If you are online frequently, searching for service providers or looking for answers to questions you have about products, chances are you have encountered – and perhaps used – live support. It can be handy to have someone available to answer a quick question with minimal effort on your part.

The goal of live support is to initiate contact before a visitor clicks away from your site. The chat enables a user to submit a question easily and anonymously without asking them to commit to filling out a form or making a phone call. Ideally, the representative chatting with a prospect will be able to glean some contact information by answering a few questions and making them feel comfortable with you firm’s ability to help.

To incorporate a live chat feature, most services will ask you to insert a small snipped of code on your website. The chat can be executed in a couple of ways. You could choose the subtler route and simply add a button somewhere on your site indicating whether or not live chat is available. If the user would like to ask a question, they can click to chat.

Live chat can also be integrated in a way that displays a popup when a visitor lands on your site. The chat box will invite users to talk, sometimes even by introducing the supposed chatter. “Hello, I’m Tom. Can I help you by answering any questions today?” Or, more generally, “We offer 24/7 support. Would you like to chat with a representative?”

Some attorneys have begun incorporating live support into their websites as a marketing tool. However, before your firm takes this step, you should consider some of the pros and cons... CONTINUE READING