Improve Your Law Firm Website Conversions with A Live Chat Service Program
A potential client, in urgent need for legal support, enters your law office. Your receptionist is not present and the rest of the staff is unaware of the visitor’s presence. The potential client walks around the room taking note of the look and feel of the office furniture and décor. While the potential client looks over your marketing literature and the plaques on your wall, they walk by the unattended reception area and, in front of them, are business cards that highlight the law firm’s phone number along with a sign-in form.
By this time, a few minutes have passed and the visitor is pleased with your office décor, impressed by the plaques on the wall and intrigued by the marketing material provided. However, with no one present to provide assistance, the potential client walks out the door. Now imagine this scenario repeating itself every day with every potential client that walks through your door!
You would never treat your walk-in traffic this way; do you want to continue to treat your website traffic this way?
Your website is a direct extension of your office that shares a common approach in converting visitors into clients. As in the scenario above, 1 out of 7 visitors to your website may pick up the phone and call you or provide their contact information through the contact form. What about the other 6 visitors; the ones that simply left the website? How many of those lost opportunities would you secure by simply having someone present, offering immediate assistance (24 hours a day 7 days a week)?
Welcome to the age of Managed Website Monitoring – a 24/7 proactive solution for converting more website visitors into leads – then into clients!
TV ads, radio, billboards, yellow pages, referral networks, Google Paid Search (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google Places and Blogging are all forms of marketing. When used correctly, any one of these marketing vehicles will deliver a steady flow of qualified visitors to your website. As the flow of new visitors reaches the website, the next step is to convert as many of those visitors into clients. This is the critical step that defines your return on investment for the marketing dollars spent each month and, ultimately, the earning potential for your law firm.
Unfortunately, up until now, this is also the step where even marketing savvy law firms find themselves with limited options at their disposal. Once a visitor reaches the website, most law firms adopt a “wait and hope” approach, relying on the chance that more than just a few visitors will take the initiative to call in or fill out a contact form.
Replacing the Hope Approach
Managed Website Monitoring (Live Chat Services) provides a real-time view of your website activity and the power to deliver immediate assistance to each visitor. There are several options when it comes to implementing a live chat feature on a law firm website. A firm can either handle the live chats in-house, or they can hire a professional service to manage the chats. If a firm prefers to have this service outsourced, Consultwebs highly recommends choosing a legal-focused chat service provider who has significant experience working with law firm clients and prospects. Recommended options are listed below, but first, it is important to understand the service and its benefits.
How it works
- A small piece of code is installed into your Web pages.
- Moments after entering your website, the visitor is greeted and given the option for immediate assistance via a “chat” with a live agent. Statistics show that a significant number of visitors welcome the offer of immediate assistance.
- The live agent collects full contact information and a summary of the potential case.
- Upon completion of the chat, the potential client’s “chat transcript” is sent to the law firm (if the service is outsourced). Depending on what service you have, it can be delivered to an email address, to a SmartPhone or directly to a CRM.
Benefits
- Significant Increase in new client sign-up rates
- Timely delivery of new leads increases the chances of a law firm being the first to respond to potential clients – dramatically improving the odds of signing a client.
- 24/7 real-time website monitoring and proactive visitor engagements (depending on the package chosen). You never know when the ideal case will arrive at your website. Live chat enables your firm to greet arriving visitors at all hours of the day or night – every day of the year.
- Convert website visitors that otherwise would have simply left your website.
- A lead generation service designed exclusively for the legal industry will understand your potential clients and qualify each appropriately.
- Exceptional customer experience. Clients will be impressed by the law firm’s ability to provide real-time online assistance.
- Affordable and cost effective
- Results can be measured on day one. Most marketing and lead generation platforms require an extended amount of time before results can be achieved.
Every law firm is different and, naturally, has different goals, expectations and preferences. Consultwebs has spent considerable time analyzing live chat services throughout the United States, as well as overseas. If a firm prefers to manage a live chat service in-house, Consultwebs recommends using Olark.com. The disadvantage of using an in-house chat service is that when your firm’s secretary, paralegals or attorneys are unavailable, so is the chat service on your website. Bathroom breaks, lunch hours, after office hours and on weekends are all opportunities for potential clients to engage in a live chat with your firm. If you are unavailable, the internal chat service is not offered. Also, having a lawyer manage a chat service can be quite expensive, especially if he/she is engaging in a chat hourly, or even daily. Taking the above into consideration, there are two cost-effective and highly successful chat service providers that Consultwebs.com is confident recommending.
Client Chat Live
Front Row Consultants is the developer of Client Chat Live, designed exclusively for the legal industry. Two of the company founders are practicing attorneys. Given its advanced ability to increase ‘visitor to lead’ conversion rates, proven as high as 400%, the Client Chat Live platform is very affordable and highly effective. The Client Chat platform offers 24/7 coverage, as well as after business hours and weekend coverage, based on a law firm’s preferences. Client Chat Live offers a month-to-month commitment, as well as a 30-day money back guarantee if a law firm is not happy with the results obtained after the first month. The company prides itself on sending the “chat transcripts” immediately after taking the chat – enabling their clients to quickly respond to inquiries and secure cases. Client Chat Live has law firm clients across the U.S. and would make a good fit for any law firm who is looking to increase its conversion rate from their website(s.) You can see an example of Client Chat Live at the Bakersfield Injury Lawyers of Banafsheh, Danesh & Javid, P.C. website.
Ngage
Ngage, a division of Cloud8Sixteen, Inc., was founded under the realization that the Web experience could be vastly improved by connecting consumers with Web assistants via 24/7 live chat. As the result of their research, they learned that law firms were achieving low, single digit conversion rates from their online marketing efforts. By tracking Internet surfing habits, they discovered that many of their clients’ visitors were qualified candidates, but they were simply browsing the Internet, jumping from site to site. Ngage is able to transform a website from a static Web page into a live interaction in which the visitor is proactively “engaged” while they are on a law firm’s site, and before they hop onto the next. Ngage currently works with attorneys in all major practice areas including personal injury, medical malpractice, family law, criminal defense, bankruptcy and more and has more than 400 law firm online chat clients. You can see an example of NGage’s online chat service at the Toledo Injury Lawyers of Gallon, Takacs, Boissoneault & Schaffer Co., L.P.A. website.
A Word of Caution
Be sure to check your Bar’s ethics rules and opinions before installing any chat service on your law firm website. Some state bars have moved to ban these services over ethical concerns regarding client solicitation and the possibility of the inadvertent formation of attorney-client relationships.
If you would like to learn more about the benefits of using online chat on your law firm website, which system you should choose and how to implement online chat on your website, feel free to contact us at marketing@consultwebs.com or (800) 872-6590.
