Why outsource all of your automotive dealership instant messaging if you have salespeople working on commission? Think of your chats as you would your telephone calls. If a salesperson is available, they will answer; if they are busy the customer will leave a message or be rolled to someone to take the message. Your salespeople are the only ones who can accurately answer the two main questions customers call or chat in about:

1. Is this specific vehicle available?
2. What is the price?

An outsourced automotive dealership instant messaging company cannot know with certainty if a vehicle is available nor can they negotiate pricing. All they can do is take the lead information and pass it along to your salesperson. Then your salesperson is tasked with returning the call and trying to reach the customer. This is fine for a small number of chats, but not all chats. If your salesperson can answer chats, they can strike while the iron is hot and when the customer is available; not three hours later after they spoke with your competition down the street.

The process for answering telephone calls and answering chats is exactly the same; you either end up with an appointment, a lead, or an anonymous customer. Each dealership has their own procedures for how to work with and follow up with customers; the only difference is how the lead arrived.  So don’t over complicate your automotive dealership instant messaging!

Today ContactAtOnce! announced a new feature called Chat Rollover and a new managed service for answering chats on a dealer’s behalf. Both represent significant announcements that will be of interest to readers of this blog.

From the press release:

“Sales people in the dealership are very effective answering a shopper’s questions and setting appointments, so we strongly prefer that they handle our chat leads,” said Drew Fitchett, Owner of North Penn Imports VW Mazda in Colmar, PA. “That said, there are times during the business day and certainly after-hours, when our sales people are not able to answer, yet we still want our prospects to be able to connect with someone immediately. The ContactAtOnce! rollover feature intelligently forwards leads during those times, and ContactAtOnce! managed live chat personnel have demonstrated excellence in handling rollover leads exactly how our dealership wants them handled.”

So we launched a chat forwarding feature a while back and some have noticed and some have not so I am writing this post to spread the word and to also inform everyone of the uses for it.  It’s the 1st week of May and we just had a great month.  Thank you to all who spent the time to research us and thank you to all of our existing dealers.

OK chat forwarding…..Dealers are loving this because they can forward a chat to the appropriate sales person.  The chat feature allows multiple people in the chat at once.  This is great for many reasons…

1) you can give a warm T.O. and

2) people appreciate being able to get the person they need by chat

“[10:00:49 AM]<Customer>Wow. I can IM my Mazda guy. This is nuts.” 

I thought that was funny. 

Another great part of the chat forwarding feature is that the agent receiving the request will get a link to review the conversation up to the forward so you don’t have to ask all the same questions over again. 

We are also able to forward chats back to the dealership when they miss them if you are on our rollover service (look for a press release about the rollvoer feature tomorrow!).  This is nice because we know no one can handle your leads better than you!

Just a heads up….everyone has the same theme - last October was the worst month in the business and things have increased every month since.  Keep trucking along…things are looking up.

I’m sure we all will agree that the leads that produce your highest closing ratio are your phone up’s. When a customer calls your dealership you already know that they are looking for some sort of help. They might just need pricing information, incentive information or they’re checking the availability of vehicle they saw advertised on your site. It’s usually the easiest time to fact find, build rapport, capture customer information and set an appointment. The same importance needs to be placed on your chat up’s.

When a customer starts a chat with your dealership they are looking for the same answers as a customer who calls in. They just might be in a situation where it is not convenient to pick up the phone.  I’ve spoken to dealers who frequently miss numerous chat requests a month. When I ask why they’re missing the chats the answer is always the same, “we’ve been too busy to answer.” If I ask them if they’re missing phone calls the answer is usually no.

Typically, if the receptionist doesn’t pick up then the phone will start to ring to another area of the dealership. Everyone wants to make sure that those valuable phone ups are answered every single time.  If a chat up is just as important as a phone up why are they handled in two different ways?  Why ignore a chat request and why bend over backwards to answer the phone? If you are truly too busy to answer, there is a solution we call “rollover”. Ask us about it.

Don’t miss another opportunity to speak with a customer. More conversations with customers equal more opportunities to do business. If you start treating your chat ups with the same importance as your phone ups you’ll see an increase in appointments which will lead to more cars sold.

I remember one of my first years in the car business I met a gentleman named Sheldon.  He was the best car salesman I have ever seen still to this day.  He taught me so much like NEVER make excuses why you should work hard or sell this many.  See it was January and everyone was hanging out dipping to the mall and I was following Sheldon.  I saw his commission check so I wanted what he had.  He was about 40 and I was about 20 or 21 at the time.  Sheldon would sell about 30 or 40 cars a month.  You say wow that’s a lot.  Well it’s more than just a lot because he would take a week to 2 weeks off a month and still did those numbers. 

His advice to me was

1) Know the flow of your store - meaning know if your store is a night store or if you have a day of the week that is heavy traffic.

2) Everyone is a prospect…..EVERYONE - meaning never discount the fact that everyone drives and needs a car or wants a new car.

This applies to what I want to talk about, trust me.

So I can tell you now that majority of your traffic to your site is between 10am and 2pm.  You may also have a peak between 8 to 10pm.  So what does that tell you?  Be at your computer and schedule your appointments around those times.  You are the manager of your time.

Secondly, every chat is an opportunity to earn business.  A lot of Sheldon’s customers came from Service.  So if you are taking chats why not take service chats and give them what they want but let them know you are here for them.  Take every chat and work it to the end.  I even suggest our rollover product because we answer the chats that you don’t get to.  So if you can’t be available during those hours or you can’t give every chat the sufficient time to work it to the end, we can.  (I know…this sounds like a bump to get rollover, but it is just an explanation of my examples above.)