7 Reasons Your Law Firm’s Website Needs a Live Chat Service

There is a bit of a disconnect right now between what businesses think their clients want in terms of customer service and what their clients actually want, expect, and prefer.

A recent Kayako Live Chat study demonstrated this point quite clearly:

The most popular type of customer service among consumers is live chat. While there are still some who primarily use the telephone, that trend is going away more and more with each passing year. LiveChat’s customer service report found that the demand for live chat services increased by 8.29% between 2016 and 2017.

This is a problem, however, since businesses aren’t yet up to speed with this reality:

Because they still believe that telephone support is the primary method of providing customer service, many are missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with customers and prospects alike.

Law firms and lawyers, in particular, would do well to install a live chat module and service on their websites. When your business model depends on your ability to communicate with clients and earn their trust in real time, live chat gives you the chance to do this while they’re already thinking about you.

7 Reasons Your Law Firm Website Needs Live Chat

Businesses of all sizes and types would benefit from adding a live chat service to their websites. Here are seven reasons why your law firm needs it:

1. Customer Satisfaction

The LiveChat Customer Service Benchmark report shares statistics on real-time usage of its software. As of January 2018, 83% of customers that engaged with LiveChat software were happy with the experience.

Contrast that with customers who engaged with B2C professional services companies (we’re going to lump legal services in since there is no unique category for it), and you’ll see that satisfaction rate jump up to 85%.

Granted, the quality of customer service ultimately comes down to the people offering the assistance behind the live chat software. However, it appears that the majority of users are quite content with this method of service.

2.  Real-time Engagements

Customers want instantaneous support and answers to their questions. Phone calls require them to wait on hold. Emails require them to wait for a response. And social media can sometimes be a crapshoot.

Live chat, however, promises a real-time experience that connects prospective clients (or even current ones) with a real person. As you can see in the benchmark report above, it usually only takes about 49 seconds for a live chat representative to make first contact with a customer, so it happens really quickly, too.

3. Improved Relationships

Live chat puts your law firm in touch with prospective clients in real time. And by providing expert advice, immediate answers to their questions, and streamlining the process of scheduling in-person consultations, you’re improving the experience they have with your firm, all from within your website.

4. Privacy

Your business’s success depends on your ability to aptly handle sensitive manners. That’s why a platform like social media (which puts it all out there for the public to see) or email (which can make responses feel canned and impersonal) doesn’t always work so well.

While a phone call could accomplish the same thing as live chat, why force anyone off of your website if you have the means to keep them put? You’ve spent a lot of time crafting a message that informs them about everything you do. If they have questions about it or want to discuss next steps, it should take place on that same website.

5. Time Savings

According to the benchmark report above, businesses, on average, field 66 chats a day. With live chat software, though, you’re not restricted by how many conversations take place at once as you are with phone or email. You can handle concurrent conversations on live chat and cut down on the total amount of time spent talking to prospects.

6. Automation

If you’re short on time or want to make the most of your live chat service, you may opt to outsource live chat to another team member or a legal live chat service. Or you can automate with bots and save your firm even more time in handling incoming inquiries. As Szymon Klimczack, the CMO of LiveChat, told Small Business Trends:

“Currently, [bots] are completely ready to handle the most common and repeated inquiries which don’t require any human reaction. Thanks to them, companies can run complex, 24/7 support (even with limited resources) and improve customers’ satisfaction and loyalty.”

7. Insights

Using live chat software gives your law firm more insights into your client base:

• What are the most common questions they ask?
• What are their biggest concerns in signing on for legal assistance?
• How much time do you spend talking to a prospect before converting them to a client?

By studying the trends, you can be better prepared to anticipate their questions and address their concerns. It will also save you time in handling the initial intake as you would have already gotten many of those questions out of the way.

Law Firm Live Chat: It’s a Must

Any time you introduce something new to your workflow—especially if it directly touches your client base—be careful. There are a lot of ways in which live chat software could turn the experience with your firm really sour, very quickly.

• A slow response (or a complete lack of one),
• Poor customer service etiquette of a lawyer or chat agent,
• Intrusive software pestering clients while they’re trying to read content on the site.

A negative experience with live chat is just as bad, if not worse, than a bad one with one of your lawyers. Except, this time, you won’t necessarily be able to defend yourself to try to recover the relationship.

So, just make sure you do what is promised. Have someone monitor live chat during the published hours of availability. Have a legal expert on hand to answer their questions. Try to resolve all questions and issues quickly and on the first engagement. And be consistent in your responses.

The post 7 Reasons Your Law Firm’s Website Needs a Live Chat Service appeared first on Trial Law Digital.

SEO and PPC: Is One a Smarter Investment Than the Other?

If you want to effectively build a client base, then your law firm’s website needs to show up at the top of search results. There are two strategies you can use to make this happen: SEO and PPC advertising.

Both SEO and PPC are equally attractive options for law firms, but for very different reasons. Let’s examine the strengths and weaknesses of both marketing tactics and see if we can find the perfect solution for your website.

What You Need to Know About SEO

The first search marketing strategy you could use is good old-fashioned search engine optimization (SEO). This is the process by which a website is designed to appease both search engine criteria as well as cater to the user experience. SEO strategy revolves around a number of techniques, such as:

• Keyword-focused copywriting
• Metadata
• Regular content creation
• Link building
• Mobile-friendly design
• Security
• Speed

The better your website handles all these criteria (and more), the higher it will appear in search. Here is an example of how your website might appear in Google with SEO:

Here are some other things you need to know about SEO before jumping head-first into it:

1. It’s Free-ish

SEO is free… in the sense that you don’t have to pay Google or Bing or anyone else to rank your website. It’s not free, however, in that it takes a lot of time to set up and manage over the long-term.

2. It Requires a Lot of Attention

Search engines aren’t always transparent about what exactly makes for a well-optimized website. So, you have to pay close attention to algorithmic changes that affect your site’s traffic.

3. It’s Great for Local Businesses

SEO is a great option for businesses trying to rank for a specific location (as opposed to a global business).

4. It Takes Time

This is what the average click-through rates (CTR) for organic (non-paid) search results look like:

As such, it’s important to be aware that a really good SEO strategy can take anywhere from 6 to 12 months to start showing real results. It takes time to build trust with search engines, which is why you need to use other marketing strategies concurrently with SEO.

5. But Results Last a Long Time

Once you get your site on the first page of Google, it’s pretty difficult to get off of it unless your site is blacklisted (which, again, is hard to do if you’re playing fair).

6. Organic = Safe

As people grow more suspicious with advertisements (with some going so far as to installing ad blockers in their browsers), your only chance to reach some of them is through SEO.

What You Need to Know About PPC Advertising

Another way you can launch your site to the top of search is by using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. One of the most common platforms for this is Google AdWords. You choose a keyword, set a “bid” for it (the price you’re willing to pay for every click), and then run the campaign. This search strategy instantly puts you on the very first page of search results.

 

In the same search I conducted before, here is how the PPC ad results appear at the top of the page:

The ads are nearly identical except for two things: additional information is added to the listing and these ads don’t require the user to scroll to find them.

Now, before you decide that the fast-pass of search marketing is the way to go, consider the following facts about PPC:

1. It Takes You Straight to the Top

When you pay a premium to Google or any other search engine, your website is placed in prime real estate space. For most of you, that will be at the top of the search results page. For others, it’ll be at the bottom.

2. There’s Much More Customizability

With SEO, you attach metadata to each page of your site that the search engines will display. But it’s only the basics: title and description. With PPC, though, you can write unique ad copy to show up in search results. You can also attach descriptors like your phone number, links to other pages, and, in some cases, attach a photo.

3. It’s Instantaneous

The second you launch a PPC campaign in Google AdWords, your listing starts showing up when users search for the keyword you bid on.

4. It’s Temporary

An effective SEO strategy will bring your website long-term success in search. PPC will not. Your site will only show up in search results so long as you throw money at it.

5. Legal PPC Can Be Expensive

This is usually a dealbreaker for a lot of law firms. The average cost per click, on average, is higher than any industry measured (legal is in the light orange):

To make matters worse, the average click-through rate isn’t too great either:

However, the average conversion rate is the second highest out of all industries:

So, even though it costs a lot more (usually) for law firms to use PPC marketing, and it’s tough to get users to click the links, the return is BIG. Clearly, there is something about PPC marketing that works well when you target the right people with the right keywords.

6. Google Sucks

Which brings me to my next point: PPC advertising should never ever be automated and left in the hands of Google. You already know that the odds are stacked against you in PPC. If you allow Google to assign default settings to your ads and to create lackluster copy that has no chance against the competition, you’re just throwing money away. Always create your own well-researched campaigns to get the most out of PPC.

SEO and PPC: Which Is Best?

In all honesty, law firms need both SEO and PPC. Anything you can do to increase visibility in search is key, which means your website needs to be top-of-the-line and, yes, you will need to pay Google occasionally. Ideally, you will have a local search strategy in place, too, that gives your site a presence in Google My Business results. Consider it the holy trinity of winning the search game.

The post SEO and PPC: Is One a Smarter Investment Than the Other? appeared first on Trial Law Digital.