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Outside of the car business I've found chat to either be supremely helpful or a total waste of time. In the latter case I typically seek alternate options for spending my money. It has been helpful when the employee was either capable of taking my order (confusing ordering system on the website) within the chat or was very knowledgeable of the product. The worst ones are when it seems like the other person has no clue what business he or she is actually supported (a managed chat service more than likely...out of India).I loathe managed chat. My personal opinion is totally based on creating and running my own BDC where I was capable of monitoring chats and training my people. I know I'm different than the average person out there because I like to roll up my shirt sleeves and I'm smart enough to figure out a path around problems. Although I can't continue to stroke my own ego when it came to the final results of our chatting ROI because I didn't think it was that great. However, I can absolutely say we were better than any managed chat service. I was never fond of chat at Checkered Flag; nor were my employees. Admittedly, we stuck to it because everyone else did it. I know better now. In my years of reading chat transcripts (comparing to what I see from a few clients I keep tabs on today) I think more and more that chat should be manned solely by individuals who are extremely product savvy. And the chat should be specific to product questions without a push for getting contact info or an appointment. When chat operators are incentivized toward conversions the customer experience is significantly impacted.Which leaves me with this conclusion:The car customer who starts a chat is doing so because they cannot find the answer to their question on your website. They're not in a position to pick up the phone nor do they have the patience to wait for you to email them back on a contact us form. In most cases their preference is remain stealth because they're not far enough along in the purchase process to make themselves known to you yet. When your chat representative is paid on converting that customer to a lead, appointment, up, etc you are creating an adversarial environment. My opinion: if you have to pay for conversions, take chat off your website.
Outside of the car business I've found chat to either be supremely helpful or a total waste of time. In the latter case I typically seek alternate options for spending my money. It has been helpful when the employee was either capable of taking my order (confusing ordering system on the website) within the chat or was very knowledgeable of the product. The worst ones are when it seems like the other person has no clue what business he or she is actually supported (a managed chat service more than likely...out of India).
I loathe managed chat. My personal opinion is totally based on creating and running my own BDC where I was capable of monitoring chats and training my people. I know I'm different than the average person out there because I like to roll up my shirt sleeves and I'm smart enough to figure out a path around problems. Although I can't continue to stroke my own ego when it came to the final results of our chatting ROI because I didn't think it was that great. However, I can absolutely say we were better than any managed chat service. I was never fond of chat at Checkered Flag; nor were my employees. Admittedly, we stuck to it because everyone else did it. I know better now.
In my years of reading chat transcripts (comparing to what I see from a few clients I keep tabs on today) I think more and more that chat should be manned solely by individuals who are extremely product savvy. And the chat should be specific to product questions without a push for getting contact info or an appointment. When chat operators are incentivized toward conversions the customer experience is significantly impacted.
Which leaves me with this conclusion:
The car customer who starts a chat is doing so because they cannot find the answer to their question on your website. They're not in a position to pick up the phone nor do they have the patience to wait for you to email them back on a contact us form. In most cases their preference is remain stealth because they're not far enough along in the purchase process to make themselves known to you yet. When your chat representative is paid on converting that customer to a lead, appointment, up, etc you are creating an adversarial environment. My opinion: if you have to pay for conversions, take chat off your website.
