In this week’s episode Grace and Liel invite over Brett Whitten for a conversation on online intake. Brett is an Account Manager at Ngage Live Chat, a leading live chat service that thousands of law firms across the nation use to convert website visitors into clients.
Brett and the Ngage team have been on the pursuit to increase conversions from website visitors and they have tried and experienced everything. In this episode Brett shares what works and how to implement your own solution if you have what it takes to handle live chat in-house.
In this episode, you will learn how to make a human connection over texts, where you should consider being available to chat with your prospective clients, how to deliver a better client experience leveraging text communications, and how to turn your vanity number into a powerful texting channel.
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Transcript
Liel: [00:00:00] In today’s conversation, we are joined by Brett Whitten from Ngage Live Chat. We talk about online intake. What options are out there and how to do it right. I’m Liel Levy, co-founder of Nanato Media and this is in-camera podcast, where we show you how to get millennials to care about your vanity telephone number.
Liel: [00:00:51] Welcome to Incomer, our podcast, private legal marketing conversations and today, for a third and final episode on intake and retention, we are joined by Brett Whitten from Ngage Livechat.
Liel: [00:01:02] Brett is an account manager at Ngage Live Chat. For those of you who haven’t heard of Ngage, they are a platform that helps law firms turn Web site visitors into signed clients. You can find out more about Ngage Live Chat by visiting ngagelive.com. Brett, thank you very much for joining us.
Brett: [00:01:28] Happy to be here.
Liel: [00:01:29] And we’re, as always, joined by the Great, Grace Montealegre. Grace, how are you today?
Grace: [00:01:34] Good. I’m happy to be with Brett and yourself, of course.
Liel: [00:01:38] And I’m very happy to be with both of you and so let’s set the scene here. In our previous episodes about intake we put a lot of focus on the intake that happens over the phone. However, as the users communication preference continues to shift, intake is now more than ever happening across different platforms, particularly online. So today we’re going to talk about online intake. What are the options that are out there and how to do it right. How does that sound?
Brett & Grace: [00:02:08] Sounds good.
Liel: [00:02:09] Excellent. So to get started. Brett, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Brett: [00:02:13] So I’ve been at the company coming up on seven years now. So I’ve seen quite a bit of change in the scene back when I first started. Chat has always been kind of a priority, at least since I’ve been in. But it’s been a massive shift from the phone intake and contact forms to people just loving to use live chat. I don’t know if it’s more millennials needing legal help or what, but it’s been a big shift. And so it’s been fun to see the changes, that’s for sure.
Liel: [00:02:50] Absolutely, Brett and I think as we dive into this conversation, we’re going very well look at what are all of these different shifts in behavior and preferences for communicating with bran sinejor in general, but also law firms. Right?
Brett: [00:03:05] Yeah.
Liel: [00:03:05] And so Grace, why don’t you take us away with the first question that we have here for Brett.
Grace: [00:03:09] So this is perfect, right on your explanation of how chats kind of come about, Brett. The first question that we have is, why do you feel like it’s essential to offer multiple conversion options to users visiting your site, could you tell me a little bit about that?
Brett: [00:03:24] Yeah. So easy answer is, first off, you just want to make it as easy as possible for people to get in touch with you. Kind of diving into that a little bit more when you look at it on the analytics side of things, what we see is that on average law firm Web site, most people are going to call. That’s most people that are reaching out to you at least, are going to call and then you have the contact forms, but then most people are leaving the site without contacting you. And usually that’s because either they didn’t see something they liked on the home page, not enough high verdicts or they didn’t see something they liked. And the bio page, a lot of people like to be able to connect with the attorney that they are going to reach out to. But a lot of it’s just they don’t see their preferred method of communication. A lot of people like to think that it’s only millennials that like to chat. You’d be surprised. I have a lot of retired grandmothers that just like to get on and talk with our operators. So by not having that, by not having texting, you’re really limiting yourself because, especially if you’re running some sort of a paperclip campaign, you’re paying very good money to have these people visit your Web site and to not give them every chance to have their preferred method of communication to contact you is you’re just kind of shooting yourself in the foot, because there’s a lot of people that visit a site that they’ve never talked to an attorney before. And they’re kind of nervous about it, but they still want to talk to somebody. So something like a chat or a texting lets them kind of open up about their issue without having to talk to a big, bad attorney that might be really intimidating to them or saves with somebody like a divorce case. They might be sitting right next to the person they’re about to divorce and they’re not going to pick up the phone and talk about that.
Liel: [00:05:22] How subtle for a person, right, to be chatting with an attorney right next to his partner or her partner?
Brett: [00:05:28] You know, I’ve seen it.
Grace: [00:05:31] You know what, that’s insanely correct on every level.
Liel: [00:05:35] Yeah.
Grace: [00:05:35] Yeah. Well, you know, we are in legal. So, I mean, I guess we can be a little cynical, I suppose. So that really does lead us into the next question, which is, it’s funny, because you just mentioned a possible benefit, but that’s my next question. What are the benefits of live chat for prospective clients? Besides the fact that if you’re divorcing somebody, you don’t have to talk about it.
Brett: [00:05:56] Well, there’s that little point right there, you can expand on it. A lot of people, whether it’s right or wrong on the job, like to research attorneys and a lot of these issues they don’t want to air out in front of their coworkers. Nobody wants to talk about bankruptcy, messy divorce or how they’re trying to get a million dollars out an injury case. So it lets them get the contact they need with a law firm in the situation where they might not be able to pick up that phone, which obviously every law firm, if they had it their way, every person that visits their site would pick up the phone and you’d be able to sign them up right there. But there are some people that they want to be able to talk to someone and have that contact where they’re comfortable with getting up on the phone with you whenever they do have that opportunity. So you’re giving that person that chance.
Liel: [00:06:53] I think what you’re saying here, Brett, is that ,so, people, users, prospect clients like versatility in the communications.
Brett: [00:07:02] Yup.
Liel: [00:07:02] They want to be able to talk when it’s suitable for them and they want to be able to talk to different platforms according to their current circumstances, right? And so I actually found here a survey, that was taken back in twenty eighteen and it’s from Bold 360. And basically what it says is around the world seventy one percent of consumers believe that live chat will surpass traditional customer service communication channels by twenty twenty one. So we have already grown very used to seeking customer support through live chat, we find it more effective. And so it looks like the trend points out that we’re going to be as equally comfortable to do the entire process through live chat or through bots or through other ways that allow us one-on-one communications with the law firms without necessarily having to get on the phone. And so Brett, with all of these taking into consideration, how do you think law firms should prepare for this trend that continues to grow?
Brett: [00:08:09] I think what you said about not wanting to get on the phone is that you hit the nail on the head. I, personally, am the type that I want to get stuff done, so I’m just going to pick up the phone. But there are a lot of people out there that, whether they’re trying to multitask at work or who knows, they don’t want to pause their Netflix show, who knows. But they have a chance to get things done without having to change anything about what they’re doing in that situation.
Liel: [00:08:38] And so with that said, actually, like in the same article, what I read is that the majority of consumers will leave a Web site without buying and now we’re talking about shopping, of course, but still, will leave without buying if they cannot find answers right away or assistance when they need it. And so it would be unfair to assume that it will work any differently for a law firm. Correct?
Brett: [00:09:04] Oh right. That goes back to what I was saying about most visitors not contacting a firm. I mean, most of the analytics I look at, are law firms lucky to get a 10 percent conversion rate. So when you’re talking about £100..
Liel: [00:09:18] Depends who is behind their digital marketing.
Brett: [00:09:21] You’re right. Yeah, it’s really bad for a lot of firms and especially if you’re talking about expensive paper click and you’re doing a lot of SEO. That’s a lot of waste. And so you’re by having something like this, it doesn’t by any means solve that problem of people leaving your website. There’s just going to be some people that they’re just not going to connect with. They don’t want anything to do with you. But if you can increase that by 2 or 3 percent when you drag that out of a year, that’s a lot of people that you never would have talked to.
Grace: [00:09:52] Yup, it’s definitely a significant amount of changes, you know. And with the different methods of communication, different ways of this, that people want to communicate, you’ve got to offer it to them, right? Otherwise…
Liel: [00:10:03] Right.
Grace: [00:10:03] You are at the bottom of the barrel in terms of that. So I think that really leads us to the next question here. What kind of best practices can you recommend to our listeners about implementing live chat on their Web sites?
Brett: [00:10:15] Yeah. So there’s two real options that you can go with if you’re gonna go with a live chat on your site. There’s something like Ngage where we have the operators that monitor it for you 24/7. If you’re gonna go with something like that, I would say that the easiest thing that law firms mess up with this is they like to go with their gut, what they think will work. So they’ll either flat out say, hey, I wouldn’t use chat. So why would anyone else use it on my site? You kind of have to put yourself in the visitors position. Can you actually see someone that’s finding your site using this, but then going farther into that, you have to take your gut out of it. When you start thinking about how the conversation should go, you need to look at the numbers and you need to say, hey, these people, this is what they do for a living. So they probably know what works and what doesn’t. I can’t tell you how many times I have someone come in and try to change everything about what we do. And everything we do is based on conversion numbers. If we find something that increases conversion by even 1 percent, we’re gonna do it because that’s a massive increase across the board. So it’s not like we’re doing things just for the sake of doing it because the numbers say that right. So I would say use that logic, even if you’re going to try to do it in-house, which I have seen work for a lot of firms. If you have the right setup for it. Do it in-house. I would say don’t try to give the job to someone that already has a full time job. Because when you’re dealing with live chat out of the three main forms of communication on a website, the phone calls, the contact forms, I’d say live chat is, the people using, are the most fragile leads. They’re the easiest to lose. And so if you give the job to someone that’s a paralegal that’s already probably overwhelmed or really anyone that they’re not going to be ready to take chats on the regular, if you don’t answer that person within 20-30 seconds, they’re usually going to have a bad experience and they’re going to leave your website. A lot of people like to think, hey, if we don’t answer them right away, they’ll see a phone number and they’ll just pick up and call, now that most people, we can see it on the back end, they just leave sites. And I don’t know how familiar anyone is with Ngaged, but we actually started out that way and we almost crashed and burned because we could see when somebody wasn’t answering a chat because they were in the bathroom when they were on a call or whatever. So if you have somebody that’s dedicated, you can make this most of their job. It can easily work. I would say if you’re going to do that, one of the easiest things people do, where they mess up trying to monitor the chat themselves as they try to do too much through the chat. If you’re going to do it, make it a quick conversation. Give the person a chance to talk about their issue. Let them get warmed up to where they’re comfortable talking to you instead of going in and say, hey, give me your phone number, I’ll have somebody call you, because a lot of the people that are using a chat are doing it because they’re not ready to give that information. So let them get warmed up. Let them know that you are someone that’s trustworthy and that they can be comfortable talking to. Don’t try to sell them over the chat. If you can, a lot of people try to give legal advice when they’re trying to do this. People if they’re not sure on you, though, they’ll get their question answered and leave and you’ll never talk to them again. Whereas if you can kind of get them warmed up to the point where they’re going to get on the phone, it’s much easier to sign someone up once you get that phone call. So that’s what I would say. And as far as if you don’t get them on the phone right away. So you’re using something like Ngage or doing it yourself and they don’t get on the phone immediately, speed is key. There are stats out there that show that if I’m talking every half hour or so after the lead comes in, your chances of signing them up drop significantly. So if a lead does come in, you have to be on it. Otherwise, you’re wasting time and money.
Grace: [00:14:38] So I have two comments to that. I think all of us here in marketing, you know, we know this, right? The five minute rule, really I mean. And then it gets worse, right? Because there’s the six second rule of somebody actually paying attention to something and not clicking away. So you’ve got the combination of if someone fills out a form, if you don’t respond to them within five minutes, you’re in trouble, right? They’re not. They’re gone. They’re pretty much gone. Right? And you can try and get them back on the phone. You do your best. But to your point, right, this live chat component. Well, the reason I’m on a live chat is because I want to talk to somebody right now. And that’s seconds, right? And you just said 30 seconds. Well, I don’t even wait that long. If I type in there and it tells me that I have to wait more than a couple of seconds and if it doesn’t even let me know, I might wait If there’s a queue and it tells me where I’m at in the queue. But generally speaking, I’m not going to wait. I’m going to just jump off. I’m going to go to someone else, especially when it comes to attorneys.
Brett: [00:15:38] Or if it says they are offline. I see that a lot.
Grace: [00:15:41] Oh, my gosh. So at Gacovino and Lake guys, you know how I like to bring it back to what we do there and we use Ngage and we actually purchased a review system to kind of help us with it. And they do have a live chat component that we could have added to our website. However, Ed, you know, asked the right question. He said, well, are we the ones managing that? Are we the ones responding to that chat? Or is that going to be responded to by the messaging system that we purchased? I was like, you know what, that’s obviously a fantastic question, let me ask it. No, I would have been the one who had to manage the live chat, which means that’s not going to happen, right? I’m not going to be there. It’s going to say offline because I’m in the middle of 10 things like a podcast right now. So I said, no, forget that. I’m going to continue using Ngage. They answer those things. They answer it quickly. And I get reports from them telling me that all this got responded to. So, guess what? That’s exactly what I was going to do. So of course, they’ll continue to use Ngage for good reason. I mean, you have something to say about that, Brett, because I see you smiling.
Brett: [00:16:49] Hey I’ll take it. You said it better than I could have.
Grace: [00:16:54] That’s awesome.
Liel: [00:16:55] Yeah, so I really appreciate all of these comments Brett, about how to do it right. And with that said, like one very prominent element when talking about live chat or intake in general has been empathy, right? And when you’re doing it, like delivering empathy through the phone is already hard as it is because you don’t have that human presence. You’re not seeing the face. You’re not seeing the body language and so you only have voice. And unfortunately, many times the lack of all of those other components lend the whole situation to go a very transactional conversation, rather, one that is aimed at building trust and understanding and obviously, then, you know, finding a solution together for what was the original inquiry. Now, when we’re moving in to live chat, you’re taking away another almost kind of like the last element that was there ,right, which is voice. Nevertheless, I believe that empathy can still be implemented through text. And Brett, would you mind telling us a little bit more about how is it that you can still deliver a human connection through text?
Brett: [00:18:16] Oh, you’re right. It’s tough. And that’s one of the things that you’ll never be able to do it as well as you could in person or even on the phone. At least on the phone, you can hear changes in tone, stuff like that. But in chat, I mean, aside from trying to use emojis which don’t really work.
Liel: [00:18:39] Especially when one of those emoji that can have a hidden meaning. You’re trying to say something, but another message has been captured on the other end. Yeah. Be careful there, guys.
Brett: [00:18:48] The smirking face a bit more. Yeah. So we, if somebody tells us something, well we’ll start every line with something like, I’m really sorry to hear that…
Liel: [00:18:59] Right.
Brett: [00:19:00] …it must be tough, I can understand, stuff like that. We’ve actually found that most people tend to go with it. It actually works a little bit. I’ve actually seen conversations where they say, thank you so much for understanding, but that’s about as far as we can take it without sounding just overly cheesy through the chat. But yeah, I would say make sure that when somebody is talking about a very difficult situation, say, even if you are trying to monitor yourself, make sure to acknowledge what they said before you start your next step in the conversation. It is kind of like really any conversation you would have in person instead of waiting for your turn to talk, which it is your turn to talk. But acknowledging what they said, I think it goes very far as showing that you’re listening to them whether you can do a great job of showing it through the chat or not, just the fact that they know that you acknowledge is huge, I think.
Liel: [00:20:05] So, would you just say that, for instance, as the conversation begins, make just initial engagement by, how are you today, if the user is providing you with their name, using it right. And making sure that you are first establishing some normal connection and then moving into like, OK, what situation we have here at hand, how can we help you? Right? Rather than jumping right into today, like, were you involved in an accident? Like the first question right there. What kind of accident have you been involved in? That will be probably a best way of starting a conversation, right? Just making, you know, how are you today and responding back to that in case the person responses, “Yeah, I’m good, thank you. How are you?”. Like just…
Grace: [00:20:49] Connection.
Liel: [00:20:50] …that normal cortices that, as you say, you would have them if you were talking to a person in front of you.
Brett: [00:20:55] Yeah. I mean, if you’re talking to, say, I was talking to Grace at the conference yesterday and she told me something bad, I wouldn’t just go into talking about a story from the night before or something like that. You’re gonna acknowledge it. And it’s the back and forth. That kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier about how it’s not a good policy to or not a good practice to jump in and try to convert a visitor right at the beginning of the chat. You want to give them a chance to get warmed up, to get comfortable with you, understand that you are a real person. Then you do actually care about their situation. I like to think of it like dating. If you meet somebody you’re interested in, you’re going to have a conversation to make sure there is a connection before you ask for a phone number. You’re not just going to say, Oh, hey, I’m Brett. Can I have your number? I mean, that might work, occasionally. Probably not going to work out very well for you. So that’s how I like to think of it.
Liel: [00:21:47] That’s actually a great example. Very well. Grace should we move on?
Grace: [00:21:53] Let’s move on to the next question. So the next question is going to help you guys listening. And you know, it’s because for us, this is one of those things that we want everybody to learn from this. And that’s why we brought Brett. We brought Brett on ,specifically, because I’ve never felt sold by Ngage to tell you the truth. I’ve always felt like they are there to help. And that’s one of those things that I love about speaking with Brett. And so, again, I appreciate you being on here to help us with this. So that leads me to this question, with so many platforms available to Ngage, you know, double entendre…
Brett: [00:22:28] I see what you did there
Grace: [00:22:30] …with perspective clients like Facebook, WhatsApp and text messages, it can be really challenging to keep track, right? So is there a way to streamline this? Can you help us out a little bit on here and tell us what we could do to, maybe, combine it? I don’t know. Tell me. Tell me, Brett. Tell us all.
Brett: [00:22:49] There are a few ways that we do help with this. I mean, we integrate with the Facebook messenger, basically hand integrate straight hand with like you would if you’re chatting with one of your buddies on Facebook. Same thing with us sms, we do all of that. We’ll chat with the visitor over text saying what they would on the Web site. But that being said, there is a lot of options out there where the firm can also do it themselves, kind of going back to what I was talking about before. One of the things that I have been hearing about more lately that it sounds like it worked very well for a lot of firms is this program called Zipp Web -I know a lot of the firms that have these these vanity numbers, especially like to use it, because that’s kind of your identity and your market, is these repeating numbers people remember them- so if you can actually communicate from that, it’s huge. So what Zipp Web does is it lets you I don’t even know if this is a real word, I’m making it one. It lets you make that number textable, so you can actually text with perspective clients from your main line. So on their phone, whenever they’re sending a text back and forth, they’re texting with the 3 3 3 3 3, 3, 3 number. And so you can either use that to help with conversion, you can throw it on a billboard or put on your Web site, “Hey, call or text this number”. But you can also through Zipp Web you can set up another number that can help you on the customer service side as well. You can say once a person is actually converted into a client, you can give them a number that they can either call or text. And that kind of goes back to some people’s preferred method of communication. If they’re at work and they want to be able to check on their case, they might not be able to call you. But if they can text a number, you can easily give them updates on their case. I think making yourself as available as possible to your clients is an easy way to one make them happy and make sure that they’re ready to refer you somebody which everyone loves a good referral. So if you’re not doing that, I would be all over that yesterday.
Grace: [00:25:09] Makes sense. So it really does go back to the preferred methods of communication. It goes back to the best practices we discussed. I mean, it goes back to all of the questions and everything. Basically, our entire conversation here, right? I mean, you’ve got to be there when they want you to be there. You need to be available in the method that they want you to be available in. And if you’re not, you’re basically being left behind.
Brett: [00:25:30] Yeah, I would agree. I talked to a lot of people that, not even counting text, just thinking about using live chat they…I have heard people literally tell me that if they don’t want to pick up the phone then they’re not a client that I want. If that’s the way you feel about it, by all means. But most people that want to grow their business you want to give your people every chance to contact you. And millennials get in wrecks and millennials like to text. And I mean, it’s not just them. But if a 19 year old gets in a wreck and they need an attorney, I’m willingly going to bet their first bet is not going to just be to pick up the phone. They’re going to text a number. And if you’re the guy with the easy number to remember and they know they can text it, you have a case.
Grace: [00:26:18] It’s such a good point.
Brett: [00:26:19] That easy.
Grace: [00:26:20] Such a good point. I mean, I just think about, you know, my daughter and when she got in a car accident, you know, she definitely communicated via different methods. Definitely not a phone call. I mean, I can even think of she was through What’s app, I believe. And so, you know, it’s definitely has to be a live chat component. And one of the biggest things, I think it’s difficult for people to manage this kind of in-house, which is, you know, even for us, like that’s why we use Ngage. But, you know, can you give us maybe just, you did give us some, but can you give us maybe one or two more tips for law firms that are doing this in-house? You know, kind of a little bit better, maybe the process.
Brett: [00:27:00] Yeah. So I would I would say the the main thing to do is not go for the kill early. That’s the thing that I want to emphasize the most is, the firms that really struggle with the in-house is that they go for that conversion too early. And if you really have somebody that you trust and sympathetic it goes back to what Liel was saying to you, you can do it right. You can show that empathy through the chat before you actually ask for that phone number. And if that person feels like you actually care about them, they’re going to give you that number when you ask for it. So I would say do that and then try to get set up with a chat system that will let you actually connect during the chat to the intake line. There is a massive difference in conversion between ending a chat and following up with them and getting a person on the phone while you’re chatting with them because, yeah, you might do a really good job of showing that empathy and getting them to like you. But a lot of people are really antsy about their issue and waiting 5, 10 minutes. There are some people that are gonna go, oh, wait, maybe I should keep looking around. If you get them on the phone during the chat, they’re not going anywhere else. They’re going to talk to you. And if you’re on your game, they’re yours.
Grace: [00:28:23] Yeah, I mean, personally, I feel special, right? Like, that’s the best term for me to use anyway. And when I go on a chat and I feel like not only do they listen to what I my problem might be, because most of the time I go on there for customer service, right? I mean, it’s a big component of why you kind of use live chatter, why you might be going on there. I just want to know what’s going on or what you can offer me or I’m asking a question specifically. So I’ll use live chat for that reason. And if I give them my phone number because I want them to talk me through something, whether it’s technical support or something else, whatever it might be. And they call me right when I ask to be called. I mean, that’s huge, right? I mean, I can imagine the conversions on something like that. I mean, you could speak a little better on that side of it than I can.
Brett: [00:29:10] Yeah. It’s a massive difference. Just think about it. If the conversation transitions to the phone over the chats even over with, they’re not looking at another firm. But I would say another thing to think about kind of going back to what I said before were a lot of firms mess up as they will try to answer questions over the chat. What we do, if somebody tries to ask us a question, it’s actually, it’s great. Someone tries asks a legal question because we actually take that as the opportunity to position the firm as the expert on it and that helps us convert because we’ll say, hey, I’m not the best person to answer this. Let me have Bob call you. But if you’re doing it yourself, you should always take that as an opportunity to transition it to a phone call by showing them that you do know the answer. But it’s easier to explain over a phone or something like that, because usually by then they at least know that someone’s available. And odds are that they’re at least warmed up more so than when they initiated the chat. So you have a better chance of converting them to a phone call there. But also going back to what I said, if somebody gets a question answered and they’re not committed a lot of times I will just leave the chat and I’ll go contact Jim down the road. But if you can get them on the phone just to answer that one question and you can just hook him just a little bit, you have such a better chance of converting a visitor to an actual client. It’s an absurd difference in conversion.
Grace: [00:30:50] So how do you feel like live chat be leveraged for a better experience to existing clients?
Brett: [00:30:57] So that usually I would say it goes for the firms that are trying to handle it themselves. What we’ve seen here at Ngage is that most firms, when they sign somebody up, they give them other methods to contact. So they’re not usually going through us. Somebody does. We’ll usually just take a message and send it over. But yeah, I would say if you’re actually handling it yourself, definitely make sure that when they do sign on with you, make sure they know that that is an option that they can use to contact you. It seems like the whole theme of this thing is just giving people options to contact you. Give them a text number give them a personal email, not personal, but, you know what i mean, a good number to call, but also say, hey, if you’re online searching, feel free to get on our Web site and check on your case and that’ll give them a chance to have all the comforting answers they need whenever they need it. Because people like to know what’s going on, especially if it’s a really big deal, but also it gives them a chance to check out the other content on your site. Check out the blogs, which is really informational. Check out your profile to see that you like football, you like baseball, you like all this good stuff. And then, that also helps you out on later on down the road, if they really like you, they’re more likely to tell their friends about you as well. So help them out as much as you can.
Liel: [00:32:29] That’s a great tip Brett and thank you so much for giving us so much general information about how to best practice live chat and, you know, not just live chat, but through different platforms. This is fantastic. Now, I know that before we jump into the next question, after that, it’s going to be a little bit hard to come back and ask my questions. So I’m going to have to ask it now. And it’s a little bit more kind of like the detail-oriented side. Right? So, Brett, how do you set up a good chat prompt, like what makes a good actual chat pop up on your Web site? What is it? Because I’ve seen everything I’ve seen from the picture of the attorney. And then you click on it and you’re not actually talking to the attorney. I’ve seen the picture of the same lady over 30 different sites. And you just cannot believe that that lady works in 30 different organizations. So…
Brett: [00:33:27] They are busy.
Liel: [00:33:27] …you get where I’m going to. So what makes for a good chat prompt, what’s like, what would be the best practice?
Brett: [00:33:33] So what kind of what we’ve been doing is we’ve been just really following Google because…
Liel: [00:33:41] OK.
Brett: [00:33:42] …Google as big as they are, what they…
Liel: [00:33:45] Always follow Google, right Grace? That’s like. Yeah.
Grace: [00:33:49] They came out with the interstitial pop up “NoNo”. A while back in Britain, I actually discussed this the last time we saw each other in Miami.
Brett: [00:33:57] Yup, I mean I can’t tell you how many times they forced our hand but when we’re talking about somewhere around 85 or 90 percent of searches are on Google, it’s a massive number. When they say jump, you kind of have to say how high. So we follow what Google says. It all started with the interstitials. We used to have this big pop up that came up in the middle that Google can answer. They don’t like that, that they even threatened to start punishing the rankings of firms that use the ad and or blocking it so that kind of started this evolution through the graphics. And so we’ve kind of been I want to say at any given time, we have maybe 40, 50 split tests going with just different ideas that somebody just be having a conversation at the office. Let’s try it. So it’s kind of evolved to this style that we use now, that’s what we call it, a mock chat. And it’s not in your face which makes Google happy. It doesn’t annoy the visitor toward to the point where they’re going to leave the website and stuff like that, where you need to find a happy spot where you’re not making them mad and annoying them, but you’re getting their attention. And so I think it’s evolved to the point where you’re out of the middle of the screen, you’re in the corners, but stay in the main corner, which is supposedly the numbers say people’s eyes gravitate to the right side. So the numbers of split tests that we’ve been doing say that something small but big enough on the right side to get their attention and not make them mad is the…
Liel: [00:35:43] Bottom or top?
Brett: [00:35:47] I like bottom. Bottom side, the numbers say that works better.
Liel: [00:35:50] Well, and I think I also like when you picture yourself like particularly through mobile devices, because as we know, most of converting traffic when it comes down to legal, come through mobile devices. Right? And so if you think about your experience navigating through a Website, like the way you actually hold your phone, the lower bottom right is closer to your thumb, which makes it way more easier to just convert. And you don’t have to, you know, use your secondary hand or something to click on your CTA. So it definitely goes hand-in-hand with UX, right? With user experience.
Brett: [00:36:24] Yeah, I mean, we even went as far as testing back in the days when we had the big pop up and then we tested which side put the left and the yes and no buttons. Little things like that across eight thousand sites, if you increase by half percentage, that’s a massive increase by the end of the month.
Liel: [00:36:44] I appreciate a lot that you answered 99 percent of my question, but not the picture. Whose picture should be there?
Brett: [00:36:53] Though I personally I think I would more gravitate towards the pretty blonde attorney, with pretty blonde picture with the headset. But we actually found out on an accident a couple years ago that an attorney looking guy converts a lot better. I want to talk about 20 to 25 percent better.
Liel: [00:37:16] Wow.
Brett: [00:37:17] It was just one of those things that an attorney, one of our clients said, hey, can you put my picture on there? We said, oh, I never thought about doing that. So it did. And it was just…
Liel: [00:37:27] Right.
Brett: [00:37:28] Eyeopening…
Liel: [00:37:29] Is it fair enough to say that it’s worth experimenting, Brett? Like show half of your visitors the picture, show half of your visitors another one. I’m not going to ask whether you guys are doing it or not, but just out of like, you know, for the sake of marketing, is that actually something that…
Brett: [00:37:44] Absolutely.
Liel: [00:37:44] Yeah, I think so. I think so, too. Oh, yeah
Brett: [00:37:47] So what does…
Liel: [00:37:49] All day.
Brett: [00:37:49] …are great We do. I mean, we don’t overdo it. We don’t want to make anybody mad. But that’s how we figure out most of our stuff. I mean, my favorite line is the numbers don’t lie.
Liel: [00:38:05] Yeah, absolutely.
Brett: [00:38:07] Something it’s, we’re gonna go with it.
Liel: [00:38:08] And I guess kind of like one of the mottos here we have going on Grace is, “there is no much guesswork when it comes down to marketing” at least not anymore, at least not in digital platforms. It’s very transparent. There’s a lot of data and the way that we should go about marketing is like make educated decisions based out on real data. As you were saying at the beginning, Brett, like there’s no need to involve here your gut feeling into making marketing decisions because you have data that can be backed up by actual user and client behavior. Well, Brett, thank you very much for sharing with us all of these insights. I guess there’s a lot that we can take here about the different ways that we can implement live chat and texting with clients in other platform. So I really, really appreciate your sharing with us all of these great ideas and best practices.
Grace: [00:38:59] Yes, thank you so much, Brett.
Brett: [00:39:00] Anytime, guys. It’s been fun.
Liel: [00:39:02] Well, Grace that was a great conversation with Brett. And so let’s go now directly to our takeaways. What would you say are the takeaways that our listeners should implement, particularly those who have not yet found a live chat solution for their Web site?
Grace: [00:39:22] So I think the key takeaways from what Brett was discussing with us, the name number one takeaway is to offer multiple conversion options to users visiting your site. Right? Be there in the preferred method of communication for the best experience for the user. Right? That’s number one. And then the next thing is there’s benefits to this. Right? So being in the space that they need you being in the way that they want you to communicate, whether it’s sms, text message excuse me, sms, text message, Whatsapp and any other method of communication. Just be there when they need you to be. And then some of this takeaways, I’d say, would be best practices that you can have in implementing. Make sure you have empathy. Right? That was a big deal. And that was a huge comment by both Liel and Brett and myself. Empathy via the chat. Don’t ask for their phone number before you ask how they’re doing.
Liel: [00:40:15] Yeah, make your text conversation human. Right? Like just be cordial and apply basic principles. Use name that sort of things. It’s just so basic.
Grace: [00:40:24] Exactly. I mean, I really, it should be number one takeaway. Right? And be empathetic. This is through live chat. So there’s still the opportunity to be empathetic. And then I think the real big thing is that you can do this in-house. You know, if you’re doing this in-house, there are ways to do it through Facebook, Whatsapp and through text messaging. Zipp Web was mentioned by Brett where you can create a textable number from your main number. So just be there when they need you and respond quickly. And there are different avenues that you can use this live chat functions, whether is through Facebook, WhatsApp or text messaging.
Liel: [00:41:04] Right. Because even if you don’t have a website yet, however, you do have a Facebook page will make sure that you are enabling messenger functions there and that you are using it as a platform to have conversations to potential visitors to your page and give them an opportunity to interact with you, via text, while they’re deciding whether they want to take a step further. And I think the other thing, Grace, that Brett made a point of very clearly here is that don’t rush the conversation, understand that the goal of that conversation is not always going to be to get them signed up right there and then via chat. It is just going to be building up to the next touchpoint, where you can actually take the conversation a step further or potentially into a full conversion. So, not rushing up things. What do you think about that one?
Grace: [00:41:59] Such a good point. Really. It’s right there. Up there with being empathetic, right? It’s alongside that. Don’t rush the conversation. Be present. Be an active listener, not a passive listener, including in text.
Liel: [00:42:12] Sounds just about right, Grace. So I think those are takeaways. It’s been great. Having this conversation with Brett and Grace with that, I must say that we’ve come to the end of the trilogy on intake and retention, and I think it’s fair to say that retention is going to kind of like carry forward a little beating as we go into the next conversations about case management referrals and review generation. So this is exciting, Grace. It’s been an amazing journey so far and we’re about to enter the last block on episodes for this 2020 Marketing Success Kit for law firms. So, Grace, I’m excited for our next recording and I’ll be talking to you next week.
Grace: [00:42:52] Awesome. Thanks so much, Liel.
Liel: [00:42:54] Thank you for joining Incomer our podcast. And we’ll be talking to you next week. If you like our show, make sure you subscribe, tell your co-workers. Leave us a review and send us your questions at ask@incamerapodcast.com. We’ll see you next week.
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