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Is Your Dealership Chat Used or Abused?
- Automotive News, Press Releases, and Events
- 18 Replies
Ryan,
Your comment reminds me of a teaching from an old sales mentor.
"A good Doctor never let's his patient see the knife"
Think about it...
Your comment reminds me of a teaching from an old sales mentor.
"A good Doctor never let's his patient see the knife"
Think about it...
Is Your Dealership Chat Used or Abused?
- Automotive News, Press Releases, and Events
- 18 Replies
Joe - Once again you put together a dynamite post that has some real data and first hand experiences from a REAL LIFE CAR DEALER.
I have read thousands of chats (our operators took) and it still amazes me how comfortable visitors are with a chat operator. There are many instances where I have witnessed a shopper volunteer the entire quote, trade in value, and Salesperson's name at the competitor down the road. It also can act as a pretty good monitoring tool for you dealership. Visitors are not afraid to rant to the operator that service forgot to book them an appointment OR Jimmy in sales didn't respond to their Trade - In Evaluation.
Self Managed Chat - I have a love hate relationship with a dealer managing their own chats. It can be done, and there are dealers all across North America that have turned into chat warriors for their dealership and are seeing big results. Chat is not at all like dealing with a live person on your lot and it can be quite frustrating. When you put a fully commissioned sales staff member behind the chat wheel and his first 5 chats of the day are service related or "Does Joe still work there?? I only deal with him" it can quickly turn into a karate chop through the monitor. In a perfect chat world we would have staff that can handle their own chats (effectively) and 3rd party doing the back up when dealer is unavailable or after hours.
If you are going to go the Self Managed chat route all I can say is make sure you deal with a company that has a Pro Active Greeting (pop up / drop down). This is where a huge portion of the chats come from. Not too long ago I had a dealer ask me to disable our Pro - Active greeting as he felt it was "intrusive" on their visitors. What was the results?? The lead train came to a quick stop and we turned it back on a week later.
I have met some super smart people here on DealerRefresh, and can tell you that the main players in the chat arena have some talented employees and we are always thinking of ways to get your dealership more leads!!!!
"I would have got those leads anyway!!!" - Chat will not hurt your original website conversion, it will turn "just looking" into a name, email , and phone number. I promise
It would be great to hear what Ryan Lucia from Contact at Once had to say, that guy is super smart.
"Am I really missing out on leads by not having chat on my website????" - The answer is yes.
Cheers,
Ryan Thompson
@ryan_carchat24:disqus
I have read thousands of chats (our operators took) and it still amazes me how comfortable visitors are with a chat operator. There are many instances where I have witnessed a shopper volunteer the entire quote, trade in value, and Salesperson's name at the competitor down the road. It also can act as a pretty good monitoring tool for you dealership. Visitors are not afraid to rant to the operator that service forgot to book them an appointment OR Jimmy in sales didn't respond to their Trade - In Evaluation.
Self Managed Chat - I have a love hate relationship with a dealer managing their own chats. It can be done, and there are dealers all across North America that have turned into chat warriors for their dealership and are seeing big results. Chat is not at all like dealing with a live person on your lot and it can be quite frustrating. When you put a fully commissioned sales staff member behind the chat wheel and his first 5 chats of the day are service related or "Does Joe still work there?? I only deal with him" it can quickly turn into a karate chop through the monitor. In a perfect chat world we would have staff that can handle their own chats (effectively) and 3rd party doing the back up when dealer is unavailable or after hours.
If you are going to go the Self Managed chat route all I can say is make sure you deal with a company that has a Pro Active Greeting (pop up / drop down). This is where a huge portion of the chats come from. Not too long ago I had a dealer ask me to disable our Pro - Active greeting as he felt it was "intrusive" on their visitors. What was the results?? The lead train came to a quick stop and we turned it back on a week later.
I have met some super smart people here on DealerRefresh, and can tell you that the main players in the chat arena have some talented employees and we are always thinking of ways to get your dealership more leads!!!!
"I would have got those leads anyway!!!" - Chat will not hurt your original website conversion, it will turn "just looking" into a name, email , and phone number. I promise
It would be great to hear what Ryan Lucia from Contact at Once had to say, that guy is super smart.
"Am I really missing out on leads by not having chat on my website????" - The answer is yes.
Cheers,
Ryan Thompson
@ryan_carchat24:disqus
Is Your Dealership Chat Used or Abused?
- By joe.pistell
- Automotive News, Press Releases, and Events
- 18 Replies
Do you really know what your dealership website chat is doing for you?
Those of us with chat on our dealer sites know that chat is an amazing lead generator, but, do you really know what your chat is doing for you? Likewize, do you really know what chat is doing for your shoppers?
It’s been a while since I took a good long walk in our chat records, while reviewing them, I see the chats fall into common classes.
- Credit Questions
- Trade-in Questions
- Search Help Needed
- Purchase Intent
- Miscellaneous
Credit and trade-in questions are driven by what the shopper possesses. Examples like: “I have poor credit, or, “I have a 2003 Kia that I owe $8900…” These are chat questions that you can easily answer via a template.
Ok, so what’s 'Search Help' and what’s 'Purchase Intent'?
- 'Search Help Needed’ chats are questions from people that need help hunting.
- 'Purchase Intent’ chats are from people that want to pull the trigger!
REAL CHAT EXAMPLES of a 'Search Helper Needed'
- “Interested in an suv with good mpg”
- “we would like also to look into all 3rd row seating SUV's under 20k mi”
- “is there any way to search just for 7 passenger vehicles what other models besides minivans and dodge journeys seat 7 traverse is too pricey”
- “I am looking for not sure what kind of car but around 2008 for around $12,000 if possible. In that type of ball park. Thank you.”
REAL CHAT EXAMPLES of ‘Purchase Intent’
- “…Stock# W16242 is a lincoln where is it located , is price negotiable?”
- “I like Stock# k35101, I am interested but need to know are your prices negotiable?”
- “I have a $4,750 trade-in, $2,000 down payment. It shows the price is $35,990. Is there room for negotiation?”
- “…I am buying with cash and will be looking to negotiate the best price I can get and purchase something from somewhere very soon.”
‘Purchase Intent’ or ‘Search Helper Needed’ both need 5 star treatment AND both need different sales techniques. ‘Purchase Intent’ questions are an opportunity to aggressively ask for an appointment, whereas ‘Search Helper Needed’ questions are a great window for the sales team to ‘wow’ the shoppers by really understanding their needs. I am not saying the Credit and Tradein questions are inferior, all I am saying is each chat question falls into 5 unique categories and they all need to be handled differently.
Here’s a breakout of the last 200+ chats on my site:
Topic
Count
Percent
Search Helper Needed
91
44%
Purchase Intent
26
13%
Credit
48
23%
Tradein
19
9%
Misc
24
12%
Total
208
The chat topics above break into smaller sub-topics. For example, is the Credit question about bad credit, or, just general credit questions? The ‘search helper’ question has many sub categories, the most common question revolves around a complex search query like “I need this and it needs to have that, but, it can’t cost more than…” Here’s an example, this chat that came in minutes ago “…do you have any extended caB or quad cab trucks, 4wheel drive under $15000? I want payments under $350”
Here are the sub categories I found FYI:
Topic
Sub-topic
Count
Percent
Credit
bad credit
27
13%
Credit
13
6%
Credit App Status?
8
4%
Search
search helper (complex query)
47
23%
search helper (by $ or payment)
32
15%
search helper (wants details on car)
9
4%
search helper, car has warranty?
3
1%
Purchase
Purch Intent, has car picked out, wants Appt
4
2%
Purch Intent (“where is this car located?”)
3
1%
Purch Intent (“car in stock?”)
13
6%
Purch assist (make an offer)
6
3%
Trade-in
Tradein
19
9%
Misc
After store visit, follow up chat
5
2%
Translation
3
1%
Carfax request
2
1%
Deliver out of State?
4
2%
Offer Military Discount?
1
0%
Young, 1st time buyers
5
2%
transfer car to other store
1
0%
prep for purch questions
3
1%
Total
208
Is your chat being used or abused? Who’s running your chat? You or a 3rd party service?
Chat falls into 2 distinct classes. Dealer Chats and 3rd party chats. These are 2 very different management problems with very different needs. Every organization is different.
Self Hosted Chat:
No doubt about it, if your not trained and prepared, chat can leave a good sales rep tired and bloody. Chat shoppers can eat up 45 minutes, suck you dry, and after all that, refuse to give you any contact info. Ugh, someone shoot me! If this happens to you (or your team), then most likely this has created another problem, chats get ignored!
If you self-manage your chats, you need great templates and a trained staff to “work” that chat shopper.
3rd Party Chat:
There are many 3rd party chat companies to choose from, and many are regulars here. One of the best threads in our forum is run by Shereef Moawad President & CEO of CarChat24. Shereef ran multiple case studies where he clearly demonstrated his team’s ability to sell cars. It’s a great read!
Chat Vendors, drop a comment here and put a flag in the sand! Dealers, tell us how your chat is doing these days!
In my organization, we started self-managing our chat and got OK results. I felt we were leaving cash on the table, we took the leap and employed ActivEngage to manage our chats. The lead counts and sales exploded! It was nice to read the chat records and watch the ActivEngage chat team consistently recognize a shopper with ‘purchase intent’ and each time they aggressively go for the appointment! For us, 3rd party chat service is our highest ROI vendor.
Lastly, to our web site vendors, when you build a site for your clients, you’re really building a site for their clients, I can’t think of a better tool to satisfying shopper needs than listening to phone calls and reading chats. You can watch me dig to find more gems in our DealerRefresh forums: The Used Car King Make Over Diary
Facebook: what has it done for you lately?
- Off Topic & Everything Else
- 10 Replies
I also feel that paying a 3rd party company to manage your Social media marketing is a waste of money...period. As an Internet director I focus on driving traffic in the same ways you mentioned:
"If you’re trying to increase sales, then tackle the SEO side of things
first. Providing useful, meaningful content on your website, strong
backlinks and an easy-to-navigate web design can go a long way."
However, as a former SEO consultant who continues to stay in the know, I (half) disagree with your post. Yea facebook is nice to have fans blah blah etc and doesnt really help sales, But FB is about one percent of social media, and the best way to build quality backlinks is via social media (maybe not on fb but other sites). I have studied SEO for a long time and a transition is occuring where SEO and SMM are really going to merge. Everyone knows that google is the search engine to focus on mainly, and with google+ being released (ive tried it and it has VERY serious potential) the search engine is now a social media site. I would never advocate hiring a third party SEO firm for a car dealership, but having a social media strategy that is handled in house I feel is VITAL. Whether its an internet manager, the sales reps, or a social media manager, you should have someone who knows the company well and can speak as the company.
As for Facebook, we have just a few thousand "fans" and we get about 5-10 deals a month via FB (mostly by letting the sales reps use FB during downtime, and training them how to do it correctly!). But more importantly our engagement is pretty good which means that the next time those fans need a new car we are at the top of their mind!
So in short please don't attack social media, Because soon the whole internet will be "social media"
"If you’re trying to increase sales, then tackle the SEO side of things
first. Providing useful, meaningful content on your website, strong
backlinks and an easy-to-navigate web design can go a long way."
However, as a former SEO consultant who continues to stay in the know, I (half) disagree with your post. Yea facebook is nice to have fans blah blah etc and doesnt really help sales, But FB is about one percent of social media, and the best way to build quality backlinks is via social media (maybe not on fb but other sites). I have studied SEO for a long time and a transition is occuring where SEO and SMM are really going to merge. Everyone knows that google is the search engine to focus on mainly, and with google+ being released (ive tried it and it has VERY serious potential) the search engine is now a social media site. I would never advocate hiring a third party SEO firm for a car dealership, but having a social media strategy that is handled in house I feel is VITAL. Whether its an internet manager, the sales reps, or a social media manager, you should have someone who knows the company well and can speak as the company.
As for Facebook, we have just a few thousand "fans" and we get about 5-10 deals a month via FB (mostly by letting the sales reps use FB during downtime, and training them how to do it correctly!). But more importantly our engagement is pretty good which means that the next time those fans need a new car we are at the top of their mind!
So in short please don't attack social media, Because soon the whole internet will be "social media"