One of the things I love to do is take live chats from people who have found this blog. If you are reading this now, a live chat popup should have already appeared. If you click on it, and I’m at my desk or close to my phone, there’s a great chance that you will chat live with me. You can ask any questions that you have for free and in confidence.
When I’m not available I have operators that will answer the chats, but I’d say about 85% of live chats through this website are handled by an attorney. Customer service is very important to me and this is a great way to show the type of service we want to give you.
More and more of late I get people saying something like:
I don’t want to talk to a robot, I want a real person!
I’m always tempted to reply “Beep bop boop, does not compute,” but I try to avoid sarcasm in my professional life and know that most people who say that are frustrated or stressed.
I’ve done live chats with some of the companies I interact with and it’s really frustrating when you don’t have a live person on the chat. AI responses are the worst. It shows a sincere lack of effort and customer care. Even some that are answered by real people can suck because they just give canned responses and don’t seem like they are actually reading what you wrote.
As of late, all the buzz is about a new product called Chat GPT. It’s essentially AI that can learn over time and some people believe it will replace many human jobs. Well, I can tell you that WE will never use it.
There is no way a computer can know what questions to ask. They wouldn’t know what they should about your current representation if you have it. They wouldn’t be able to analyze legal issues that you aren’t even thinking about. And they certainly can’t show real compassion or empathy. They also can’t talk to you on the phone when you feel like talking instead of typing because you have a wrist injury or just prefer the phone.
None of these bots can tell you about recent experiences they’ve had at the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission or what their experiences have been with the insurance company on your case.
To me, these features are just another example of lazy lawyering. Some firms don’t want to talk to their clients. They’ll have paralegals or secretaries be your point of contact throughout the case even when you have legal questions. That is not customer service.
To me, when you see these AI chats, it’s a red flag that you shouldn’t hire that firm in the first place. No firm that cares about their clients would want to come up with reasons not to talk to them.
