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.