• Stop being a LURKER - join our dealer community and get involved. Sign up and start a conversation.

Gubagoo Chat

mikeelmore

Hat Trick
Apr 16, 2009
99
3
First Name
Mike
Hello all......

Does anyone have any information, personal experience with a chat service vendor by the name of Gubagoo?

Thank in advance for your help and input.

Mike


PLEASE NOTE: At this point I would appreciate hearing from DEALERS ONLY and not from other services, including Gubagoo. Thanks.
 
I can provide my personal feedback as one of my clients is currently using the service and I have used numerous others (ActiveEngage and LiveAdmins as well as another I cannot recall).
  1. Their setup is pretty good, but doesn't seem that flexible. I sent across quite a few questions about their toolbar and why it had to be a certain way and it was indicated to me that certain aspects of the toolbar were the same for every client
  2. The chat isn't too invasive, but it' readily available. The chat windows and toolbar look much better than most and it's not too offensive
  3. The chat quality was quite good in my experience - the way they integrate your inventory into their system makes it a much higher quality experience for the customer because it genuinely appears that the person knows the inventory and can easily pull specific stock numbers that you may be interested in
For me, the shortcomings were:
  1. I don't like toolbars and if I was using the service it wouldn't be through a toolbar. The toolbar's "quick access" to all sorts of things plays with my analytics and I find them to be an eyesore no matter how well they're done
  2. The names and photos on the chat windows are very obviously fake. The window pops up with a picture of a woman and says "Andrea is ready to speak with you" - as soon as you click it and say "Hello Andrea, I'm looking for a ___________" a new conversation will be started with someone else named Monica or Andrew. It's a minor disconnect but it's very obvious when it happens.
  3. I found some of the responses slow, as if they were maybe handling too many conversations. I can't back this up with any hard metrics, but occasionally I would ask a simple question and it would take too long to provide a phone number, etc.
From what I understand all their chat reps are in North America and I noticed a difference between that and another company we used that outsources much of the conversation - things like tact, ability to explain and customer service were significantly better with Gubagoo.

All that said, I'm not a big fan of live chat unless it's perfect or it's with someone in the dealership who can answer the questions themselves.
 
  • Useful
Reactions: JessicaRuth
@mikeelmore you don't ever have to worry about vendors pouncing on your here. Won't happen.

I have found Gubagoo to be VERY intrusive from my experiences with it. However, if there are various levels of it....my clients haven't chosen to simmer down:)

No matter what chat provider you go with be sure to check how it performs on mobile. Nothing is more annoying than finding the BEST car ever and then BAM! a stupid chat window pops up that can't render on mobile and everything is wrecked.

What other providers have you checked out?
 
  • Like
Reactions: craigh
No matter what chat provider you go with be sure to check how it performs on mobile. Nothing is more annoying than finding the BEST car ever and then BAM! a stupid chat window pops up that can't render on mobile and everything is wrecked.

Damn - you got me! That's usually my go to advice and I completely missed the boat this time :)
Responsive websites by Vendor A with chat integration from Vendor B = explosions.
If you're going to add communication to mobile I recommend a robust text message integration direct to your departments.

Things to watch out for:
  1. Chat prompts on every page, even after they were dismissed previously
  2. Aggressive/intrusive chat windows before visitor has shown intent (ie: viewed 2 vehicles)
  3. Colors not matching the website or taking away from the current focal points (ie: CTA buttons)
Things to watch out for if you do a trial with them:
  1. Reduced number of phone calls due to live chat - were the chat logs as valuable as any number of phone calls that were lost?
  2. Proper analytics on where users are clicking, how many dismiss chats, how often windows are injected, etc
  3. Read some chat logs - When working with another vendor I was reading through some of the chat logs and finding some very unprofessional dialogue or indications that the chat employee didn't work at the store and really knew nothing. We also struggled with some misinformation coming from the chat reps which is very probable given how many different clients one employee could serve - they're human after all.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jeff Kershner
To echo what others are saying, I've dabbled with all of them and the mobile/sms part is usually the dealbreaker for me. You guys are currently using ContactAtOnce which I've had the most consistent results with. What do you feel like your current solution is missing?
 
actually, my dealer & gm asked me to check it out as they were shown fabulous posts about it on Driving Sales.....
naturally, I told them let me get a "real world" perspective on that service, hence the reason I asked my question here in the forums....