QualitySolicitors Talbots provides services to individuals and businesses from seven branches across the West Midlands. In early 2014 the firm took a completely fresh look at the way it handled incoming telephone calls.
Here, Martyn Morgan, Senior Partner describes his experience of engaging with telephone answering specialist Moneypenny:
“I’d seen Moneypenny at numerous conferences and exhibitions over the years and always been impressed by how friendly, helpful and innovative they were. It is clear that the company place a strong emphasis on customer service, and I had heard glowing endorsements from other firms using their services.
“Our own call to Moneypenny was prompted by a need to change our phone system, and not only that, but the realisation that we needed to change our entire culture in regards to the way we handled calls. Too many calls were going unanswered. We know that people much prefer to speak to another person so we had never liked the idea of answer phones, but our receptionists needed support with overflow calls for those times when they were busy or unavailable. Our new enquiries team also needed assistance with calls to their dedicated number and we wanted to be able to take calls out of office hours and on Bank Holidays and Sundays.
“We took advantage of Moneypenny’s no-obligation trial, which highlighted just how many calls we were missing, as well as providing a host of other data which gave us accurate and invaluable business insights. Understanding our call volume peaks and troughs, for example, has helped enormously with our own resourcing.
“Our Moneypenny Receptionist, Kate, is a legal call specialist and has seamlessly integrated with our own staff. In fact we just think of her as one of us. She has a great rapport with our team and our clients, and we know that we can speak to her anytime to ask any questions or to fine tune anything.
“The bar is so high now in terms of client expectations. Customers expect a fast, professional response, so we have to get it right. It’s been important for us to look at things a little differently and move away from the old-fashioned telephonist set-up.
“With Kate, and her small team beside her, we now know we are capturing every call and that’s worth its weight in gold. Moneypenny offers fantastic service and having someone to support us during working hours, as well as when our offices are closed, is invaluable. We know that every message will be emailed to us straight away which means we can respond to urgent enquiries at any time. For example, I was walking my dog very early one Saturday morning and an email from Moneypenny popped up on my phone regarding an urgent call from a client who was upset. As I received this message straight away, I was able to call her back immediately and turn the situation around there and then. If I’d had to wait until Monday to pick the message up on an answer machine, the situation would have been completely different.
“Moneypenny helps us to deliver first-rate service every time, with flexible support just when we need it. We wonder now how we ever managed without them!”
