Today we went live with a new consolidated blog that brings together the content from what were previously two separate blogs and provides us with a solid platform to support our future growth.  The conslidated blog assumes a format that is consistent with and fully integrated with the corporate website and has the URL http://www.contactatonce.com/blog.    

Our previous blogs included a corproate blog, Presence Bits,  and this Auto Dealer Live Chat Tips and Techniques Blog.  All historical posts and content from this blog has been migrated to the new blog and are easily searchable using the site search function there.   The new blog logically organizes content so you may also search using categories - searching posts categorized under the “Auto Dealer Live Chat” or “Tips, Tricks and Best Practices”, for example. 

If you are not yet subscribed, you should subscribe via RSS or email right now!

If you were subscribed to either of the previous blogs via RSS you will need to update the feed URL to http://feeds.feedburner.com/ContactAtOnceBlog.  

If you subscribed to either of the previous blogs via email, you need not do anything.  You will continue to receive emails whenever content is added to the new blog. 

Oh..and if you have not already done so, please follow us on Twitter as another way to stay up to date on all the latest from ContactAtOnce!.

The auto industry and those of us in it are certainly living through interesting times.  Dennis Galbraith of RevenueGuru.com released an impassioned video today entitled “Auto Dealer Pride”.  Start the week and the month right by watching it.

Last month we featured a post about Dennis Galbraith’s new business, RevenueGuru.    Dennis recently released a new white paper entitled “The Preference-Engagement Matrix” that we’d recommend to anyone involved with dealership marketing.  Yes, there’s a chat angle (Dennis knows from his Cars.com experience that chat helps shoppers engage the dealership in a conversation), but the white paper isn’t about chat.  The following paragraph pretty much sums things up:

Whether advertising is online or offline says nothing about its contribution to connecting the shopper with the store. Contact is a result of preference, for the vehicle and the dealership. Until the shopper has some level of preference for a vehicle at the store or preference for the store itself as the solution for finding a vehicle, most shoppers will avoid contact. For the shopper, searching online or across a variety of print ads until a preference is established makes a great deal more sense than hopping from store to store on an exploratory basis.

Dennis’ analysis is excellent and insightful.  Read the free white paper and get educated about marketing to car shoppers.

We all know how wonderful live chat is and how it benefits the dealership; however, is it being used effectively? Every chat customer is a potential buyer and should be treated that way. Here are a few common sense tips that you already apply in phone conversations but are sometimes forgotten while chatting:

1. Answer a customer’s questions promptly, even if you are looking up information for them. In a phone conversation you’re naturally going to say, “Hang on for a second while I check on that info.” In chat the need to acknowledge the customer is even more important because they can’t hear that you are actively doing something and might think you forgot about them. In the ContactAtOnce client you can use the predefined Status shortcuts to help you out, for instance “Bear with me a moment while I look that up.” Is the very first shortcut in the Status group.
2. Be polite and professional. In a phone conversation, if a customer gets heated and begins to raise their voice, you remain professional and do not raise your voice back. The same goes with chat, you do not have to YELL just because the customer is YELLING. Your attitude could make or break the customer’s experience and could send them, and their money, down the road to your competition. You would never want your receptionist to answer the phone “ABC Dealer, what do you want?”, just as you would never answer a chat “You’re bothering me, what do you need?”.   As your mom said, “Be nice and saying please and thank you can go a long way”. And remember that if you use another application that requires caps to turn off your caps lock when you answering the conversation.
3. Tell the customer who you are. Just as you would on the phone, say “Hi, My name is ___”. Usually the customer will respond with their name, and you didn’t even have to ask. Now that you have their name, it will be easier to get their contact information later in the conversation. For example, if the customer asks if a certain vehicle is available, you can say “Mark let me check on that for you, but it could take several minutes. Can I call or email you when I have the information?” Since they asked the question, they want the answer, and will usually give you their contact information.

Cars.com launched a new blog on Friday.   It includes news, tips and success stories so dealers can improve their online sales, while also providing an avenue for dealers to share feedback and advice with one another - basically the same concept as this blog except with a broader scope.

The blog, dealeradvantage.cars.com, is an extension of the Cars.com DealerADvantage monthly newsletter, Webinar series and local market workshops.

One of the featured posts in the new blog is a podcast entitled “How Can I Use Online Chat to Win More Sales?”.  Check it out.

Many readers will recognize the name Dennis Galbraith.  Dennis has been a promient presenter at industry conferences and an executive at Cars.com.  Recently Dennis launched a new company, RevenueGuru.com and the company’s website is an incredible resource that every GM and anyone that aspires to one day become a GM should tap.  From the RevenueGuru.com website:

RevenueGuru.com is about helping the companies we care so much about to help the consumers we all care about. It offers an ever-growing list of free tips, white papers, blogs, videos, and expert interviews. RevenuGuru.com also provides free, syndicated video and audio podcasts across the internet. We also offer a range of products, training, and consulting services to take your business to the next level of success.

Dennis is a proponent of chat as a means to connect more consumers with car dealers.  For Dennis, chat is not a novelty but rather a standard technology in the same class as the phone and email - technologies that every dealership should be using (and, perhaps with some help from RevenueGuru.com, using more effectively…). 

We highly recommend checking out Dennis’ site and subscribing to the podcasts (new content daily!) and other feeds of valuable information flowing from it.

Customers expect to be treated well from the beginning of the sales process and often times that begins with a chat, email or phone call. Customer service is the key and a potential car buyer will keep looking until they find the “right place” to purchase their vehicle. The “right place” not only has the right vehicle at the right price it also has the right channels through which the potential buyer may communicate with the dealership.

The “right place” will offer chat, email and phone and be consistent in using all three. When shoppers choose an avenue to communicate through, respond quickly and answer their questions. A quick response will let them know they are important and you are interested in their business. Build a rapport with the customer and promote the value of buying from your dealership, and in a short time you have created the “right place”.

Chat: Chat provides shoppers some initial anonymity while they are researching vehicles however; it is easy to get their information by gaining their trust. Respond quickly and promptly to their questions and keep your IM messages short. Once you have answered the first question, prompt the customer to tell their name with something similar to “My name is Jill, what’s yours?” Even though your name is displayed, this gives the customer the cue to provide theirs. As you answer their questions you will find opportunities to ask for contact information to provide follow-up information. Remember setting the appointment is key!

Email: Communicating via email is easy but not effortless. It requires your timely response and attention to detail. Grammar, punctuation and spelling are key ingredients to an effective email. Always ask open ended questions and engage your customer in dialogue until they are ready to commit to an appointment. Even if they are not ready to buy now, keep their email address and follow up with them every two weeks to once a month. This is a fast and easy way to keep customers in your sales pipeline.

Phone calls: Customers who phone in are often neglected. They are lost in the automated system, put on hold, transferred to the wrong extension, and usually left to leave a voice mail without a timely return call. Make these customers a priority and call them back within thirty minutes, and focus on answering their questions, gaining their trust, and setting the appointment, instead of making the sale.

Todd Smith of fellow chat provider Activengage posted a nice article on the DrivingSales.com website yesterday.  From the article:

I was on the phone with a dealer this week and he said he wanted to change the way the dealership handled live chat on the website.  He said he wanted to stop giving out detailed vehicle and other information and curtail the process of getting shoppers’ contact information to continue communication via email and phone.  He said, “We just want to tell them to ‘come on down to the dealership.’

Can you relate?  Dealership website chat, whether from ContactAtOnce! or Activengage, is a powerful tool when used effectively.  Some dealers like the one Todd quotes still have work to do in order to become effective users.  If you follow this blog you already have read about many tips and techniques for effectively using chat to sell more cars…hopefully you are putting them to work!

If you advertise your inventory on Cars.com, here’s a no-brainer tip for selling more cars.  Contact your Cars.com rep and request that they turn on DealerChat for you. 

Today at NADA in New Orleans Cars.com officially announced the immediate availability of DealerChat, powered by ContactAtOnce!, for all franchise and independent dealers that advertise on Cars.com.  ContactAtOnce! did a corresponding press release too. 

There is no additional charge for dealers to take advantage of DealerChat, and doing so is sure to increase the number of quality leads a dealership receives from Cars.com.  No additional cost.  More leads.  No-brainer.

Before you release your sales people and allow them to run wild with your IM/chat program you need to implement procedures to control what is written in your IM program by your employees.  Remember that written correspondence creates a written record.  It is a legal and business necessity for any organization that allows employees to use an IM to have written rules and policies for the use of the IM.

Purpose-built IM/chat solutions such as ContactAtOnce! address most of the security, recording, technical and compliance issues mentioned in the following document, which is more about personal IM products such as AOL, Yahoo, Google, Skype, etc.   That said, there is still valuable information in this document that will help with the creation of written rules and policies:  http://www.epolicyinstitute.com/imr/32rules.pdf.