Continuing our ongoing Clearway Investigates series, we’ll be placing Ngage Live Chat under the microscope.

Is this the right live chat solution for your law firm’s website?

In the world of digital add-ons to help augment your online presence, live chat is probably the most visible, and front and center, representing your business to the public. You’ve seen it. You navigate to a new website and as the home page loads, you’re greeted with a friendly pop-up welcome, usually emanating from the lower right of your screen.

Online chat is nothing new

In fact, live chat has come a long way since the AOL messenger days (look it up, kids!). Today, live chat is almost a necessity for every business online, big or small. You’ll see it in the form of a welcome chat pop-up as we’ve described above, or employed for technical or customer support applications, as you may have experienced with your mobile phone or internet provider. It’s a popular time and manpower saver for many big brands out there.

And if you’ve had any experience with online live chat at all, I’m sure you’ve experienced the mind-numbing and soul-crushing experience of dealing with an automated, or robot response system. Systems like these are designed to mimic real, human interactions, but unless they are implemented carefully and thoughtfully, they tend to fail pretty miserably.

If you have a website for your new legal practice and you are looking to keep visitors on-site longer and encourage more conversions into real, paying clients, live chat is certainly a worthy avenue to explore. Studies have shown that live chat can improve conversions by up 30%. It’s a fantastic tool for both sales and providing a stellar customer service experience to current and potential clients.

But the real question is – what is the best option? As with many service providers, a wealth of options is both a blessing and a curse.

Allow us to make your decision just a little bit easier as we examine the Ngage Live Chat platform for legal websites.

What is Ngage Live Chat?

Ngage is a well-established live chat service platform that provides a live, pop-up chat integration service with your website. They offer integrations with businesses across several different verticals, including several different law practice areas.

Ngage employs operators to provide this service to their client’s websites 24/7. It’s both a sales and customer service tool. The service is designed to engage potential customers as soon as they navigate to a website before they have a chance to navigate away. Ngage operators are trained to grab customers’ attention quickly and then collect their information so a member of your company can follow up.

The Ngage website claims its operators employ a proven method that has been shown to improve the overall conversion rate of the website. This is done by quickly narrowing in on the issue the site visitor is looking for help with, and then collecting all relevant information.

At the conclusion of each chat, a full summary is then sent to the business, so an employee can follow up on the lead. This is all completed within 5 or 10 minutes, so a quick follow-up can occur. Studies show the quicker you can follow up with a lead, the better.

Does live chat really make a difference?

The short answer is yes.

In an industry where it is especially important to represent yourself as responsive and accessible, live chat provides another great avenue to engage with your potential customer base.

It’s also a great way to communicate with your client base in a medium they love. Consumers gravitate toward chat because it’s consistently proven to be a fast and convenient way to get access to the information they are looking for. It’s also been found that users are more willing to openly share certain kinds of information through chat that they might not share through other communication channels.

In addition to providing an excellent avenue for providing incredible customer service to your client base, live chat can also serve an important sales function. As we’ve pointed out before, sales-focused live chat agents can zero in on the essential client information you need to properly follow up and close the sale. You can also address client concerns proactively before they are able to navigate away from your website.

In short, live chat can be an invaluable addition to your marketing efforts if implemented properly. It can help connect your business with consumers through the lightning-fast experience they expect.

The main difference between live chat and automated messaging services is the human factor. Many automated messaging services use bots to help answer common queries, but as we mentioned above, the end results can often be clunky and less than spectacular. The human live chat aspect allows for the creation of stronger, real human connections that make a lasting difference in the long run.

How does Ngage stack up to other live chat providers?

From what we’ve been able to uncover, Ngage is head and shoulders above many of its competitors in the space. We’ve scanned through pages of review sites like G2.com and Trustpilot. 

The reviews are almost exclusively positive.

A big plus for Ngage is its specialized nature. The tool is affiliated with the Martindale-Avvo network of websites and online tools that we’ve covered with increasing amounts of exhausting detail. The company may have a near monopoly on the online space when it comes to the legal industry, but this position provides certain benefits. They really do know what they are doing.

As we mentioned, a good live chat tool can be a great addition to the sales funnel and Ngage is especially sales and conversion-focused. Plus, the company has been working in the legal space for years. A big selling feature on the websites is Ngage’s specialized chat scripts and trained operators. The system is designed to feel natural and inviting while still keeping the end goal of capturing sales leads at the forefront of client communications.

Is Ngage easy to use?

A big positive selling feature of the Ngage live chat service is its “out-of-the-box” nature and quick setup.

Ngage live chat can be quickly and easily integrated with your legal website by simply adding a snippet of javascript code into any consistent element of your website on all pages – probably your header or footer section. Before this, Ngage will customize the chat box that will appear on your website so it features your company’s logo and matches the overall design aesthetic of your website (your brand’s colour scheme, fonts, etc.).

And that’s about it.

Unlike some less expensive (or free) live chat options, Ngage employs live chat operators to answer questions from site visitors. This means the bulk of the work managing the chat is done by these operators. At the conclusion of each chat, a summary will be sent to a designated person in your organization for follow-up and more detailed correspondence.

What does Ngage Live Chat cost?

All of this sounds pretty great.

But, a full service like this is bound to cost you dearly, right?

Well, maybe. Ngage Live Chat employs a unique cost-per-lead pricing structure. First off, you’ll pay an upfront fee that covers the collection of your business information as well as customization to the live chat integration so it matches your website. After that, your regular monthly invoice amount will depend on the number of verified leads you receive.

As you can imagine, monthly amounts could vary wildly depending on the amount of traffic your website attracts and the nature of your legal practice. A high-volume legal practice with a popular, high-traffic website will pay significantly more than a start-up law firm with a more low-volume legal specialization.

Qualified Lead Disputes

Just a quick note about qualified leads. The Ngage website mentions that some irrelevant leads/chats will be automatically and proactively not charged by operators if they are clearly not relevant leads.

Beyond that though, you may find yourself having to wade through a good number of leads irrelevant to your specialization or service area. The Ngage policy is to send you any leads your website collects and leave it up to the business to decide if they are relevant or not. If a lead is not relevant, there is a dispute process you’ll have to follow so you don’t end up paying for these leads.

Again, depending on overall lead volume, this could become a significant drain on your time.

Ngage Live Chat Review – Final Thoughts

If your legal practice is in growth mode and you are looking for ways to get more from your website, a live chat feature is almost always going to be a welcome addition. The question then becomes – which service provider is the right choice for your business?

If you’re looking for an out-of-the-box, turn-key solution then it’s hard to go wrong with Ngage Live Chat. The service brings trained operators with specialized legal industry-specific training to help pre-qualify website visitors and help turn them into real, paying customers.

That’s if you can afford it. There are definitely cheaper options out there, but any savings you gain from setup and implementation will be eaten up by your or your employees’ time managing the chat function. One major advantage of Ngage is that it is fully manned, with only pre-qualified leads funnelled to your company for follow-up.

The service’s unique pricing structure does leave pricing a little up in there. As your legal practice grows and your company builds an online following and increased traffic to your website, Ngage’s cost-per-lead policy will also grow.

There you have it. Please check back regularly for future installments of Clearway Investigates. We love digging up the dirt and helping legal businesses just like yours grow and make informed decisions. 

Let us know if you have any questions or if there are service providers out there you’d like us to shine our spotlight on.