The availability of the internet almost everywhere through the use of wireless and mobile connectivity makes virtually all consumers consult the internet for information on how to solve their problems. When it comes to important services, time strapped consumers often go online to find the best possible solution to their problems and the widest possible range of good options. In case of critical needs, such as health, legal or accountancy services, people look for options on which they have the utmost confident and often rely on word-of-mouth because of their lack of trust and the high risk involved. Such is also the case with Law firms and their websites. A person with a legal problem to solve is most likely to go to the local law firm suggested by friends or family, however, when there is limited time and access, or the absence of good references, the internet is usually where they end up looking.

When it comes to legal services, nothing can be as important to a defendant as finding the firm that will provide assurance and promise the best and quickest possible solution, and in which the person will have complete confidence. People often put their property, freedom and even their lives at stake and must be assured that their trust will not be betrayed. But how can you get customer to trust your services? The answer is simple, live interaction.

Research all over the world has shown that interaction is the key to building confidence and trust. People nowadays trust the words of an actual person over the text on a computer screen, and interacting with potential clients on your law services website will help not only give clients the confidence they need but also speed up their processes and reduce anxiety.

When a potential client comes online, the most important factor is how soon they are connected with legal experts directly. While live chat agents are usually not qualified to give legal advice due to laws in almost all states, they are the first contact that a troubled client can directly speak to, within seconds of their landing on the webpage. This direct interaction not only helps reduce stress immediately, but enables the agents to qualify the visitor and then connect them with an expert within minutes, either directly via live-chat or by gathering contact information, generating a lead and then forwarding it to the law firm directly for a subject oriented follow up.

Consider a visitor landing on a webpage to look for advice regarding a DUI case or to fight a traffic ticket. Such visitors are first cordially greeted and then connected to a sympathetic and helpful chat agent. This agent seeks to reduce the anxiety that the visitor is experiencing by listening to their problem attentively and then forwarding the case to the expert within the law firm who specialized in such cases.

Live chat for recruitment websites

The recruitment services industry is experiencing growth despite the condition of the recession ravaged economy. This is one of the industries that have gained the most from going online in more recent times and today, online HR and recruitment services are big businesses. Hundreds of companies are now offering online recruitment services for businesses and job seekers alike, connecting thousands of employers with tens of thousands of potential workers every day. One of the reasons for this growth is that the maintaining an online recruitment system or hiring specialist web recruitment companies such as Monster and Gumtree, is more cost effective and far reaching than maintaining a traditional walk-in recruitment setup.

Huge online databases are commonplace on the internet and document and store the millions of new résumés which appear every day for employers to search through. However, as anyone who has ever had to look for a new employee or job will tell you, recruitment is a field that goes far beyond quantitative analysis, computer intelligence and search engines; it takes intuition and subjective judgment to hire the best man for the job, and sometimes, the best man may not appear to be so on paper, at all. Many recruitment companies do establish contact centers via phone or e-mail to manage prospective employees, however, these methods have never really been as successful as they need to be in this context.

Recruitment is a comprehensive process which measures potential candidates’ technical, creative and communicative abilities as well as their temperament and personality in comparison to a vacancy which needs to be filled. Employees can be trained to perform tasks which they have not performed before and taught new skills, however, what a resume really doesn’t tell you is whether the employee has the right temperament, potential and required skill set to be able to perform the work efficiently or not – often it is more important to hire a person who has the right personality than to hire the best candidate on paper. It is much more important to find employees who not only do the work well, but fit in with the culture, become a member of the team and remain with a company for an appreciable term.

Live Chat helps recruitment professionals combine the efficiency of the internet business with the highly subjective kind of work they need to do. It brings together the technology features that save costs while providing recruiters with a direct channel of communication with prospective employees. This business and workflow model therefore changes as well. Recruitment agents can actually speak to prospective employees on their websites and form a better picture of them while these employees are uploading their CVs and résumés. The possibilities are endless. The turnaround time even for online recruitment is currently too long; it takes weeks sometimes for a candidate to apply for a job and get a response after thousands of CVs are checked and references are confirmed. With Live chat, recruitment agents who specialize in specific industries can speak to online visitors seeking jobs in those industries. Agents can actually match employees with available positions dynamically by asking simple questions right then and there; they would be able to instantly intimate employers of strong candidates who might appear when there is a need – in the right place at the right time… This model can potentially turn weeks into days or even hours!

Shopping cart abandonment is actually the phenomenon observed at retail stores whereby some customers inexplicably leave a shopping cart with items for purchase inside it and walk out of the store. When shopping migrated online, and credit cards were introduced for online payments, the problem of website cart abandonment was apparent from the very offset, prompting web companies to investigate the reasons behind it. Many reasons have been cited by marketers, with low confidence in security and payment procedures being the most common reasoning, and they were right. Other major reasons discovered were low confidence in the retailer, the fear that goods would not be delivered at all or would be delivered late, and high shipping fees. While the last cause was addressed by economies of scale, with increased shipping volumes lowering fees charged by couriers, the other reasons are still as relevant to shoppers everywhere as ever before.

Live Chat also known as Live Support or Live Help, is the predominantly used online communication method and was introduced into the world of e-commerce and online retailing around the year 2000 with great success and since then, the concept has grown from strength to strength. Online shopping became a victim of its own success. Online shopping removed the ‘middle-man’, that is, the traditional retail and distribution agents who are not needed for website sales, reducing the costs for businesses as well as the price of products and services for customers. With the ease and security of online shopping also improving radically, and time-strapped global shoppers surging towards online shopping websites to buy everything from groceries to Christmas presents in July, the gates were thrown open for new retailers and companies to sell directly online and take advantage of these features. This scenario complicated things. Hundreds upon hundreds of retailers began setting up websites and before we shoppers knew it, there were so many choices in products and services that online shopping became a tiresome exercise in research and price comparisons, often ending with customers wondering whether they even got a god deal or not . Live Chat is the technology which steps in to solve this problem.

A Live chat service offers businesses the potential to give online shoppers a great shopping experience and remove the negative effects of confusion, over-choice and the often overwhelming amount of information which engulfs online customers. Its main effect is to reduce dissonance and friction and provide customers with the very thing that makes them want to shop online in the first place – time / cost-saving, convenience, and reliability!… Live Chat agents can reduce the time customers spend researching products by providing information directly without the need to search for it on a website. They can pitch sales, provide opinions and even up-sell and cross-sell where applicable, providing customers only those choices that fit their needs and budget instead of overwhelming them with confusing info and too many options as websites without Live Chat normally do. In many instances, customers require information which is not there or buried deep within forums or links. Doubts caused by the aforementioned problems make customers leave their online shopping carts outright – but when Live Chat agents are present to address those concerns at the moment they arise, or remove doubts or misconceptions that customers may wrongfully have, the customers will more likely than not finish their purchase process. Additionally, Live Chat can be used to handle post-purchase issues such as complaints, returns, exchanges and warranty issues, a model of customer care which has proven it to be cheaper and more effective than any phone or e-mail customer services model ever used. Live chat helps you deliver real value to your potential customers.

Live Chat Mannerism

Live Chat is an integral part of the internet lifestyle, now finding a new great use in e-commerce. There are several chat-based methodologies used by websites which make their revenues through business with their online visitors, using a variety of customer services models in order to keep their visitors pleased.

The most important aspect of Live Chat for e-commerce is the use of this as a sales platform. The fact is, Chat operators become chat based sales people, and are provided with an e-platform to pitch to your online customers, and help them out with any of their problems or questions in the bargain, automatically providing you with a customer care outlet as well!

The most helpful factor to consider is that these e-salespeople have your business information on their fingertips… your web pages with direct content about your products and services can be served up to your interested visitors in an instant… by a friendly, non intrusive chat-person!

Important factors of Live Chat services:

• The appeal of chat lies in the humanization of the online shopping experience.
• Instead of having customer services personnel follow up on huge backlogs of emails or talk to a lot of frustrated customers over the phone all day (often leaving customers on hold for too long), several customers are managed instantly and at the same time by a minimal number of customer care people as chat based interaction allows them to multitasking with several chats at the same time.
• The concept is like having an online shop attendant (or e-attendant); operators using Live Chat software are aware of all visitors browsing onto your website (like a doorbell). These operators can approach visitors proactively and ask if they need information or assistance of any kind (just like the friendly attendant at the local grocery).
• Recent surveys (WebSiteStory) have shown that web browsers who have grown up with the concept of chatting are actually more accustomed to chat based business interactions and are more likely to do business once they are able to talk to an operator representing your website.
• Live Chats are supported by the use of canned messages; these messages are pre-stored and can be used appropriately (providing standard answers to commonly asked questions and frequently sought information). However, Chat operators are trained to be cordial, friendly and ‘real’, the mannerism needs to be humanized and friendly, and should seek to garner customer confidence and trust.

The following is an example of a Live Chat on a services website (names and specifics have been changed in order to protect identities and avoid legal discrepancies). This chat takes place between an operator and a visitor who does not wish to do business but is a regular visitor and simply finds the chat service unique. The operator on the other hand behaves courteously and is responsive without being robotic in any way.

M.J. Krauss = Visitor XYZwebsite.com
Josh = Live chat operator

Josh: Hi, this is Josh. Welcome to XYZwebsite.com! We connect attorneys with expert witnesses in all fields. Our role is to locate, assess, and deliver the best expert witness to help make our clients more successful.

Josh: May I help you find an expert today?

Visitor 2095: I am one of your experts in pharmacology
Josh: Great! May I have your name, please?

Visitor 2095: I was asked to help with a case but it has been delayed for weeks

Visitor 2095: M.J. Krauss

Josh: I see. Nice to have you with us Ms Krauss.

M.J. Krauss : I am new. I have not worked a case for you but I have done many others for lawyers and I am currently a key expert witness in a murder case

M.J. Krauss : I teach medical pharmacology so I am very busy but I was just wondering what was happening at round table

M.J. Krauss : my son lives in Washington dc very near your company I think

M.J. Krauss : he lives within a mile of the white house and your address is Pennsylvania avenue too I think

Josh: Yes, that is correct.

Josh: How may I help you in your case?

M.J. Krauss : I don’t believe you can help me really. Once before I visited your website and was amused that you have this online chat service

M.J. Krauss : so I wondered if that happened by chance or you monitor your website this way

M.J. Krauss : I am surprised there is not more need for pharmacology assistance in cases because physicians are not properly trained in pharmacology across America and drug errors are very common

Josh: Well, we greet every visitor who visits our website so that we can assist them.

M.J. Krauss : pharmacists are not really checking for drug interaction problems either

Josh: Yes, I totally agree with you on that.

Josh: I hope your case won’t be delayed any longer.

M.J. Krauss : perhaps medical cases are not your most common types of cases you assist with

M.J. Krauss : or maybe you have many experts in pharmacology but actually I believe my level of knowledge is very rare

Josh: No, we have lots of medical cases in other states.

M.J. Krauss : there is a shortage of people well trained in pharmacology

Josh: I’m pretty glad you signed up for us then.

Josh: And I’m glad you are one of those well trained experts in pharmacology.

M.J. Krauss : well, I should return to teaching duties – I just popped in here for a change of pace

Josh: No problem. We all need to relax once in a while.

Josh: I’m glad you visited our website again.

Josh: Is there anything else that I can help you with?

M.J. Krauss : I was hoping to have an excuse to come to Washington dc to visit my son but – well dream along with me

M.J. Krauss : he is redesigning the interior of the world bank

M.J. Krauss : no – just wish I was in DC

Josh: That’s sad, I hope you get a chance to go here.

Josh: You have a great weekend!

Josh: Thank you for visiting our Web site. Please contact us any time to take your seat at XYZ for a level of service, and a breadth and depth of experts that is unmatched!

Question is, how does your company’s customer service is different from others? (In a positive way of course.) Are your people going the extra mile which might be not a part of their actual job?

I go to a store to buy a Camera with the assumption that I saw something on the Internet and thought, That’s the one I want.

1- I’ll go to Store A, I’ll ask the person there to show me the specific model I’m interested in, he takes it out, show it to me, I pay him and I go home! Now he must’ve been helpful during the purchase but did he did something special for me? Maybe not but me or the company he works for are happy with him.

2- I’ll go to Store B, same situation but the guy there gets involved, shows interest in what I’m buying. Gives me suggestions like hey, this is a great camera but when you take pictures at a higher ISO, it’s not that good! The result might be blurry! Takes out another one, $30 expensive than the one I had in mind but has a better result! Since, I’m buying something expensive already, it won’t hurt to spend a bit more and get a better camera!

This will result in me being more confident and happy that I got a better thing because of that guy. And I’m sure, I’ll get back to that same store If I’m looking for another item and maybe ask for that guy again! Will you?

Going above and beyond the call of duty means doing something that is not required of you as part of your job or obligations to your customer. But going the extra mile in customer service means doing something special or extra for your customers, even difficult ones, often display extreme gratitude and loyalty when you can show them that they are so important that they are worth going beyond what is required.

That is one of the secrets of providing excellent customer service, demonstrating through your actions that the person coming to you is special and important!

At WebGreeter, we teach, train our reps to do the same! Be cheerful, give the people they are talking to, an extra edge, help them in what they are looking for, improvise.. thus giving us the ability to be at the top of the level, being different than any other.