Live Answering Service 101: Will I Still Get The Chance To Answer My Own Calls As An Answering Legal Customer?

Those that have never used a phone answering service before, or have used a call center that turned out to be less than reliable, probably have a lot of questions about what Answering Legal has to offer. While the concept of having a team of trained receptionists answer phone calls on your law firm’s behalf isn’t too difficult to understand, there is often a lot of concern amongst attorneys over how their incoming calls will be forwarded when using our service.

One of the biggest questions we get from lawyers is “will I still get the chance to answer my own calls as an Answering Legal customer?”. The answer to that question is yes. Attorneys that use our service are always able to answer their incoming calls, but only if and when they want to. In this blog post we’ll explain what exactly we mean by that, and go in-depth on some of the incredible call forwarding options you can take advantage of with our live answering service.

How Does Call Forwarding Work With Answering Legal?

When setting up your Answering Legal account, one of the first things lawyers get to decide is how we go about forwarding their incoming calls. With a team of highly trained legal receptionists available to answer calls on behalf of your firm at anytime, you’ll have a lot of flexibility in addressing the needs of your current and prospective clients. It is important to note that the call forwarding choices you make during your setup process are far from finalized, and can be adjusted anytime afterwards.

Option #1: Rollover Call Forwarding

If you always want to give yourself or your in-office staff a chance to answer incoming calls first, you’ll probably want to take advantage of Answering Legal’s rollover call forwarding. Under this method, your firm’s incoming calls will be transferred over to a member of our virtual receptionist team, but only after ringing a certain amount of times. The amount of rings is of course predetermined by you. Rollover call forwarding is a preferred option by many lawyers that use our service, as they enjoy giving their in-office staff the opportunity to immediately address important matters over the phone, while still having the option to turn callers over to a trustworthy group of legal receptionists during busier hours or out-of-office hours.

Option #2: Time of Day Call Forwarding

If you know there are certain times periods each day where your staff will be able to easily answer incoming calls, and certain times periods where they won’t, give time of day call forwarding a try. Under this method, your calls automatically get forwarded to our receptionist team during times of day pre-specified by you. This feature can be especially helpful when it comes to after hours and weekend phone answering. You can still give your staff a chance to answer calls during working hours, while knowing that all of your after hours and weekend callers are always getting high quality and immediate support from our service.

Option #3: Manual Call Forwarding

For those that always want to be in full control when addressing new client opportunities, there is probably no better option to take advantage of than manual call forwarding. When using this method, lawyers get to physically turn on and off call forwarding to our service. This allows attorneys to more easily adjust the way their calls are being handled, based on how each individual work day is unfolding. If things end up being busier than usual, lawyers can turn over all of their calls to our team. When things get quiet again, attorneys can simply turn off call forwarding to our service. This form of call forwarding is also great for helping law offices keep their overall minute usage down.

Option #4: Total Screen & Transfer Call Forwarding

Every lawyer is different in how they want to engage with callers, and some attorneys will prefer to have all of their incoming callers speak with a receptionist buffer first before deciding whether or not they want to get on the phone with them. Answering Legal’s total screen & transfer call forwarding method gives lawyers that ability. With this option, all of your incoming calls will be answered by one of our receptionists first. Our receptionist will then collect some basic information from your caller before putting them on hold, and contacting a direct line of your choosing. After you are briefed on who is calling, you’ll get to decide whether or not to take on the call or have our receptionist take a message. We know your time is valuable, and our service can help ensure that you’re only getting on the phone for important matters.

Don’t Be Afraid To Rely Upon Our Team

Answering Legal will always give you the ability to speak with current clients and new prospects in real time, but that doesn’t mean you should always feel obligated to. Sure in an ideal world you’d have the time and energy to speak with all of your incoming callers directly, and make an incredible impression on all your callers. But lawyers often don’t live in an ideal world. They usually live in more of an unpredictable and chaotic world, that makes the task of answering incoming calls challenging on good days, and impossible on bad ones.

Our service is unique, in that we exclusively answer the phones for law offices. This allows us to specifically cater our features and receptionist training programs to the needs of busy attorneys. You can trust our receptionist team members to make a great impression over the phone on all of your incoming callers, because they’ve successfully answered hundreds (and in many cases thousands) of legal phone calls before. They’ll know exactly what tone to use during calls, what questions to ask your clients, what procedures to follow and when it’s time to get you on the phone.

For further evidence of the reliability of our receptionist team, check out some of our recent Google reviews.

Will our live answering service be a good fit for your firm? We’re willing to bet yes, but there’s only one way to find out for sure. Sign up for a free 10-day trial of our service, and take advantage of the opportunity to try out all Answering Legal has to offer in terms of call handling. There are no contracts to sign, and you don’t even have to put a card down during the trial period. To get started, simply fill out this form or give us a call at (631)686-9700.