[CAORYAN]

I would say that the biggest misconception of chat from dealers is that people have to sit in front of the computer all day. With presence based technology chat disappears completely from your website when your presence is showing offline. You never have to turn it off or on. In my experience if a dealer has to turn something off or on it doesn't work. Look at your computers, all my guys used to leave them on every night.

With the technology of mobile chat you can now chat from your cell phones. We also have many dealers with salesmen that download it on their home pc's and take chats at night.

Chat is just like the phone and email......if you don't answer you won't sell that car if you do there is a chance. What you put in it is what you get out of it.

I had a dealer tell me once that "all these people are trying to talk to me and I can't stand it, it gets on my nerves". That person is not from the same school I am.

My theory is you have 3 types of people. People who are great, people that are great and help other be great, and those who will never be great. All chat takes is a little effort and the "want to".

[merritt]

Originally Posted by classicchevyjustin

I think that it is essential that the chat be covered at all hours. My staff covers is during business hours, and is outsourced after. The chat module has become so popular amongst my staff, that we had it installed on some of their personal laptops and they will chat after hours and on Sundays (when we are closed.) My LMA is sponsoring an outsourced chat product. Throughout the time that this was our sole chat product, I never saw results. We then switched to Client Connexion, which allows our own sales staff to chat, it has produced incredible results. I certainly don't think that you can open chat up to your entire sales staff, but more importantly, I don't think a non employee can convert near as many customers. That is the most important thing to chat...... CONVERSION. The chat has become so highly regarded, that our top salesman in the dept reached that point solely off of chat! If managed correctly and operated properly, chat is probably one of, if not, the highest quality leads in the E-Commerce world.

Those are some great points Justin, but I have to disagree on the non-employee conversion. Comparing apples to apples, statistics are showing the lead conversion for a dealership managing their own chat at around 40% and a outsourced managed chat up to 80%.

The bottom line is that you want the leads while offering great customer service. More leads are more leads... which should lend itself to more sales. Just pointing out that statistically speaking, those non-employees of the dealership are the ones creating larger numbers overall.

Other than that... kudos to being one of the few forward thinking dealers and recognizing the importance of chat in today's market.

[AndrewDiFeo]

We just starting outsourcing our chat to Activengage and so far I am very pleased with the quantity of chats taking place, but more important, the qualify of the representatives doing the chatting. Only been on it since the beginning of May, but so far so good.

[CAORYAN]

customer goes to website...wants info, starts a chat. They have to give their info and wait on a reply while your internet team waits on an email. Does something feel a little wrong here? Your basically saying it is a glorified form lead. The experience for your site visitors is not great and you now are chasing a customer via phone and email that once was live on chat.

This would be equal to your receptionist at your store answering phone calls and saying, "can I have your info and sales will call you back."

Lets give people a little credit. They are thinking before they start the chat "is this person at the store or not".

Again, I make money when people choose to outsource with us but no matter how you do it the experience isn't better than chatting live with the dealer.

I have yet to find a dealer that is willing to embrace it and chat failed.

[RogerG]

Hmm, here in the UK we love the interweb thing. Live chat is obviously some kind of voodoo, and we are busy bringing valued and trusted colleagues up to steam on this.

"I'd like you best price for a Land Cruiser"
" I'd be happy to give you that, but my Manager will need a lock of of your hair"
"why?"
"well we use voodoo, old school I know, but it works"
"so you want a lock of my hair then?"
"if this is an objection sir, I will need to note it"
"I will send you a jiffy bag in the post, you just snip and send.. job done"
"can I also have your name and blood type?:
"so you want my name, hair and blood type?"
"yes we do, as we live to serve at Cliff Edge Toyota"
"your dna and blood type will help our business managers hone the best finance deal for you, could you also let us know the colour of you eyes?"
"so you want to know the colour of my eyes, my DNA and blood type?"

ding dang diggidy do .. yes we do! ( you might have heard that on our radio commercial )

"it's only for the banks you see"
"they need to know stuff"
"had some bad experiences in the recent past" not you sir but the banks
"they are skitty now"
"we can send a rep round, he has all the tests in his trolley bag"
"might need you to poop as well though, just a final test to make sure it's you"
"so all that said and done, what colour would you like?"
"hello"
"hello"
"yikes he's logged off"

[Jeff Kershner]

[Alex Snyder]

Roger

[merritt]

now that is LOL

[RogerG]

I live to serve :: bows ::

[JoeBrouillette]

I would agree that Contact at Once has lead to a high appointment rate. I don't have 100% accurate lifetime stats, but I believe i'm at a 75% lifetime appointment rate on chat. I find it's very effective and you have a captive audience