Businesses have been using live online customer service chat services for quite some time, but the legal profession has yet to catch up. In fact, a recent study showed that 80% of law firm websites don’t use live chat at all, even though it’s standard on many other websites. Only 3% of the law firms surveyed could say with 100% certainty that they offer live legal chat.
Artificial intelligence is often used to shops 9177 communicate with potential clients before they even speak to another person, which can be frustrating for many people. With live chat, website visitors can easily and immediately get human involvement, which provides a level of service and legal advice that all kinds of clients will appreciate.
What is Live Chat (Online Customer Service)?
Live chat is a pop-up service on your website that allows visitors to speak to a live agent immediately through a chat window for support. Live chat can solve problems in real time so that website visitors don't have to wait for an email response or something similar. An email may take days to get a response, while a good live chat service will only take a few minutes at most.
Live chat is especially useful for law firms given how competitive legal services are. Most people tend to check out several law firms before making a decision when they have a legal need. Offering live customer support is a great way to stand out and quickly build rapport with potential clients, rather than losing them to a competitor who didn’t keep them waiting too long.
Yes, there are significant differences between live chat and chatbots. Live chat works by connecting website visitors with a real person who can respond in real time. Whereas a chatbot is an automated system that can only provide certain predetermined answers. Automated responses can still be useful in certain situations, but legal services often require a more personalized service.
When visitors interact with a chatbot to seek answers to complex questions, the task can be time-consuming. After spending minutes navigating automated responses and options, visitors may ultimately conclude that the chatbot doesn’t have the answers they need. Meanwhile, live chatting with a real person can answer any questions directly, saving your website visitors time and increasing the chances of them becoming a client of your law firm.
While the benefits of live chat are clear, chatbots can still play an important role. If a person is looking for basic answers to simple questions, it can be much faster to use a chatbot than to wait for someone to chat with you in live chat. For example, let’s say someone is looking for the office hours or address of your law firm. A chatbot will be able to provide that information quickly.