During your many trips around the web, you’ve likely encountered “live chat” on a site. Usually it comes in the form of a small pop up window with a message along the lines of “Hi. I’m Sarah. Can I help answer any questions for you today?”
The main goal of this feature is to encourage interaction with visitors before they jump off of the site. This tool allows the web user to make contact in the most non-committal manner; after all, they don’t have to pick up the phone or submit a contact form. Heck, they don’t even have to give you a name and they get an instant response.
With most live chat software, you simply insert a snippet of code on the firm’s website. Each time a visitor arrives at the site, a message will automatically pop-up asking the visitor if he or she requires any assistance. Should the visitor reply, the response is usually sent to an outsourced answering service of sorts that is trained to try to get the visitors contact information to pass along to the office. For many attorneys, the idea of having a complete “stranger” gathering contact information and serving as a virtual ambassador for the firm is unsettling.
With most chat software, your firm does have the option to have live chat messages sent directly to your office but that does mean that you’ll need a member of your team to be at their computer all day when the chat feature is active. If you have dozens of visitors each day, you can be certain that this staff person won’t have time to do much else. For most law firms, it simply isn’t worth the investment.
Before adding live chat to a website, we strongly recommend that firms seriously weigh the investment (time and financial) and potential risks if the live chat attendant is outsourced. There are far better tools on the market designed to engage website visitors. Amicus Creative is proud to offer a handful of features encouraged to interact with visitors while helping your firm remain professional and in control of all exchanges with prospective clients. We’re proud to offer Click to Call technology, Online Consultation Requests, Seminar Management and Special Reports. Contact us today to learn more about these incredible features.