"Impatient sales reps, or those un-technical reps (aka lot lizzards) should NOT be chatting. -- if your team is un-trained, chat is a time sucker. Your reps will avoid
chat because it's low ROI. Low ROI creates un-staffed chat & that
is costing you sales. Chat done right, should be one of your top3 lead systems."
Joe - you're 100% my friend.
It's rare to find someone on the showroom floor that will have the patience and knowledge to chat. And of you suck on the phone, it's most likely you'll suck on chat. I've had chat rolled out to the sales floor as a beta test and it of course failed as I predicted. This was with several courses of training to go along with it.
There are a few exceptions of course. I've had a hand full of sales people (internet sales) that understood chat and did a well job with it.
Chat IMO - In the dealer world, chat is better off being outsourced to the professional chatters. Again, there are exceptions. I have a 1-2 employees in our on dealers BDC that do a great job with chat. If I could I would have chat on the dealer sites and allow them to take all the chat sessions while allowing an outsourced chat provider come in from behind.
for reference - I started a thread a while back in the forums titled Chat Tracks where I post chat transcripts for all to critique.