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TAKE POLL How many offers to CHAT would frustrate YOU?

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#31
autodealerchat said:
Hey Everyone,

It's Aaron from Contact At Once!. As many of you know, Contact At Once! is the chat of choice for most dealerships, third party sites and OEMs and we couldn't agree more that a positive customer experience should be the driving force behind every chat implementation. Our current recommendations are born of the principle that those who want to chat will, and those that absolutely do not want to chat should be allowed to have an uninhibited experience with the website while continuing to have the communication options available (should they change their mind).

Our standard integration currently anchors text and chat buttons on the right side of the browser window, out of the way of the website’s main content so that chat is welcoming and accessible, but not intrusive.

We've replaced the falling business card size chat invitation (moving top to bottom) with a more subtle and smooth entrance where the photo invitation peeks out from the bottom, right side of the page. The live photo of the actual agent answering the chat is the focus of our photo invitations as it helps visitors build trust and rapport with the dealership and enhances the website experience.

From there this invitation minimizes into a smaller tab after one minute and remains out of the way at the bottom, right side of the page. Of course at any time, the visitor can choose to have the invitation go away for a period of an hour by clicking on the ‘X’.

And...that's just the desktop implementation. Mobile chat (and text) implementation is another conversation. The good news is that our software is highly customizable, so we can work closely with our customers to help them implement the chat (and text) configuration that works best for their business.

Excellent topic. Thanks for bringing it up!
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Hi Aaron,

Thanks for posting! I'm looking into the new "subtle and smooth" entrance for our desktop as we currently still have the business card style chat invite (moving top to bottom) on our site. Also, we have found that the live photo invitation is often NOT the actual agent that answers the chat request. This sometimes creates confusion for the consumer.
 
#32
craigh said:
Now that we're having this conversation I'm very interested.

http://www.autoremarketing.com/system/files/DataiumChat_WhitePaperUpdate.pdf





As a numbers guy, I'm just struggling with some of these statements.
I typically try and stick to independent studies that aren't commissioned because I have some personal experience with commissioned studies and know firsthand how easily they can be skewed. I will keep reading and trying to find information from other sources. We have been trying live chat and we're still interested in finding the correct way to do it, but I have not been able to replicate any of the amazing stats online.
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I am a numbers guy as well, and I follow your logic 100%!

Data in and of itself is such a wonderful thing. Data makes no claims, it simply reports happenings. The numbers are pure and innocent. There is nothing to it one way or another. Interpretation of that data is where things get cloudy. So often, data interpretation can be skewed by the use of deductive reasoning and squeezing that data into logic equations in which it was not initially intended. The most common error in this manipulation is a small data pool. I have always struggled with this because I have never worked in an environment in which I could apply any data interpretation to a very large pool.

Sometimes data can give us tremendous insight. Sometimes it simply tells us nothing. I believe that this is what we are dealing with here. 1 in 3 people that identified themselves through chat bought within 90 days. So? "Bought"? Bought where? Bought from the dealer that they initiated chat with? How many dealers did they initiate chat with? What percentage of customers that picked up the phone and called a store purchased within 90 days? I personally believe that we are micro-analyzing a group of people that actually "will use" chat, not necessarily demand chat.

I dropped chat from my website about 60 days ago. I am certainly not saying that chat is bad. I am unquestionably saying that a chat icon was a waste of real estate for me. My customers just didn't click on that button. I sure wish they would have. Oh, and before all of you vendors start blowing up my phone, I tried 3rd party chat, mobile chat, pop up chat window with employee pictures and without, drop down chat windows, about 10 different color combinations, a small chat icon on all 4 corners as well as floating on the side, time delay between 5 seconds and 60 seconds on a page, as well as dealership initiated chat in which we manually invited customers to chat by live monitoring of the actual site visit. It didn't work.
 
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#33
These are some of the reasons I have partnered with Sales Text Chat. I get so tired of the bothersome buttons on a website, also the delay in live chat is very annoying. I think people chat so much in their daily lives it is only logical Text Chat is the way to go.
 
#38
I guess I need to reference back which buttons I was referring to. This whole thread was based on Jeff Kershner's comment of

"When was the last time you stepped through your own dealer website and at one point found yourself frustrated because every damn time you went to a new page, some Chat invite was sliding down the page, popping up in your face or worse yet - causing the page to load so slow it would have been quicker to walk outside and physically touch the vehicle!?"

Those are the buttons that I too find bothersome. If you just look around you find everyone is texting, most are not talking on their phone, but texting. It makes sense that with a chat vehicle that people are attracted to you would not need to have such obtrusive buttons that slide all over the page, with sales person's faces on them offering you gift cards to chat with them.
So yes, Ed, Darn those buttons. I did not know I needed to point out the whole basis of the thread.
 
#39
tracourt said:
I guess I need to reference back which buttons I was referring to. This whole thread was based on Jeff Kershner's comment of

"When was the last time you stepped through your own dealer website and at one point found yourself frustrated because every damn time you went to a new page, some Chat invite was sliding down the page, popping up in your face or worse yet - causing the page to load so slow it would have been quicker to walk outside and physically touch the vehicle!?"

Those are the buttons that I too find bothersome. If you just look around you find everyone is texting, most are not talking on their phone, but texting. It makes sense that with a chat vehicle that people are attracted to you would not need to have such obtrusive buttons that slide all over the page, with sales person's faces on them offering you gift cards to chat with them.
So yes, Ed, Darn those buttons. I did not know I needed to point out the whole basis of the thread.
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I understand you are trying to peddle a text-as-a-chat-alternative @tracourt, and I say more power to you. Now I think I understand what you are talking about when you reference "buttons" - you are really talking about pop-ups and intrusive invitations, rather than mere buttons.

I like buttons.

I hate pop-ups.
 
#40
tracourt said:
I guess I need to reference back which buttons I was referring to. This whole thread was based on Jeff Kershner's comment of

"When was the last time you stepped through your own dealer website and at one point found yourself frustrated because every damn time you went to a new page, some Chat invite was sliding down the page, popping up in your face or worse yet - causing the page to load so slow it would have been quicker to walk outside and physically touch the vehicle!?"

Those are the buttons that I too find bothersome. If you just look around you find everyone is texting, most are not talking on their phone, but texting. It makes sense that with a chat vehicle that people are attracted to you would not need to have such obtrusive buttons that slide all over the page, with sales person's faces on them offering you gift cards to chat with them.
So yes, Ed, Darn those buttons. I did not know I needed to point out the whole basis of the thread.
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I don't think Ed intended to rub you the wrong way.

From my perspective, this is the perfect case scenario. I monitor my time on site, average page views per visitor, and number of return visitors. These numbers continue to get better. I watch this site traffic, and as it increases so does my floor traffic. THIS IS WHAT I WANT! I want my website visitors to hop in their car and drive down here. I don't want to "Chat" with them, email with them, text with them, send smoke signals or Carrier Pigeons. I want to shake their hand, physically touch the car with them, actually look at their trade in with my own eyes, and be able to read their body language.

This is how I rank my categories of customer engagement"
1. Live and in person customer visit to my store.
2. Customer spending more than 5 minutes on my site
3. Customer viewing more than 8 pages on my website AND scrolling down my homepage to the Why Buy section.
4. Customer views my website and CALLS. Like a telephone call. Like we interact with one another.
5. Customer initiates an email that is done independent of any CTA form on my website. The customer clicks on an email address link for myself or one of my employees and actually sends a real email. Not a form lead.
6. Customer views my website and submits a complete CTA Form, no matter the form. Long form Credit App doesn't count here, because the majority of these come to us as a result of us guiding a customer to this section.
7. Customer clicks on the Chat Button (which no longer exists)
8. Customer clicks the Text Us button on the VDP.

Now, I do have lead forms, text buttons, etc., but they are mostly there because I believe that one day I am going to wake up and everyone within 75 miles of my store is going to start using all of them. Customers in my market are going to to have this awakening that they really need to start using these things and I am going to have myself brilliantly positioned. I guess I leave them for the rare customer that actually wants to use them. Honestly, I am not really sure why I leave them.
 
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