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The Outsourced Chat Debate - Conclusion

This is the concluding post in a series of five posts regarding “The Outsourced Chat Debate”.   The introductory post provided important background and context that should be referenced before continuing with this post.  The second post made the case for answering your own chat leads.  The third post  explained rollover - answering your own chat leads but with an assist after hours and during those times when you are simply too covered up to answer your own.  The fourth post explained the advantages of completely outsourcing chat leads.  In this post, we summarize the various tradeoffs and set the stage for you to make a decision about which approach is best for your dealership.

By Popularity

If you like sure bets and believe in the power of crowd-sourcing then answering your own chats is the right choice.  More dealers answer their own chats by far versus rollover or fully outsourced.  

By Common Sense

If your dealership outsources the handling of non-chat leads then outsourcing chat leads is just plain common sense.   And if you work in a marketing department that is still measured by the number of email leads you direct to dealerships, outsourcing is the right choice too (not necessarily the choice that will maximize the number of cars sold, but absolutely the choice that will maximize the number of email leads you’ll deliver to your dealerships…).

By ROI

For dealerships that prefer to answer their own chat leads, but acknowledge that they can’t staff chat every minute of every business day let alone the nightwatch, rollover is the right answer.  It is our experience that dealerships using rollover maximize the return on their chat investment and sell more cars.

What Are Your Thoughts and Experiences?  Please share via the comment section below.

The Outsourced Chat Debate - Post #4 - Outsource Chat Leads

This is the fourth in a series of five posts regarding “The Outsourced Chat Debate”.   The introductory post provided important background and context that should be referenced before continuing with this post.  The second post made the case for answering your own chat leads.  The third post  explained rollover - answering your own chat leads but with an assist after hours and during those times when you are simply too covered up to answer your own.  In this post, we explore the advantages of completely outsourcing chat leads with a post from guest contributor Ron De Angelo of the Ennovate Group.  Ron’s firm provides outsourced BDC services, including chat, and is thus an obvious advocate of fully outsourcing chat and other lead handling.

Taking Your Website Online Chat to the Next Level
 
O.k., so you have added the ability to have an online chat with prospects while they are on your dealership’s website.  Great; we all know that the best time to communicate with a prospect is while they are currently on and viewing your website.  So, what could be wrong with this picture?
 
Something that you might consider is what happens to your unanswered chats during busy times at your Dealership, after your Dealership has closed for the evening or before opening in the morning, or if your dealership is closed one day a week (such as Sundays in some states)?  Turning off your Chat Service in the evening only eliminates the possibility of chatting with prospects that do not keep the same hours as you and means you have no way to get their attention or get them into your Dealership.
 
The solution is to work with a service provider who can answer chat leads on your behalf 24 hours per day, seven days a week, 365 days per year and during those times when the Dealership staff is unable to answer or are not present at the Dealership.
 
And how does one select such a service provider?  Here are a few things to consider…
 
Depth of Services
 
Chat Tools – it is important that the service provider’s chat tools include specific “rollover” functionality to ensure the service provider’s personnel know, and are reminded with each inbound chat, how you want them to handle your leads.  Ask for a demo so you can see what the person answering on your dealership’s behalf will see when a new chat lead comes in.
 
Chat Integration – as more and more 3rd party sites enable chat as a means for prospects to contact dealerships it is critical that the service provider fully integrate with the chat systems used by the 3rd parties.  Cars.com, CarsDirect.com, CarSoup.com, Cox Auto Trader, and many other local newspaper and classified type auto websites support chat leads.  If the service provider can’t handle your chat leads coming from the 3rd party sites you use, you’ll lose those leads, so ensure that your service provider supports chat integration.   
 
 
Breadth of Services
 
Some chat service providers have their own chat tools, while others are able to work with various chat tools.  The “Switzerland” approach, i.e. being able to work with whatever chat tool you choose, means a service provider is focused on one thing only, answering your leads effectively.  Those that force a specific chat tool upon you…not so much.
 
A service provider capable of delivering the full breadth of call center services (e.g. phone, chat, BDC, and promotion staffing services) is better able to partner with a dealership for success, versus a chat-only service provider.
 
Outsourcing chat leads is a cost effective way to increase sales and further leverage your investment in chat.  Consumers like chat, and you have the opportunity to leverage that affinity into more sales by maximizing your dealership’s availability for answering chats.

ContactAtOnce! Integrates Live Chat for Car Dealer Websites With Website Analytics and Business Intelligence

Provider of live chat for car dealer websites, ContactAtOnce!, announces immediate availability of  free and simple integration with leading website analytics platforms.

ATLANTA, GA – December 2, 2009 – ContactAtOnce!, a leading provider of live chat for car dealer websites and other internet marketing tools that move online shoppers into live conversations with car dealers, today announced the immediate availability of features that enable customers to integrate ContactAtOnce! live chat for car dealer websites with website analytics and business intelligence platforms from Google and Omniture.

“Analytics help our customers understand consumer behavior and, ultimately, which of their marketing initiatives are working and which aren’t,” said Marc Hayes, Founder and EVP of Products for ContactAtOnce!.  “By integrating our live chat for car dealer websites solution with the leading analytics and business intelligence platforms we are making it simple and easy for our customers to get even more value from their ContactAtOnce! investment.”

ContactAtOnce! powers presence-aware “drop-in business cards” that appear on car dealer websites alerting shoppers when dealer personnel are available to answer questions.  Shoppers may then initiate instant communications whenever they choose.  ContactAtOnce! live chat for car dealer websites automatically measures advertising effectiveness, helping dealers constantly improve their businesses.

Google Analytics is an enterprise-class web analytics solution that provides rich insights into website traffic and marketing effectiveness.  It is provided by Google free-of-charge and is widely used on car dealer websites.

The newly released website analytics integration features are immediately available, free of charge, to all ContactAtOnce! customers.

The Outsourced Chat Debate - Post #3 - Rollover

This is the third in a series of five posts regarding “The Outsourced Chat Debate”.   The introductory post provided important background and context that should be referenced before continuing with this post.  The second post made the case for answering your own chat leads.  In this post, an argument is made for answering your own chat leads but with an assist after hours and during those times when you are simply too covered up to answer your own - what we call “rollover”.

The term rollover is borrowed from telephony where phone systems can be configured to automatically “roll over” unanswered calls to another extension or number.   In the same way, chat systems such as ContactAtOnce! can “roll over” unanswered chats to another group of users.  In the typical automotive scenario this means rolling over chats not answered by dealership users to an external group of users that work for an answering service.  The answering service answers on behalf of the dealership, collects the shopper’s contact info ( name, phone, email and any additional info), then sends it back to the dealership as an email lead or, in some cases, “hot transfers” the conversion to the dealership. 

Unlike phone systems, chat systems such as ContactAtOnce! can provide a wealth of information to the answering service when a chat is rolled over, including not only the lead context (e.g. make, model, stock#, etc.) but also specific instructions from the dealership for answering, qualifying, and forwarding leads on the dealership’s behalf. 

With rollover a dealership gets the best of both worlds - the advantages that come from answering your own leads, plus the assured coverage and availability that outsourcing to an answering service provides. 

Here’s an interesting tidbit…time of day has a lot to do with a shopper’s willingness to give out their name and contact information.  This fact is based on large amounts of data collected and analyzed by the ContactAtOnce! rollover team.  To be more specific, shoppers reaching an answering service after business hours are nearly twice as likely to willingly provide their contact information versus those reaching the answering service during business hours.  Why?   As highlighted in the previous video post, shoppers prefer to chat with a knowledgeable person at the dealership and build a trust relationship (and are thus disappointed to reach an answering service during business hours), but are realistic when initiating chat during non-business hours (and are thus accepting of the fact that someone at the dealership will have to call them back).  

Having observed over 6,000 dealers using the ContactAtOnce! chat service it has been our observation that the rollover option provides the highest return on investment (ROI).  That doesn’t mean it is universally the best fit for every dealership, but we recommend that our customers strongly consider this option and at least give it a try for a few months to measure the ROI.