Friday, July 20, 2018

'Live Help' Offers Online Legal Assistance in Real Time -- and en Español


By Ramzi Badwi, Program and Outreach Coordinator, Michigan Legal Help

Visiting a website for the first time can be a frustrating experience.  It can take time for a user to find what they need, especially for those who are not very comfortable using a computer.  One of the ways we remedy this on michiganlegalhelp.org is by providing “Live Help,” an online chat feature similar to a customer service help desk.  Using this service, agents can answer a visitor’s questions in real time and provide links to our own content, quotes from our materials, or links to other trusted sources.

If a visitor is having trouble, they can click the orange chat bubble on the lower right-hand side of any page on michiganlegalhelp.org.  During Live Help hours, (11 am to 3 pm, Monday through Friday) this will send out a “call” to the agent or agents currently working.  After an agent accepts the call, a chat window appears on the visitor’s screen and the call begins.  If a visitor clicks the chat bubble at a time when Live Help is closed, a window appears that allows them to send a message directly to our after-hours e-mail address.  We respond to these e-mails in 24 to 48 hours, Monday through Friday.  This chat service is also available to visitors to our Spanish site, ayudalegaldemichigan.org.

Behind the Curtain: Predefined Content

To a Live Help visitor, it may seem like the chat agents are legal information gurus, but these agents are not acting alone - they are a part of a strong, supportive network.  Our agents spend several hours being trained by Michigan Legal Help staff, familiarizing themselves with the website, and engaging in mock chats.  In addition to this, they have a secret weapon that we call “predefined content.”

 If you have ever interacted with an online help desk, you may have wondered how the agent responded to your questions so thoroughly and quickly.  They probably had “canned responses” or “predefined content” - previously drafted responses to some of the most common questions.  Once an agent takes a call on Live Help, a window appears containing many previously formulated responses that are organized by their subject matter.

 Once an agent clicks on one of these messages, its content is automatically pasted to their chat window.  At that point the agent can either edit the message or simply send it to the visitor.  These predefined messages help the agents respond to visitors quickly and accurately and also helps us ensure visitors receive consistent service from Michigan Legal Help, no matter which agent is chatting with them.

Let’s consider an example to illustrate how these messages are used.  Imagine that a visitor tells an agent that she is divorced from the other parent of her child.  A child support order is in place, but the ex-spouse is not paying the amount specified in the order.  The agent can simply click the predefined content button for “Needs to Enforce Custody, Support or Parenting Time Order” under the “Custody Issues” section.  The following message will then appear in the draft box of the agent’s chat window:

If your child’s other parent doesn’t obey the court order for child support, custody, or parenting time, you can file a motion to ask the court to enforce it or change it.  Click this link to the article Enforcing Orders for Custody, Parenting Time, and Child Support to read an article that explains enforcement of these issues.

These template messages are a simple way to provide efficient and well-rounded service to the most common issues a Live Help agent will encounter.  They often include convenient links to relevant content; for example, the passage above includes a hyperlink to the “Enforcing Orders for Custody, Parenting Time, and Child Support” article on our website.  All of our pre-formulated responses have been carefully drafted by Michigan Legal Help staff and are reviewed and updated as needed.  It is also worth noting that we have Spanish predefined content to assist the Spanish Live Help agents as well.

Our Visitors: What Are They Looking For?

Visitors come to Live Help for all sorts of reasons, most of which are tied to a legal issue or procedure that we cover on the website.  Michigan Legal Help has a few different tools we use to keep a finger on the pulse of Live Help and its users.  One of these tools is the “Conversation Summary.”  This a survey that the agent fills out as the chat progresses, detailing the subject of their chat by filling out a series of checkboxes.  There are 34 descriptors in total that include legal issues like domestic violence, paternity, and eviction.  There are also other options like those that indicate the chat was prematurely ended or that the visitor was seeking an attorney or legal aid office referral.

In 2017, our agents handled 3,961 Live Help chats, an average of about 330 per month.  The most popular legal issues that visitors asked about were divorce, attorney referral, and custody which made up about 17 percent, nine percent, and eight percent of the total chats respectively.  This concurs with the traffic on the website as the most popular area of content is Family, which contains our divorce and custody materials.

Our Agents: Who Are They?

Live Help is an essential aspect of Michigan Legal Help, and the agents that operate it are a large part of what make it possible. Most of our agents are students currently attending law school in Michigan; in fact, we usually reach our potential agents by holding a presentation on their campus.  One of our biggest draws for these students is that their time spent with Live Help can be counted as Pro Bono hours.  The position is also done remotely, requiring just a computer and an Internet connection, a feature that is attractive to many potential agents.  Another valuable aspect of the position is that it involves interacting with real people who have real legal problems.  This gives students a chance to gain experience with issue spotting, a valuable skill they will need in their future careers.  As you may already know, there are five law schools in Michigan: Michigan State University College of Law, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, University of Michigan Law School, Wayne State University Law School, and Western Michigan University Cooley Law School.  We have a relationship with each of these schools, regularly holding presentations on their campuses and training their students to become Live Help agents.

Our agents go through a brief yet thorough training process to ensure that they are ready to help visitors to the website.  First, agents attend a 60-minute training presentation, either in-person or online.  Afterward, they are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the website and are guided through our materials by completing a practice packet.  They also use one of our Do-It-Yourself Form tools to generate a mock letter requesting that their landlord return their security deposit.  This is all done to help them get a better sense of what a visitor might be referencing in a future chat.  In addition to these tasks, agents-in-training complete two practice chat sessions in which they respond to mock questions from a Michigan Legal Help staff member.  This is meant to simulate a real chat and get an agent comfortable with the types of questions they will be receiving.

After the chats have been successfully completed they are given constructive feedback and then activated as an agent.  They can begin signing up for shifts and taking real calls at their soonest availability.  At the beginning of every shift, the Live Help supervisor will introduce themselves to the agents that are on the schedule and encourage them to let them know if they have any questions.  Michigan Legal Help staff are on hand at all times in case an agent has a question or needs to transfer a difficult chat.  MLH staff attorneys also review a portion of every agent’s transcripts to provide supervision to the students and give them feedback on their work.

Michigan Legal Help aims to be a valuable resource for those who are handling their legal problems without a lawyer.  We want to be as accessible as possible to everyone who needs us, trying our best to make our website easy to read and easy to use.  Our Live Help chat service is just another part of this solution.  Live Help can be used to assist a visitor who can’t find what they need or doesn’t know where to start.  We realize that not all of our visitors are tech-savvy or knowledgeable of the law, and we want to help them too.  The next time you encounter someone who can’t find the legal information they need, refer them to michiganlegalhelp.org and our Live Help chat feature!