An Inside Look At Our Bilingual Answering Service

What is a bilingual answering service? At first blush it seems like a simple concept, really: an answering service capable of serving customers in two languages. In the United States, those two languages are usually going to be English and Spanish.

But how does a bilingual answering service guarantee that it’s able to handle every Spanish-language call that comes in? And how does one make sure that Spanish-speaking clients get the same quality experience as English-speaking clients?

To answer those questions and more, below we’ll be going inside our own bilingual answering service here at Answering Legal. We’ll be detailing just how we’re able to make sure that we always have bilingual virtual receptionists available 24/7.

First, We Train And Hire Bilingual Receptionists

Creating a bilingual answering service starts in the hiring process. Without bilingual virtual receptionists, we wouldn’t be able to handle Spanish-language calls. We’re always on the lookout for bilingual candidates, and our team is made up of a plurality of bilingual receptionists.

The reality, of course, is that we cannot have a 100 percent bilingual team of virtual receptionists. As many Spanish-speaking people as there are in the United States, filling our team—which handles thousands of calls a day—with bilingual receptionists is unlikely.

Therefore, while hiring bilingual receptionists is a priority, we never sacrifice candidate quality for bilinguality. We are confident that we will always have enough bilingual applicants that we can pick the most qualified candidates and have the bilingual receptionists we need.

Then, of course, we train our receptionists. Our bilingual virtual receptionists receive extra training, as even someone fluent in Spanish may not know all the extra-specific legal terms they need to know as virtual receptionists for lawyers.

This training is in addition to learning these terms and concepts in English, like the rest of our team. Think about it; without a background in the law, how many people would know, for example, what tort law is? If you’d like to read more about how we screen and train our bilingual virtual receptionists, click here.

Here’s How Spanish-Language Calls Work

Since we can’t have a 100 percent bilingual team of receptionists, how can we guarantee that our bilingual answering service actually connects every Spanish-language caller with a Spanish-speaking receptionist?

Our proprietary call system makes it easy. Bilinguality wasn’t an afterthought for us; we built our system with bilingual calls in mind. Every caller has the opportunity to ask our legal virtual receptionists to speak to someone in Spanish.

To demonstrate, we’ll walk through what happens on a Spanish-language call. Below we’ll go over the three stages of every call that comes into our bilingual answering service: greeting, handling caller concerns, and sending messages to the attorneys in question.

A Closer Look At Spanish-Language Calls

Every call, English or Spanish, begins with a firm’s custom greeting. It’s usually only after the greeting that the caller asks if they can speak with someone who speaks Spanish, or indicates that they would prefer to. If the caller happens to have been connected to a bilingual virtual receptionist, the receptionist will just answer them in Spanish. If our intrepid virtual receptionist doesn’t speak Spanish, however, we don’t leave them in the dark.

There is a button on the screen during every call that will begin the process of an internal transfer from the receptionist who initially answered the call to a bilingual receptionist. When the receptionist presses that button, a message will appear that explains the situation to the caller in Spanish. Then, after a brief hold, the Spanish-language caller is transferred to a bilingual virtual receptionist.

When we say a brief hold, we really mean it; we have enough bilingual receptionists that there is never a wait time for Spanish-language callers. Our bilingual virtual receptionists conduct every part of a call in Spanish, including legal intake. If you’d like to read more about our legal intake process, click here for a deep dive.

After each call our receptionists leave messages for our law firm customers in English so there’s never a miscommunication. This is where bilinguality is truly important: speaking both English and Spanish fluently makes our receptionists efficient translators of sensitive case information. There’s never a translation issue. To learn more about our message taking service, click here.

Why Go Bilingual? Why Not?

You might be thinking, “That all sounds neat, but do I need a bilingual answering service?” We’ll answer that question with one of our own: Are you willing to stop competing for a full 13 percent of your pool of potential clients? After all, census data indicates that in 2019 there were just under 43 million Americans who spoke Spanish at home.

Of course, that 13 percent group of Americans isn’t evenly distributed throughout the United States. There are some markets in the U.S. where a bilingual answering service is a necessity—take Miami, Houston, or Los Angeles, for example. Firms in those areas that aren’t bilingual might even consider a bilingual answering service a translation tool for Spanish-language clients, who would make up a big percentage of their client base.

But even if you’re not in those markets, can you really say no to a significant chunk of your local market? Even if your local market only has 5 percent of people who speak Spanish at home, that’s a significant number of people! Imagine looking at your tax documents at the end of the year and subtracting five percent from your revenue. Sounds scary!

Spanish is the language spoken by the most people in the United States other than English, and that’s by a large margin. From the furthest reaches of the Pacific Northwest to the northernmost parts of Maine, every market has a community that would appreciate being able to communicate in Spanish. There’s even an argument to be made that in markets with no bilingual firms, the first firm to break that ground will generate a lot of business.

And finally, being able to communicate with clients in the language they’re most comfortable speaking will go a long way. Word-of-mouth is a powerful marketing tool, and it’s also difficult to generate. If a firm is ready to accept Spanish-speaking clients, they may find themselves on the receiving end of some very favorable reviews from grateful clients. Let’s not forget that in 2022 Clio’s Legal Trends Report found that client reviews are the biggest factor in deciding whether or not to hire a firm.

We’re More Than Just A Bilingual Answering Service

If you like what you’ve read, we encourage you to check out Answering Legal. We are deeply committed to making sure that your clients and callers have the best customer service experience possible.

As you might have guessed, bilinguality is only the beginning of the benefits we can offer a firm. We’ve already touched on message taking and legal intake, but we’ve got so much more in store. Click here to find out about more of our features!

Each of those features, and more parts of our service besides, are also customizable. Need a specific custom greeting to match your in-house phone answering staff? No problem! Want the contents of one of our legal intakes sent straight to your CRM? We can integrate with all of your favorite legal software. Click here to learn more about integration and customization.

Start cornering your local Spanish-speaking market today. Click here or call 631-686-9700 to sign up for our free trial. For a limited time, we’re offering firms that sign up for our service their first 400 minutes free.