A survey of AnswerConnect’s legal customers found that 48.44% of calls to legal practices occurred after business hours (9am to 5pm).
Deploying a virtual receptionist is an important step in avoiding missed calls and getting more leads.
However, to ensure that the rollout process goes smoothly, all departments within the company need to be consulted.
Don’t have a team? that’s ok. Whether you’re a small team (or just an entrepreneur), you’ll find plenty of tips to help you prepare for your virtual receptionist service.
This article covers several useful areas such as:
- Preparing the department for virtual reception services
- Understand how, when and where to call
- Integrate your virtual receptionist with your current tools
- Adding additional features to get the most out of the service
- How to choose a virtual reception service
But first, we need to understand what a virtual receptionist service is and how it works.
What is Virtual Reception Service?
A virtual receptionist service is a B2B service where a third party provides virtual support to customers via phone, live chat, or email. A virtual receptionist service acts as an “extension of legal practice” to answer calls and messages. It then relays messages or forwards calls directly to people within the legal practice.
to ensure your legalctice is available 24 hours a day and these services require a large number of personnel. The virtual receptionist is based out of the office and often works in her office each home.
1. Involve key stakeholders
As with any decision, the legal practice must involve the right people. Education and transparency are key to a seamless transition.
So who should be involved in the discussion? Start with the heads of each department, including .
- sale
- marketing
- client service
- that
But it is not enough to inform all these people of the coming transition. The more involved they are in the process, the less likely they are to encounter backlash or confusion later on.
So what do you need to discuss with your team?Besides why (to eliminate missed calls, generate more leads, and increase customer satisfaction), you should also look at: how, when and where. and it is…
2. Understand your telephony system
This also helps in setting up and optimizing the transfer process. Call forwarding is an important part of our service. Receptionists can pick up messages and pass them on to their team at any time, but they can also forward calls to specific colleagues during business hours.
“Call forwarding” covers several sub-services such as call forwarding, live relay, call forwarding, and call forwarding.
- call transfer – A set of rules implemented by the answering service to ensure calls are routed to specific members of the team.
- call routing – A form of call transfer with multiple options for transferring calls to different departments and specific members of teams.
- call forwarding – An automated process in which calls are automatically redirected to another number at specific times.
- live relay – Ability for a virtual receptionist to make up to 5 calls to different people in the team to contact someone.
These different transfer rules affect how calls are handled and are based on several factors, including call escalation rules and legal requirements.
Check out our complete guide on what each of these terms mean and find the best one for your legal practice here.
3. Consider consolidation
Perhaps you already use the integration in your day-to-day legal practice and are unaware of it. How many and how much of them you use depends on the size of your company and the different software you use to manage your legal practice.
Mostly, though, we’re talking about the tools a virtual receptionist needs to integrate in order to act as an extension of their legal practice.
The following may not apply to you, but they are worth learning about anyway.
- Sales – CRM and booking software
- Marketing – PPC and organic and paid social channels.
- IT – everything from email systems to security systems.
The most important of these is your sales. Sales teams and virtual receptionists should work seamlessly together, and receptionists should send the latest leads directly to the sales team.that your appointment schedulingMost virtual reception services offer their own scheduling tools, but they also integrate with popular calendars such as Calendly, Google Calendar, and Microsoft 365.
Of course, the most important integration for sales is the CRM integration. Make sure your virtual receptionist service is integrated with your preferred CRM and of course discuss it with your sales team.
Even after reaching agreement with the sales team, it’s worth getting a complete picture of your entire software infrastructure. Consider how each aspect of your system will be impacted by the introduction of a third party. Ultimately, we want our virtual receptionist to feel like an extension of our team. This means providing seamless access across systems.
4. Set up live chat on your website
The virtual reception service can handle more than just a phone line.
Adding live chat to your website opens up a whole new channel for your prospects. Not only can you get leads that would otherwise slip through the net, but you can also provide an extra support line for your existing clients.
Work with your IT team/developers to add the code to your website’s backend, or word press Also Jumura It varies by platform. Once integrated, the virtual receptionist will be able to answer chats from her website, just like they would on the phone.
It’s not just your IT team that needs to be involved to take advantage of live chat. Most of the leads you find here are pretty positive (i.e. they know who you are and are interested in your product/service), so your sales team is always up to date. You should know. And with the information collected by the virtual receptionist, your sales team can engage leads with personalized offers.
Even if you don’t have a website Facebook accountThis way the receptionist can reply to the message via Facebook Messenger.
5. Set goals and be ready to adjust
As with any aspect of legal practice, the success of virtual reception services must be measured. This means setting goals and measuring key metrics across the journey. There are many things that can be measured internally. for example:
- Number of missed calls
- number of sales
- average customer value
However, we may also measure customer satisfaction through external review websites such as Google My legal practice and Trustpilot.
The important thing is to realize that the service can always be tailored to your requirements. By preparing your team to provide feedback on all aspects of your service, you can develop a cycle of testing, feedback, and improvement.
Above all, it’s up to you to make sure your legal practice is ready for virtual reception services and make the most of all the new legal practices it brings.
Interested in learning more about how virtual receptionist services can help your legal practice? Book by phone with our team And we will work with you to find the best solution for your legal practice goals.
