Off the Hook: When Phone Calls Become Nightmares
You have a thriving practice. Almost too thriving. The phone is constantly ringing. Clients say that you are not responding to calls, but they often do not leave a message. Your team is overwhelmed. Is there some way to help deal with the incessant and time-consuming phone communication?
Outsourcing
If you do not have a dedicated receptionist and you or your legal support team are struggling to handle calls it may be time to consider hiring a virtual receptionist. There are many virtual receptionist services with a focus on helping law firms. Decide if you need a 24/7 service, additional language support, integrations with your calendar and practice management systems, and pre-screening for potential clients. Virtual receptionist services can screen callers, book appointments, gather new client information, and more. They can also take payments, call clients back and provide other services. Some have apps, some can respond to Facebook messages and chat bots, and they can be far more cost-effective than hiring a new employee. They won’t call in sick, don’t have bad days, and always answer the phones with courtesy and professionalism. Learn more about working with virtual services here.
Consider the Options
If your firm has only two communications pathways for clients – phone and email – you may consider supplying more options. It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that adding more ways to communicate will help with the onslaught, but if some of those are passive and do not rely on you to be actively responding then it might help. Telephone calls are disruptive, especially when they are unscheduled. Taking a call inevitably means you must shift gears to answer it and then try to get back to what you were doing. One way to try to reduce unscheduled calls it to offer an option for clients to schedule time with you, like an automated calendaring tool like Calendly, Accuity, or a tool built into your practice management application. Email is another tool that is treated as if it is immediate. Email is easy to miss, sometimes hard to respond quickly (and do you really want to set that expectation anyway?) and must be properly stored and shared. While you and your team are no doubt adept at managing email, if your clients had alternate ways to communicate could it help?
Client Portals
A client portal is like the popular medical app, MyChart. Your clients can view documents, upload documents, send you messages, view their upcoming appointments, and more. Many, if not most, of the cloud-based practice management applications include a client portal. Clients can also pay bills, answer questionnaires, view assignments (yes, your client is often a significant contributor to the success of their own case!) and has many other features. The best part of a client portal is that it supplies immediate gratification to your client, who can self-help at any time of the day or night.
Texting
Most lawyers cringe at the thought of texting with clients. But handled with the right tools and the right protocols, text messaging can be a useful communication tool with clients. You can send reminders about due dates, outstanding items, and other quick missives. What you want to make sure that you do is not hand out your personal cell phone or your teams personal cell phone numbers, but rather incorporate the messaging into systems that help with management of the record and add some automation to the mix. For instance, many of the automated calendaring tools will send text reminders about upcoming meetings and some of the business text services will send auto-replies outside of business hours, scheduled texts, etc. You may already have a business texting option, through your VOIP system or your practice management application. Or you can explore services like HeyMarket or TextMyMainNumber so that clients can text your business line.
ChatBots
Chatbots, either pre-programmed to ask and answer specific questions or those that employ a live person (which could be your virtual receptionist), are becoming increasingly popular with law firms. Consumers want immediate responses and are happy to engage with a chatbot, versus having to sit on hold or wade through phone menus. This might be a distant option for many law firms right now, but there are lots of ways to leverage this technology.
Establish How You Will Communicate
Whether you add and implement a few new communication tools or not, you need to work with your clients to establish preferences for communication and spell out expectations. If you do not respond outside of business hours be clear about that, or if you have a 24/7 answering service tell them calls will be answered and you will return their calls as soon as possible. Establish ground rules at the beginning of representation. You will want to find a way to be flexible and firm. Adding some “self-help” tools like client portals will go a long way to be client centric, while getting you out of the business of spending all your time responding to calls. It is also helpful to proactively communicate. You can have a series of emails or texts that you cue up to remind clients of deadlines, due dates, court dates, etc. Your monthly bill can include a section on next steps. If your engagement agreement is 14 pages of dos, don’ts, whereas and therefore consider cutting it down to more plain language and don’t be afraid to use diagrams and pictures. A timeline to help a client understand a 45-day real estate contract workflow, probate, or divorce can help them understand next steps and keep them from getting anxious – and calling you. You can easily create a timeline in a tool like MS PowerPoint, then right click and save as an image and drop it into a Word document – no graphic designer necessary!
Conclusion
Clients can be demanding. Phone calls are disruptive. Consider ways to bring in help with third-party tools, virtual services, self-help portals, and alternative communication means to help reduce the reliance on the telephone. While phone calls certainly have their place, you can reduce the immediate demands a phone call puts on you and your team by adopting new tools and proving communication guidelines up front.