What's important to you in chat?

[CAORYAN]

I am interested in what the dealer feels is most important when choosing a chat technology. Yes, this is for selfish reasons because I want to take what you have to say back to my developers. However, I think this could be interesting for everyone.

I will go first and say "Presence". Your computer knowing when you are available and when you are not without having to turn it off or on would be probably the single most important to me.

Please share you opinion. Shereef....you too bro! I want to hear what you have to say. Your rep's can give what their feedback is after speaking to dealers.

We are doing this internally but I want to hear what everyone here has to say.

 

[rapidchevrolet.com]

We just implemented ChatStat about 2 months ago. The tool works good, and I have sold some cars because of it. That is the good thing!!

I noticed a press release regarding the Cobalt deal is that you guys? Or someone else.

The number one complaint I have with chat is forgetting to turn it off on when I am with a customer or just plain leave the office.

Number 2 complaint I have, customers come on the chat that are working with other salesman on the sales floor already and want me to answer all their questions.. Tough Call, I work straight commission and don't want to waste my time with them when I get zero benefit...

There is my two cents.

Matt Scott
Internet Manager
Rapid Chevrolet

 

[CAORYAN]

Yes, we have partnered with Cobalt to make the integration easy as well as exclusive options. So your opinion looks like the same as mine. Presence aware chat.

 

[Marc McGurren]

Location of customer (ip address) - it's nice to know where they are at (ie work) and their physical location

Referring search engine - for example, my chat provider Client Connexions allows me to see what they googled/yahooed/binged to find me. Very relevant if they looked directly for me, or my SEO grabbed them.

Ability to transfer chats to someone another representative

Ability to whisper to my sales reps and watch them as they chat

Ability to push transcript to CRM

Ability to take a message if operator wasn't available (I get 1-2 a night when we are not here)

Reports reports reports!

Mobile chat would be phenomenal!

Email chat link - ability to have hyperlink in emails that the customer can click and chat with me directly any time they want (would be even cooler if those particular chats can come to be via text message and I can "chat" via SMS. It would be seamless for customer but I would have the ability to chat with them any time and anywhere from my phone

Just my two pennies.

 

[CAORYAN]

Location of customer (ip address) - it's nice to know where they are at (ie work) and their physical location

Referring search engine - for example, my chat provider Client Connexions allows me to see what they googled/yahooed/binged to find me. Very relevant if they looked directly for me, or my SEO grabbed them.

Ability to transfer chats to someone another representative

Ability to whisper to my sales reps and watch them as they chat

Ability to push transcript to CRM

Ability to take a message if operator wasn't available (I get 1-2 a night when we are not here)

Reports reports reports!

Mobile chat would be phenomenal!

Email chat link - ability to have hyperlink in emails that the customer can click and chat with me directly any time they want (would be even cooler if those particular chats can come to be via text message and I can "chat" via SMS. It would be seamless for customer but I would have the ability to chat with them any time and anywhere from my phone

Just my two pennies.

Marc,

I appreciate all the feedback. Would you say your list is in order of importance? Other than knowing if it is a competitor I am not sure what the IP lookup does. We offer it but it isn't a deal breaker for dealers most the time.

Keywords, source, and page path is something I am interested in seeing added to ours.

Transfering chats should be pretty standard stuff for most chat providers.

We offer the live chat watch and whisper ability but I am not a big fan of it. Being watched makes people feel nervous. At least the people you feel you need to watch.

I am not sure about the transcripts on other providers but that is simple technology and we offer that. I assume the ever popular Shereef also offers that.

I like the "rollover feature" and think it is cool. Having the ability to pick up chats when you are closed or when your team is away is for sure a nice feature. We already have that.

Reports is one of my favorite also. I am a big fan of reports. What reports are most important to you?

Mobile chat is standard with us. Two versions....one that you manually turn on and off and another one that is presence based. Again, I am not sure what other chat providers offer as far as mobile chat goes. I find that a lot of one man internet departments love it. My buddy Jamie works at an Audi dealer in Florida and took a chat via mobile at church on Easter and scheduled the appointment and sold the car the next day. I told him he needs to work from church more often .

Email chat again is pretty standard with all chat providers I would assume. Great feature for email newsletters. I actually added it to my sig.

Great feedback! I really appreciate it. Please take a few seconds to answer a few of my questions above.

 

[Marc McGurren]

I would say my list was just off the top of my head on what I like rather than rank of importance.

IP isn't huge but extremely beneficial. How far away is the customer from me? Are they a competitor mistery shopping me? Are they at work or home? If so, does my company offer special pricing based on their work place? I find it very beneficial and a feature that I truly use when chatting.

As far as whispering goes - we use it more for passing information rather than a big brother type of feature.

Reports - knowing how many chats each salesperson had, how many converted, how many chats a day/month/etc, length of chats would be beneficial, chats per website. That's all I can think of.

Hope that helps.

M

Marc,

I appreciate all the feedback. Would you say your list is in order of importance? Other than knowing if it is a competitor I am not sure what IP lookup does. We offer it but it isn't a deal breaker for dealers most the time.

Keywords, source, and page path is something I am interested in seeing added to ours.

Transfering chats should be pretty standard stuff for most chat providers.

We offer the live chat watch and whisper ability but I am not a big fan of it. Being watched makes people feel nervous. At least the people you feel you need to watch.

I am not sure about the transcripts on other providers but that is simple technology and we offer that. I assume the ever popular Shereef also offers that.

I like the "rollover feature" and think it is cool. Having the ability to pick up chats when you are closed or when your team is away is for sure a nice feature. We already have that.

Reports is one of my favorite also. I am a big fan of reports. What reports are most important to you?

Mobile chat is standard with us. Two versions....one that you manually turn on and off and another one that is presence based. Again, I am not sure what other chat providers offer as far as mobile chat goes. I find that a lot of one man internet departments love it. My buddy Jamie works at an Audi dealer in Florida and took a chat via mobile at church on Easter and scheduled the appointment and sold the car the next day. I told him he needs to work from church more often .

Email chat again is pretty standard with all chat providers I would assume. Great feature for email newsletters. I actually added it to my sig.

Great feedback! I really appreciate it. Please take a few seconds to answer a few of my questions above.

 

[joe.pistell]

ohoh Ryan,

Here comes another classic Joe Pistell Rant! You know I love Chat, it's a HUGE success. I am really passionate about this, I hope you can get this thru, I couldn't. I've been lobbying for this idea since last year.

Chat for the Silent Majority.

Currently, the shopper is presented with an offer to chat, their choices are limited to “Yes – or – No”. We need a “not right now, maybe later” button.

Aggressive drop-in settings produce the best lead counts, BUT, 98% of the shoppers do not use Chat. Think about that. So, we have 98 of 100 visitors hitting the “X” 3,4,5+ times to see the merchandise. This is NOT a positive shopping experience for the silent majority. Shopping for a car takes weeks. I want people to come back often. 36% of my traffic has been to my site 3 times or more. I watch that number and I want that number higher, it's a sign of satisfying the shoppers needs.

One metric of use that NO ONE talks about is how MANY times the chat window is closed by the shopper. Think about it. Go to any other shopping site with a mission to research & purchase. If you have to battle with the chat window, you can call it anything you want, I call it a pain in the ass.

Yes, we have "chat window drop in settings", but the current design is simply a timer with a dropin count limiter. What does that have to do with shopping? You want the chat avail when the shopper wants it... aka: The "shopping sweetspot, the upslope".

To draw a parallel, if you’re out shopping for a car, just looking around, and a rep comes up “can I help you?” and you reply “no thanks, just looking now”, then you walk over to another car and that rep comes up “can I help you?” and you reply “no thanks, just looking now” and you step over to another car and…. You KNOW what’s next… and the rep comes up “can I help you?” and you reply “grr… no thanks, just looking now”. We all know our best sales reps tell the shopper "I'll be right over here, if you see something you like call me anytime". Can you see the “shopping experience” parallels?!!


Just last week, I finally found a Chat vendor that sees this opportunity. http://www.ecarlink.com/ Here it is:


Chat Invite:

Chat refused (Chat “Parked” for future use)

Try it. The chat stays in it’s parked state, always ready to chat, for the rest of the session (aka "I'll be right over here Mr Customer, if you see something you like call me anytime!". )


Parked Chat Icon.
If you like this idea (I hope you do), the 'parked chat' success will depend on strongest possible “Need Help?” icon. I don't care for ecarlink's rectangle. It can still get in the way of shoppers screen real estate (those with low res screens). We need an icon that uses the smallest footprint. My strongest pick for this is at: Feedback Form - Kampyle. See the Triangle on bottom right marked “Give Feedback”. Visually very strong yet it takes up a tiny part of the real estate. Kampyle is a “best of class” 3rd party survey provider and has refined it’s presentation thru years of a/b testing.

Every time I bring this idea up (publically and privately), I get the "deer in the head lights" stare followed by a "no, your customers like their shopping to be interruped".

It's simple, smart and will IMPROVE the shopping experience.

 

[Marc McGurren]

Joe - I absolutely LOVE that idea. To park it similar to Kampyle would be a great benefit to the customer and us. As many chats I get - I am curious to see how many people are annoyed by the pop up and thus not making it a enjoyable shopping experience.

m

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

I wonder if you populated all your pictures with beautiful women if that would help increase chat penetration.

 

[CAORYAN]

Joe, I will add that to the list. You think that would be more beneficial than a button that is static? I guess it would be because it stays on the screen even if you scroll. Point taken and it will be reviewed.

Jerry, I don't get many cancellations but I did get one and lets just say the same goes both ways. Ugly people can cause people not to chat. I did an account review when they canceled and I told the GM to remove the photo's of his sales women. lol.....he said "i thought you said it would help". That was fun!