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For law firms with significant mass tort practices, call centers are a must. There are simply too many clients and too many phone calls to and from those many clients during a mass tort for a law firm’s intake or client care staff to handle on their own.
But an ineffective call center can do more harm than good, leading to sunk costs, unhappy clients, and reputational damage. Here are the five pillars of an effective mass tort call center.
Effective mass tort call centers implement the best tools (Add using a H2 tag in Wordpress)
An effective mass tort call center uses reliable and flexible technology to ensure it can do its job effectively. The two pieces of technology at the heart of an effective call center are a reliable phone system that incorporates call recording and monitoring software, and a customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Call recording and monitoring is a key way for managers to identify opportunities for improvement by client service representatives. It allows managers to ensure representatives provide quality and consistent service to prospective and current clients, and gives managers the opportunity to correct representatives who do not seem to follow established procedures.
A CRM system helps a law firm track which clients its representatives have communicated with and what they have communicated about, and provides a system for capturing personalized information about clients’ situations that can be used for marketing and litigation purposes.
Effective mass tort call centers develop standard operating procedures
With an assist from technology, an effective mass tort call center provides consistent, high-quality client service. To get there, it must develop, implement, and enforce standard operating procedures (SOPs). An effective call center’s SOPs include scripts for common and potential call scenarios so that representatives know what to say and how to handle the call.
For example, what should representatives say when they receive inbound calls from prospective clients? Or, when making outbound calls to clients, what should be the procedure for scheduling meetings, requesting documentation, or providing case updates?
SOPs need not provide scripts for phone calls that representatives must stick to. If they did, they’d come across as robotic. SOPs for engaging with callers should give representatives the flexibility to have a fluid, natural conversation while making sure they follow the approved procedure for handling a particular type of call.
Effective mass tort call centers have a culture of quality control
An effective call center will put an emphasis on quality control and use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track whether representatives are providing high-quality service to callers.
Those KPIs will probably include, among others:
- Average handle time, which is the time a representative spends on the phone with a caller, plus the after-call work needed to resolve the caller’s request or issue
- Quality scores issued by quality assurance teams reviewing recorded calls
- Caller satisfaction surveys, although call centers should know that surveys can rub callers the wrong way considering mass torts and the injuries callers might be suffering from when they call
Whatever KPIs an effective call center uses, their metrics provide critical data like the conversion rate of incoming leads or how long it takes representatives to solve a caller’s problem. Managers also define what a “good” call looks like, so representatives know what standard to aim for. In addition, effective call centers tend to implement reward systems to recognize representatives who meet and exceed metrics.
Effective call centers hire the right people
An effective mass tort call center hires the right people to serve as representatives. Effective call centers don’t just settle for hiring someone who can “do the job.” Instead, they look for candidates who show a genuine desire to help callers and who understand they could play a role in helping those callers recover from life-changing injuries.
An effective call center will also enhance the performance of its representatives by giving them best-in-class training. This includes both client service training and training regarding the substance of the mass torts the representatives will field calls about. This helps representatives understand callers’ legal claims, empathize with them, and manage their expectations.
Effective call centers commit to continuous improvement
An effective mass tort call center does not rest on its laurels when it meets the quality standards it has set for itself. Instead, its managers and representatives continuously review calls and analyze reports to stay on top of their performance and identify areas of improvement where the center can increase its efficiency or effectiveness. Effective call centers do not view quality control as a “set it and forget it” effort. Instead, managers are always looking for ways the call center can improve.
Effectiveness starts with these five pillars
Mass tort call centers are an important piece of the mass tort practice puzzle for law firms. The most effective call centers implement the above five practices to provide consistent, high-quality service to prospective and current clients.
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Interested in learning more about how Verus can assist your law firm with establishing or running an effective mass tort call center? Email us at info@verusllc.com or call us at 888.681.1129 to arrange an initial consultation.
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