Whether you are a small family practice, or a leading magic circle firm, one of the biggest benefits you can bring to your business is speeding up the instruction process.
Using live chat allows you to respond rapidly to new client enquiries, allowing you to quickly ascertain their fit, and hasten the onboarding process.
It’s clear that the public want to be able to access businesses online. A recent survey found that 41% of customers now expect to see live chat on a website.
And for those in the legal profession, using live chat has many benefits. A survey carried out in 2019 found that law firms’ usage of live chat had increased 38% in 6 months.
We look at how using live chat can help to speed up legal instructions.
Lay out your services quickly
It is often the case that someone making an enquiry to a legal firm for the first time will not have much knowledge about the services they require, or whether you can help them.
Live chat allows you to quickly ascertain whether a potential client is a good fit for your business, and whether you are able to help, or even refer elsewhere.
The speed at which conversations can happen on live chat helps to quickly eliminate those who you may not be able to help, while simultaneously providing excellent service to those who you can.
Get customers prepared
One of the most common elements that slows down legal instruction is your clients preparing the needed documents. Whether that’s proof of ID for a conveyancing service, or collating paperwork for a complex business transaction.
Live chat gives you the opportunity to lay out what is going to be required at an early stage, so that your potential clients can start to prepare any required paperwork.
Free up your fee earners
In many law firms, it’s still very much the case that fee earners spend a lot of non-billable time liaising with new clients to get them on board.
Live chat can eliminate this issue, or at the very least, reduce the amount of time that your teams spend on chasing new clients.
You can choose to have your staff manage live chat which is more efficient than phone calls as a typical agent can manage around five chats at one time.
Or you can use a fully-managed service, where a highly trained team manage responses for you. This can also avoid over-servicing where a client has not yet committed to your firm.
Be on hand 24/7
Managed live chat allows your business to be open 24/7 and at a minimal cost.
Increasingly, individuals have expectations of being able to make enquiries outside of the traditional nine to five. Having a team on hand to answer enquiries and set up appointments at all hours of the day gives you a true advantage over your competitors.
If you haven't yet looked into a 24/7 managed live chat service, or you'd just like to know more about the options available to you, don’t hesitate to get in touch, we would be happy to chat.
