with, but they’ve come to expect less than they did before. How can that be? Think about it. When you go to the doctor, you want to see him immediately, but you expect you’ll have to wait because experience shows that’s usually the case. So you never schedule anything too closely around a doctor’s appointment.

I even got a survey recently from an orthopedist’s office I visited, and one of the questions was “How long did you have to wait to see the doctor?”  Notice the question wasn’t “Did you have to wait to see the doctor?” Waiting was assumed, even by the survey writers.

So where does your business fit into this paradox? Are you contributing to the expectation that your customers will get less even though they’d like more? Or are you the exception?

Are your customers disappointed when they call your office during the day or after hours? Maybe they expected to get an answering machine but were hoping they might reach a real person. Maybe you should give them more than they expect.

The whole idea behind using virtual receptionists and business answering services is to provide customers with an immediate response. Answering-service clients want their customers to speak with a “real” person, 24/7, who can either patch them through directly to someone or immediately get a message to the client. Shouldn’t that be something you want for your customers, too?

If your business is already the exception to this want-more/expect-less paradox, then good for you. If your answer is “not so much,” then I encourage you to think about what you can do to bring an end to it. If your customers are reaching an answering machine instead of a virtual receptionist during office hours or a business answering service after hours, maybe it’s time to reconsider. Professional answering and/or virtual receptionist services can help you be the exception to the paradox.

Frances Starr, Director of Sales & Marketing for Alert Communications.  Alert Communications is a 24/7bilingual inbound call center, specializing in professional attorney answering, virtual receptionist, Spanish answering and business answering solutions.

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Posted in Live Receptionist Service | 1 Comment »

Live Receptionist vs. Voicemail?

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Just for kicks, go to Google and type in “how to reach a live person.” One of the top listings shows “Phone numbers, shortcuts and customer service tips” — on a site called GetHuman.com. It made me smile.

A live receptionist is as “human” as you can get.  If you can’t afford an onsite receptionist then try a virtual receptionist service.  Many offer their services in Spanish as well as English.

We know what so many companies are finding out — people want to talk to people, not machines. And it helps if they speak the same language. When your customers call, they want a live person to answer the phone and talk with them.  There is definately value in human interaction and a personal touch.  It doesn’t matter whether their handling emergency calls or covering your office while you’re out to lunch, live receptionists care about your customers as much as you do, and are dedicated to providing a professional, courteous service when you’re not there.

A machine never goes out of its way to calm someone down, get the right information or can’t determine just how urgent a call is. A live person, given the right training, can.  A machine may very well make an upset customer irate or overwhelmed. A live person, given the right training, won’t.

If you want to get your company’s name off the GetHuman.com list — or ensure your business never makes the list — try a virtual receptionist service. You can “get human” in no time.

Frances Starr, Director of Sales & Marketing for Alert Communications.  Alert Communications is a 24/7bilingual inbound call center, specializing in professional attorney answering, virtual receptionist, Spanish answering and business answering solutions.

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Posted in Live Receptionist Service, Small Business Tip | 1 Comment »

Well Trained Answering Service Agents Are a Must

Friday, February 26th, 2010

If ever I’ve been tempted to handle a phone call in a less than professional manner (yes this has happened), I think about virtual receptionists, answering service agents and call-center staff. They don’t have the luxury of letting customers even think they might be gritting their teeth. Fortunately, there’s training available that helps these folks create win-win situations out of the most emotional calls.

The first step is to be able to split yourself into two. (Just kidding, but it can help.) One “you” needs to step back and look at the call from outside all the emotions. The other “you” has to decide how to diffuse the situation. At this point, an agent may benefit from visualizing Robert Plutchik’s flower-petal model of emotions to determine exactly what the customer is feeling. Once he knows that, he knows how to manage the call by asking the right questions and letting the customer know he understands his distress and will help resolve the problem.

Through it all, agents need to remind themselves to hold onto their composure. If they lose that, they lose — period. Plus, they must remember they ARE their customers’ business as far as that caller is concerned. Every caller is important, and should be treated courteously and professionally, no matter the emotions involved. With the right protocol many customer service issues can be handled by the call center.  However, when a call is escalated directly to their client, the call center agent should know how to document a caller’s emotional state so their client can quickly and efficiently handle the situation.

While agents are busy splitting themselves into two, they need to remain flexible throughout it all. Every situation is different, and what worked well with one caller may not help the least with another. It’s important to hit just the right tone with callers. Not aggressive, but assertive enough to take control of the call. And definitely not passive. It’s best to engage the caller, identify and acknowledge their feelings and assure them that they will be helped, while gathering the necessary information in order to do so.

The next time you’re tempted to slam the receiver down or hit “End” on your cell phone, take a deep breath and figure out how to turn the call around. I promise to try and do that the next time I’m “discussing” my prescription coverage with my insurance provider.

Frances Starr, Director of Sales & Marketing for Alert Communications.  Alert Communications is a 24/7 bilingual inbound call center, specializing in professional attorney answering, virtual receptionist, Spanish and business answering solutions.

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Posted in Attorney Answering Services, Customer Service Experience, Live Receptionist Service | 1 Comment »

6 Ways to Save a Few Dollars With Your Answering Service

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

In today’s economy, we’re all looking for ways to save a few dollars, even on the things we know are absolutely necessary. So if you’re looking for ways to reduce your monthly virtual receptionist/live answering service charges, you might want to try to reduce the number of minutes you’re using. Whether you’re already an Alert Communications customer or are currently with another company, think about doing some of the following:

  1. Instead of having your calls go to the answering service throughout the work day, forward your calls only after hours and on the weekends. This reduces the number of overall minutes used.
  2. In the same vein, forward calls for portions of the day instead of all 24 hours. If you or someone else in the office can answer the phone for a few hours in the morning or afternoon, take advantage of that time to save on minutes usage.
  3. Use a voice-mail screen to help prevent non-emergency calls going through to your virtual receptionist.
  4. See if your service can notify you about calls using text messaging/e-mail instead of a more expensive phone call.
  5. Call your customers back instead of having calls patched through. The less time spent using out-dialed resources, the fewer minutes accrued.
  6. Refine your call-protocol guidelines so you have just a one-number or one-person contact. More isn’t necessarily better when you have to pay in minutes for each one.

If you’d love to save a little money each month, try implementing some of these cost-saving ideas with your virtual receptionist/live answering service provider. If it doesnt feel like money is growing in your backyard, at least you may end up with a few extra coins in your pocket.

Frances Starr, Director of Sales & Marketing for Alert Communications.  Alert Communications is a 24/7bilingual inbound call center, specializing in professional attorney answering, virtual receptionist, Spanish answering and business answering solutions.

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Posted in Small Business Tip | 1 Comment »