Your law firm has invested in marketing and you have more clients and leads than you can adequately manage. Calls are pouring in, and while you’d like to answer and nurture everyone interested in your services, there’s just no time. You consider hiring an employee to help take care of calls, but the expenses involved in hiring makes doing so difficult.

Does the above hypothetical situation sound like your reality? If it does, you’re not alone.

The solution to giving your clients the attention they deserve and continuing to scale gracefully is a call answering service.

Many law firms have turned to call answering services to provide a high-quality experience for their clients without imposing further strain on their internal team. The purpose of this post is to help you assess why you might need an external team to help manage your calls.

Here are five signs your law firm needs a call answering service.

1. Your Internal Team is Spread Too Thin

When calls are pouring in and there’s no dedicated person to manage them, getting each prospective client the information they need can become a haphazard team effort. That start-up mentality of wearing multiple hats works well when bootstrapping a new legal practice, but how does that mentality scale?

Unfortunately, not well.

If you’re serious about growing your law firm, each member of your team needs to be able to concentrate on their own area of expertise.

If you find your team racing to help cover phone lines and later stressing out because they don’t have time to complete their real work, you need a call answering service.

2. You’re Receiving Negative Feedback

In business, reputation is everything. For legal practices, that goes double.

Giving prospective customers sub-par service when they initiate contact for the first time can lead to negative feedback. Even recurring customers can be put off by a phone call that seems to be brushing them off.

Best-case-scenario is negative feedback comes to you directly. Worst case scenario is the feedback will be posted on review sites like Google and Yelp.

Almost 90% of people who look at reviews online are swayed by a business’s ratings. Furthermore, over 60% of prospective employees who use Glassdoor won’t apply for jobs at companies with low reviews.

Law firms are dealing with clients going through difficult times in their life. When people shop for a firm to represent them, they want to make sure they’re going to be well taken care of.

Bad feedback can hurt the quality of your team and the amount of business you get. A call answering service can protect your reputation.

3. You Feel like You Could Be Losing Business

Let’s face it, not everyone needs a lawyer during the work week between the regular business hours of nine to five. The law profession and people’s demand for legal services are unpredictable. Because of that, you may occasionally get a lead at an odd time. This could be after hours, weekends, or holidays.

If someone calls your office during one of these times, and nobody is there to answer, odds are your lead will move onto the next firm that has somebody available.

If you’re getting calls outside of business hours and feel you could be losing valuable business, a call answering service can help.

4. Client Turnover Is Getting High

If you’re getting bogged down trying to keep up with new leads, you may not be doing as well as you think. Every minute spent doing something is a minute lost that could be spent concentrating on something else. It’s the basic idea of opportunity cost.

The time you spend keeping up with new clients could mean time lost helping existing ones. When an existing client feels they’re not getting the attention they need, they will move on.

While it may seem like losing one client and replacing them with another is an even exchange, it’s not. There are a lot of costs associated with onboarding new people. To recuperate those costs, it’s vital that they stay on as a client for a good amount of time.

A call answering service can give your team the time they need to focus on improving business operations.

5. Productivity Isn’t Where It Could Be

The simple sound of a ringing phone is a distraction that could cost your employees their productivity.

An environment where your legal team can focus on their work with minimal interruptions is critical. It can help projects move to completion faster, freeing up room in case-loads and enabling your firm to drive more revenue.

Handing over your phone distractions to a call center ensures that only the most important calls draw you and your team’s attention away from the task at hand.

Make the Move to a Legal Call Answering Service

As your legal practice grows, the demands of your client base will also grow. Whether you’re dealing with new or existing clients, they require your full attention. Your ability to give them that attention can mean a massive difference in your firm’s success.

Alert Communications is an industry-leading, U.S.-based call center that helps manage law firms’ incoming calls and so much more. We are the largest and most awarded 24/7/365 legal call center in the country, and we want to be part of your team.

If you want to make your legal practice a 24/7 operation without any additional effort required by you, contact us today!

We can help you convert your leads, keep existing clients happy and give you the time you need to concentrate on growing your firm.

For more general information on how a call center can help your practice, read more on our blog.