Adam is CEO of Gladiator Law Marketing. He’s an Afghanistan veteran, outdoor enthusiast, husband, and dog parent to two German shepherds.
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Most lawyers understand the value of being immediately available to potential clients who are shopping for an attorney and comparing one law firm to another. But when you’re busy in court or meeting with a client, how do you facilitate real-time interactions with consumers who are accustomed to online chatting? Weekends and evenings pose another challenge. It’s tough to decide whether to hand out your personal cellphone number to everyone or incur the expense of hiring an answering service. Are live chat and chatbots a reasonable solution?
These ubiquitous tools can help you meet the 24/7 communication demands of a public that has come to expect immediate interaction in every purchase decision. My agency has experience implementing both live chat and chatbots on client sites. Let’s take a look at the difference between them, as well as the pros and cons of each.
Live Chat Vs. Chatbots: What’s The Difference?
The primary difference between live chat and chatbots is that there’s a real human being on the other end of the line with live chat. Live chat enables you to offer human-to-human connection, responsiveness and compassion when responding to potential consumer needs. It can work in combination with chatbots, which employ artificial intelligence and machine learning so your website can provide predetermined answers to frequently asked questions.
Typically, you can create and install a chatbot on your site using software. For live chat, you have to designate an in-house, on-call staff member or hire a vetted chat provider to use a digital communication channel to interact with potential clients in real time via messaging.
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Generally, chatbots are great for answering everyday questions about products and services, and many law firms already use chatbots on their websites. But for more nuanced, specific and unique queries, live chat can produce more satisfying interactions for the consumer.
It’s easy to see why live chat is a slam dunk for retail companies selling clothes or pet supplies. But in the legal industry, interactions are more complicated, and there are rarely simple answers. So not every law firm is on board with live chat yet. If you do employ live chat, you’ll have to make sure it adds value and provides users with meaningful takeaways. You should not provide legal advice via live chat, but it can help you triage leads to determine when to provide helpful, customized information and when to facilitate a phone call with one of your attorneys. You also can respond to current clients who are struggling with a technical difficulty, firm-specific concern or payment question.
The Pros And Cons Of Live Chat
• Pros: The biggest pro of live chat for lawyers is it enables you to communicate in real time via many consumers’ preferred method (chatting), ensuring that contact with that next million-dollar case isn’t missed. With younger millennial and Gen Z consumers, they are much more likely to want to chat online than pick up the phone and call. It’s about meeting today’s consumers “where they are.” Other pros include having a written record of a consumer’s questions and needs, thereby avoiding confusion or miscommunication.
• Cons: The biggest cons of live chat for lawyers are simply its implementation and whether it can add any real value for the consumer. First, if you offer live chat, you must have a human being who can respond immediately. Otherwise, it’s useless. That means you must designate a staff member to respond promptly to chats or pay a chat provider to do this. You may or may not have the human resources or budget for it. Larger law firms probably do. Second, you have to respond with customized information that meets the consumer’s needs. You can’t always answer with: “That’s a complicated legal question. There are so many factors involved.” If you’re able to answer with case-specific details, anecdotes about personal concerns and dollar amounts, then a consumer will likely find this valuable and satisfying.
Is Live Chat Worth Consideration?
Perhaps the better way of looking at live chat is to understand that it is a migration path to future communication modes that more and more younger consumers are probably going to demand. Just as your receptionist or legal staff answer phones today to talk to potential clients, younger legal consumers in the future are probably going to make initial contact with law firms through chat, not phone. Chat will not be an add-on to your firm’s communication options—it will likely be the first-choice mode of initial contact for consumers. So whether you decide to add live chat now or, instead, plan for how live chat will be part of your communication infrastructure in two to five years, it’s worth beginning to think about.
The Pros And Cons Of Chatbots
There are a lot of pros and very few cons of chatbots, and that’s why so many law firms are currently using them. True, they can only provide standardized answers rather than curated, personalized responses, but they are very useful nonetheless. They’re a great entry point for legal consumers who have basic questions about practice areas and the laws in their state. Chatbots are a way to engage a potential client with your website in something that feels like real time and to provide meaningful information. Chatbots are a first step in creating a chat experience with your firm.
Chat: Part Of Your Overall Law Firm Marketing Strategy
If you include live chat and chatbots on your website, be sure to integrate them into your overall law firm marketing strategy. Know when to use them, and when not to, and be able to measure their effectiveness and impact on ROI. With both live chat and chatbots, focus on user experience and ease of use, and make sure that every aspect of your law firm’s marketing strategy is interconnected to ensure the best overall results.
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Author: Adam Draper, Forbes Councils Member
