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9.1 Baseline for Intake and Telephonic Advice – Telephone Systems

Needed capacities or functions - Telephone Systems 

Programs should have the following technology in place to support their intake and telephonic advice systems. However, some technologies may not be applicable to all organizations, such as those in rural locations with limited internet connectivity:  

  1. Implement ​a ​hosted phone system across the entire organization. 

  2. Monitor call volume and craft a strategy as to how it will address issues around excess demand to provide information over the phone to callers. 

  3. Call routing by language, substantive area, and/or geographic area. 

  4. Ability to serve persons with speaking or hearing disabilities through access ​​to TTY, Video Relay Service ("VRS"), or Video Remote Interpreting ("VRI"). 

  5. Technology to review busy signals, wait times, dropped calls, etc. 

  6. If the program does telephone callbacks, it should look at technology systems that facilitate an efficient callback system. 

  7. Provide recorded information to callers while waiting on hold or after hours. 

  8. General intake should consider online intake as well as more traditional means of application for services. 

Important Considerations and Best Practices 

Hosted phone systems are becoming standard among legal aid organizations and provide the following capabilities and benefits: 

  • Monitoring and reporting features that would allow for call data analysis (e.g., determining resource allocation based on call volume by office or improving call flow by identifying at what points callers hang up). 

  • Access to translator services or auto-attendant messages that can cover primary languages based on client base.  

  • Advanced functionality and scalability, especially for call center needs. 

  • Less infrastructure needed onsite to maintain and support.  

  • Redundancy and backups done by the provider. 

  • Upgrades to features and functions are done as they are released. 

  • By default, most hosted solutions allow you to use the system from a physical desk phone, desktop client, web browser and smartphone. 

  • More security protocols. 

  • Less time spent by IT resources to manage an on-premise phone system. 

Legal aid law offices that use SMS through a hosted phone system should develop a governance policy to ensure that case-related information is streamlined to the case management system. 

Telephone systems should be designed to meet the needs of relevant client populations. This includes considerations regarding clients’ language proficiency and sensory impairment issues, as well as consideration of difficulties seniors may have with automated attendant systems, the cultural differences that may deter new immigrants from understanding automated advice, etc. 

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