What's wrong with my chat?

[tomfohr]

So, we have ContactAtOnce! Chat on our VinSolutions website (as well as Autotrader) and we have their "Chat Receptionist" feature or staffed chat as you would call it.... But in my opinion, it is just not performing at all.

For Starters, Last month we received a total of 417 Total Internet Leads and delivered 44 Vehicles for a closing ratio of 11% (or if you take out the 107 duplicates an adjusted closing ratio of 14%). Of those 417 leads, 38 were Chat Leads. Of the 44 Sold..... ZERO were any from Chat. I've watched the script the Staffed Chat service uses and I think this may have a lot to do with it. I also understand that some of the chat leads may have already submitted a different lead type so they may not be receiving credit for the sale but I would think that out of the 44 Sales at least a few should be from chat.

Can anyone tell me by looking at these numbers or the anyalitics below if I am missing something or are they really just performing THAT BAD?

Also, if they ARE, who would you recommend as a replacement?

Here is the full stats off my ContactAtOnce! backend tool:

Performance Summary
Category	Metric	Comments
Total Number of Chat Receptionist Requests	79
Number Answered by Advertiser	2
Net Number to Chat Receptionist Service	77
Total Number Answered	76
Answer %	99 %
Average Number of Messages
Average Duration [hh:mm:ss]	0:11:50
# Customer Name Captured	42
# Customer Telephone Captured	27
# Customer Email Captured	38

 

[Alex Snyder]

Your placement of the chat is generically placed at the top of every page on your website. How many of those 79 (or is 77?) chat leads are for actually buying a car?

 

[yagoparamo]

Tom,


What is important is website traffic Vs chats.What is your traffic VS the leads generated?


Chat may be great but website calls to action may be bad, confusing, or misplaced.

 

[nevarlawae]

Having the same issue. Chat receptionist is good for the Answer %.

If you read the chat logs you'll see some basic questions aren't answered up to par . It's nothing against CAO, but there's some things that are hard to answer unless you are in the dealership.

Read the logs .. You'll see what I'm talking about.

 

[tomfohr]

Tom,


What is important is website traffic Vs chats.What is your traffic VS the leads generated?


Chat may be great but website calls to action may be bad, confusing, or misplaced.

Here are the web stats from last month for Normal Traffic (Not including Mobile):

[COLOR=#005188 !important]Visits
3,787[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#005188 !important]Unique Visits
2,75472.72 % of 3,787 Total Visits[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#005188 !important]Page Views
25,536[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#005188 !important]Average Time on Site
05:31[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#005188 !important]Bounce Rate
24.85 %[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#005188 !important]Pages Per Visit
6.74[/COLOR]

 

[yagoparamo]

Tom,


Your traffic is that of a small store: 2,700 uniques. Based on that, your chat numbers don't look too bad compared with what I usually see.

That doesn't mean it can't be improved, I'm just trying to give you some comparative data for your benefit.

 

[tomfohr]

It wasn't the number of chat requests that I was concerned with, it was the closing ratio. Although we have a decent overall closing ratio for our internet leads, we are not closing any of our chat leads.

Tom,


Your traffic is that of a small store: 2,700 uniques. Based on that, your chat numbers don't look too bad compared with what I usually see.

That doesn't mean it can't be improved, I'm just trying to give you some comparative data for your benefit.

 

[yagoparamo]

It wasn't the number of chat requests that I was concerned with, it was the closing ratio. Although we have a decent overall closing ratio for our internet leads, we are not closing any of our chat leads.

Then what ewalraven wrote is your best approach: What is the approach of the person answering the chats? Have you mystery shopped yourself on your chat?

 

[Sachin Raja]

For comparison, our Chat (Managed) by Carchat24 performed as follows over the last 20 days (we launched our new website 20 days ago):

7454 Unique Visitors (according to their reporting, Google Analytics says 6997)
148 Chats
85 Leads (Email or Phone)
5 Vehicles sold so far from the chats, obviously still working the leads from this period

As always Carchat24 always has great service and wonderful to work with

 

[anthonycapital]

I am going to put out a random compliment for Dealer E Process... their chat reps are far from perfect but in terms of getting away from a script and actually engaging customers they do an amazing job! I have seen them go to a near "Disney" level of customer service, searching the web for information for a customer, making light "jokes", really well done. And if we ever have a problem I find they are surprisingly responsive to our feedback. Anthony