Chat Challenge: Show Me Your Chat

[Daniel J. Mondello]

I'd also love to see some stats on chat agent icons using actual dealer staff photos and their conversion rates. Anyone have any thing like this?

 

[Daniel J. Mondello]

From a car shoppers POV, aggressive chat boxes are a lot like photobombs
View attachment 2008

It's hard to concentrate on the main topic when...

If that kid wasn't wearing muppet-blue shorts I wouldn't have even seen him...

 

[Stephen Jackson]

I think based off my secret shopping competition websites that a Fully Integrated Chat "in" the website is a very important part of the equation. Just like Facebook would have when chatting with your friends. Most Chats I have seen pop up in a separate window that I lose amongst the 3-4 windows that I have open at the time and disappear behind other windows.

Is there a reason that carchat24 & activengate & CAO & almost everyone in CHAT has a separate window open?

Erik,

Great question. In-window chat is something that ActivEngage has played around with quite a bit. We know that we live in an era of tabbed browsing, and opening a new window doesn't always make sense. But putting chat on the same page walks a very thin line. If the chat window is too big, it ends up obscuring inventory and other elements of the dealer site. If it's too small, it becomes very hard to read and interact with.

I've been reading J.D.'s discussion as well as several other threads about chat, and it seems to me like the issue most of you guys have is with interface design. I hear a lot of words like "intrusive" and "obnoxious." I understand exactly what you mean. I think that, going forward, the most successful chat provider won't be the one that makes graphics that stand out the most; it will be the one that blends in. The idea behind chat is not to make invitations that get away, that hound shoppers into giving out their lead info. Instead, we aim to provide an accessible line of communication for shoppers who want to talk - and we get out of the way for those that don't!

Thanks for the valuable feedback! We'll continue to iterate on new chat designs.

 

[Sachin Raja]

We are currently using Carchat24 and have been overall happy with them. Recently I've also been talking to Live Admin (http://liveadmins.com/) and they do managed chat for Dealerships as well. One of my friends at another local dealership used them (while he was at the Honda store) and apparently had great results. I think that no matter what there will always be a fundamental disconnect between managed chat and operators that work at the dealership. One of the things I have been trying to keep a track of is the chat to lead ratio.

Things to keep in mind for these stats: We are an independent pre-owned dealership and do not have a service/parts/body department. Just pre-owned sales.

YTD (according to Carchat24's stats) we are sitting at 56%
For all of 2013 it was 52.8%
I did run 1 week where there was no chat invite/popup. During that week the ratio increased to 66% (2 out of 3 chats resulted in leads).
Lastly, 38% of chats were started from Invites, another 38% from the bar at the bottom right of the screen.

Does anyone have any stats where they have changed from 1 provider to another? Or from managed chat to handling it in house?

 

[JD Rucker]

Completed our first chat vendor review. Contacting more. Who's next?

 

[joe.pistell]

From my experiences, some KPIs are:

__% chats per visitor
__% answered
__% with full contact info
--__% with name & email
--__% with name & phone number
__% Sold



Example:
AcmeFord.com Chat Vendor #3
3% chats per visitor (1,000 visits w/30 chats)
99% answered
85% with full contact info (30 chats, 26 w/contact info)
--20% with name & email (5 of 26 chats have email)
--% with name & phone number (19 of 26 chats have phone#)
12% Sold (3 sales from 26 chats)

 

[Shereef]

All chats are technically the same, but not all managed services are. There are some out there that incentivize their own staff heavily on lead capture (not sure how CarChat24 incentivizes their staff).

Alex

We manage our Chat Team similar to how a dealership manages a sales team. Volume of Chats, Conversion Percentages of Sales, Service, and Parts Chats, and overall Customer Satisfaction Score. Our Dealership Chat Specialists have to maintain above our average in All areas to gain bonuses. The more they achieve the more they make (If they gain higher conversion, but are below our average in Customer Satisfaction, than no bonus is paid). Of course as a Managed Chat Provider we want to maximize lead volume, but are very careful not to do so at the expense of customer satisfaction. If customer satisfaction is not tied to a pay plan or bonus plan than short cuts would be taken and the quality of support service would suffer. Providers that are strictly after the lead and not offering a quality level of support are damaging dealers overall sales and reputation in my opinion.

 

[Chris Leslie]

I know I'm a little late to this party but here's my 2 cents.

When end it comes to chat it needs to be easy to use by both parties. It needs to be flexible and from a manager standpoint and so on.

Every automotive chat vendor I've seen focus on the wrong metrics in my opinion. Yes response time and whatever else metric you feel like using to try and justify a roi is important. But the thing is, is that not one vendor approaches thief offering from a user standpoint.

This is is why I use tawk.to : I met these guys at Pubcon and offer a free.. Yes I said that.. Free chat platform that is easier, more robust and did I mention free.

I look after 4 dealerships. In my dashboard I am able to build each store. Each store I have set different depts. each department has their users and when someone chats from a parts page. They would speak to a parts rep. Not then bdc.

I would suggest anyone to check it out.. Tawk.to

 

[conor.bergman]

uShare.to has built upon the ‘standard model’ for chat, with the understanding that text to text conversation can be both incredibly convenient as well as incredibly impersonal. We offer both audio and video options built right in to the standard text chat software, with easy one-click access. Beyond the ad-hoc chat, we allow the buyer to manage the entire transaction with file sharing, conversation history, email integration and more. Unlike other solutions, you can use uShare.to throughout your entire pipeline, from lead to after sales service, all through one platform.

 

[Alexander Lau]

If you have the right tech people...

https://rocket.chat

Open Source
With 16.8k stars on GitHub and more than 850 contributors across our products, we are the largest and most active open source team chat solution.

LiveChat
With Rocket.Chat LiveChat you can add real-time chat widgets to any website or mobile app and get more value from your team chat.

Ditch other systems and use one communication platform to save time and money. Create a user support helpdesk, answer customer queries and convert leads.