The Good Features of Voice Mail

By Gerry Morris

I’m going to change the format of the column a bit to make each month’s issue shorter. In the future I may do more two-part columns if I’m covering a topic that requires more length. This month, however, I’ll be able to cover the topic in one issue.

Probably the most frequent source of irritation for our clients is not being able to reach their lawyers. When someone comes to me looking to change lawyers, almost always the main complaint with the current lawyer is inaccessibility. The nature of my practice is “client oriented” meaning that I frequently communicate with my clients to discuss their cases, often in response to their phone calls. Of course, most of my new clients initially contact me by phone. But, my practice requires me to be out of my office for some period of time almost every day, so often I’m not there when an important call comes in. There’s also the question of how to handle calls that come in after business hours.

After several years of walking into my office from court to find a pile of phone messages and missing important calls either during of after business hours, I decided to rethink how I was doing things. When preparing to relocate my office about three years ago I explored various phone systems to see if better technology could help. I learned that most modern integrated phone and voicemail systems have a set of features that can drastically improve call handling. Here are a few features that my Panasonic system includes and how I use them.

My system (Panasonic KX TD816 Super Hybrid) allows for incoming calls to be transferred out of the office to any phone, local or long distance. If a call comes in my staff can place the call on hold, dial my cell phone, (or any other phone where I am) ask me if I want the call, and if so, transfer it to me. The caller hears nothing different than he or she would if the call had been transferred to my desk in the next room. Although I’m out of my office quite a bit, I find that a lot of the time I am where I can take calls. And, if I’m expecting a call, I don’t have to worry about staying by my desk to wait for it. I can leave if I need to and know that the call can be transferred to me. Often when I’m out of town I’ll continue to take calls in this manner.

This feature is simply invaluable. There is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t receive a call while I’m out of the office that is from someone I’ve been playing “tag” with, a new business call with a short fuse or that is otherwise a call that I needed to take right then. The opportunity for someone to reach me by phone is greatly expanded.

There is actually a way to make the transfer automatic when someone accesses my voicemail. I can set the system to automatically dial an outside number and transfer the call to me at whatever number I designate. This system would be useful for someone who often works out of another office or from home.

Another useful feature is actually part of the voicemail system. The integrated system (Panasonic TVS 120) notifies me by calling my cell phone each time a caller leaves a voice mail. If I answer the cell phone call, I can instantly access the message. Otherwise I can call my office when I have the time and retrieve the message. This is a fairly standard feature on most systems.

A third feature has allowed me to discontinue the use of an after hours answering service. Rather than pay that monthly fee, I have my voicemail system set up to play a different message after hours. That message instructs callers that, in case of emergency, they can reach me immediately by dialing a two-digit code. Once they dial the code the system automatically routes their call to my cell phone. When I first started using this system I was afraid that every caller would have an “emergency” and try to contact me immediately. In the almost three years I’ve used this system I’ve have about three calls out of several hundred after hours calls where the caller transferred themselves to me directly and the call wasn’t really an emergency. I’ve found this to be an acceptable irritation for the benefit of receiving the emergency calls immediately and saving about $240 per month for an answer service.

When shopping for a phone system and voicemail I highly recommend choosing one with these capabilities.

E. G. “Gerry” Morris is a solo practitioner and has practiced law for over 27 years in Austin, Texas. He is certified as a Criminal Law Specialist by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. His firm web site is at www.egmlaw.com. Email your comments and questions to Gerry at tech@egmlaw.com .