Published By Countrywide Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc.
Group legal plans promote their pre-paid legal services as much as possible. The types of assistance, such as writing simple wills or helping with warranties, are given considerable attention as the plan administrators seek to impress prospective clients. As a result, there is a lot of talk, but that may be a severe problem.
Effective communication is essential in any employee benefit plan. However, there is more than talking and simply hearing causes problems and rarely provides solutions. There are some common communication mistakes to avoid.
- Underestimating the other person. That means assuming that someone who is not an attorney has to be lectured to because of a lack of knowledge.
- Not understanding unique problems. Not every plan member has the same challenge. Two people may need help with consumer protection issues but have different reasons.
- Not listening. This is a common mistake knowledgeable people can make. Someone who isn’t listening will easily ignore essential facts.
- Not showing empathy. Using the wrong tone forces the other person to be less responsive to questions and hesitate to share information.
- Relying too much on email. Or other impersonal means of communication. These can be misunderstood, and personal conversations are many times more effective.
Any group legal plan that does not pay close attention to communication is mediocre. Countrywide Pre-Paid Legal Services emphasizes communication whenever dealing with clients or plan members.
Important Qualities
The Countrywide method encourages communications and relationship building. We are not interested in using online chatrooms or FAQ pages on our website. Legal problems are best resolved by direct contact. We have a nationwide network of attorneys who will provide services. There’s an attorney located in every community where there is a Countrywide client.
Countrywide encourages face-to-face meetings. Our group legal plan members have priority status with the lawyers. Getting an appointment is very easy to do. People are still worried about COVID-19, and our attorneys respect that concern. Countrywide legal professionals use safety protocols and practice social distancing in the meetings. We want group legal plan members to ask questions and seek clarifications. If a person forgets to ask a question, we allow an unlimited number of telephone calls to the attorney on a given topic.
Listening is Critical
Most employees are not familiar with the law. As a result, it is hard for them to express their problems, and they become easily frustrated. We want to assure any prospective client that Countrywide is serious about good communication skills. We recruit attorneys based on legal expertise and a proven ability to listen.
The Countrywide attorney does not lecture or preach. Instead, this legal expert will allow the plan member to fully explain the problem and seek assistance. Countrywide lawyers will always show a sincere interest. Emotional intelligence is not always displayed in a lawyer’s office, but we feel it is a benefit that must be there. If we discover that an attorney behaves surly or disinterested, that person will not be working with us much longer.
We Communicate with the Client
A superior pre-paid legal services benefit is a team effort between Countrywide and the client. We are in constant contact with the organization whom we serve. That dialogue starts at the beginning of the process.
We have benefits that help people with common legal issues such as drafting medical powers of attorney. We want our program to help all employees, but we are not familiar with the workforce. Therefore, we ask the prospective client to select those pre-paid legal services that will be part of the group legal plan. The organization will make the choices, and these will be in the final plan document. In addition, we provide administration and superior member services.
Countrywide wants to listen to what you would like to offer your employees. If you want to know more about any of our benefits, please feel free to contact us at your convenience. We welcome any opportunity to answer your questions.