I have been with Contact At Once for almost one year now. Here is my observations.....
1) Chat does work but only for dealers committed.
2) Outsourced can work but works best if lead is qualified and forwarded to dealer.
3) ROI is probably higher than any other 3rd party source available
4) All chat companies offer the same features for the most part.
5) Convenience is important....The chat company should be a automotive chat build to make you life easy.
6) Support....These crazy computers these days have a mind of there own sometimes so you need to know that you can count on support.
7) Education, you need to be trained on best practices, software, and processes.
8) Month to month agreement
9) Great rep that will take your call and answer your questions (Automotive savvy)
10) Check to see how many upgrades they have done in recent time to improve the product and whats in the pipeline
Those are some great questions when searching for your chat company.
The data we have shows that more people will contact you via chat and you lose no phone calls. As a matter of fact calls go up as high as 36%. We do however see a decrease in form leads by 3%, it's a fact that less people are filling forms out these days. Check your stats 80% are leaving you, most shopper are landing on your site during work hours monday through friday.
There is a clear cut difference from the dealers that are really putting forth the effort in today's market and those that are not. I am not saying that you will be successful if you are using chat. I am saying from all the dealers I speak to I can tell the difference right off the bat. It is very obvious and I have learned to view myself and the company I work for from the eyes of the auto dealers and I think it has helped me grow and be better at what my boss asks of me.
Everything you do requires effort...some are willing and some are not.
