|
Login
|
Contact
|
Blog
|
News
|
Corporate
|
Products
-->

Website Chat Etiquette - How To Chat Effectively - Part 1

Chat is a powerful business tool that, when added to a website, causes more visitors to engage in conversations with sales people - visitors that would otherwise have browsed away without ever calling or filling out a form. In our experience, at least 25% more visitors will engage with a business that has chat on their website. Great! But once visitors engage, how do the best sales people convert conversations into appointments and sales? This post provides some guidelines for effective communication and website chat etiquette.

Add A Photo
It’s a bit ironic that the first key to better chat conversations is a picture and not something to do with words, but first impressions count and building rapport is the number one key to effective chat conversations. ContactAtOnce! enables you to upload a professional looking photo that will appear in the consumer-facing chat window, and in the drop in business card. This photo should be a headshot of you smiling and looking relaxed, taken at your desk or in your work environment. Consider yourself ugly or unattractive? Even better! Our experience has been that website visitors are more likely to trust pictures of “normal looking people” than they are pictures of beautiful, curvy models off the pages of magazines. Adding a photo personalizes the live chat experience for the customer, humanizes your website, and allows you to establish the rapport required for a productive conversation. And don’t forget, if your conversation with a site visitor is successful they’ll soon be walking through the door of your business so you’ll want them to instantly recognize you.

Introduce Yourself
Answer inbound chat requests with “Hello, my name is ___. How may I help you?” or a similar greeting. This will often prompt the customer to give you their name and tell you what they are looking for.

Keep Messages Short and To The Point
Keep messages simple, concise and give people time to respond. Follow these guidelines:

  • Ask only one question per message sent.
  • Provide one answer per message sent.
  • Don’t use the “machine gun” technique of sending lots of messages in quick succession – it will only confuse and irritate the visitor
  • Do give the visitor ample time to reply after each message you send (hint: ContactAtOnce! shows you when the visitor is typing so you can get a good sense of what they are doing…)
  • Acknowledge every message you receive, even when an answer is not required. For example, visitor say “I really like green” and you respond “ok”.

Humor - Be Cautious
As with email communications, be very careful about the use of humor within chat conversations. In fact, in initial business conversations steer clear of humor and jokes unless the other party initiates them, and even then be careful as to how far you push it. There are cultural and personal differences among the population, so what seems funny to you may be considered weak or even offensive to others.

Jargon, Slang and Abbreviations
Jargon, abbreviations and slang used in live chat and instant messaging conversations can help reduce keystrokes, but may come across as being unprofessional to the person you are communicating with. Worse still, if the other person isn’t familiar with the lingo, it may totally confuse them. Until you get to know the person better, or you see them using the same lingo, it is best to steer clear of it. That said, with the incredible popularity of text-based communication of all sorts, you will encounter an increasing number of visitors that will use slang to communicate with you. Make sure you know the basics so you can understand what they are saying to you and/or asking you. For your reference, a chat slang guide was included in another post on this blog

Don’t “SHOUT”
TYPING YOUR MESSAGES IN UPPERCASE is extremely rude - it’s considered shouting and very aggressive. Use lowercase letters.

Relax, Fat Fingers…
Chat is less formal than email so proper punctuation, capitalization, spelling and grammar should be considered a bonus but not a requirement when chatting.

To be continued in the second post in this series…

Contact At Once! Customer Global Imports BMW Featured In Magazine Article

Great article in AutoRemarketing Magazine today about a Contact At Once! customer, Global Imports BMW.

This dealership is part of the Sonic Automotive Group and ranks in the top four nationwide for certified pre-owned sales, which is the main topic of the article. This dealership has also been named a BMW Center of Excellence store six consecutive years. We have been featuring them in a customer testimonial on our website for the past year or so.

The AutoRemarketing Magazine  article is recommended reading for anyone looking to improve their dealership’s pre-owned sales and marketing.

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.

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.

The Outsourced Chat Debate - Post #2 - Answer Your Own Chat Leads

This is the second 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.  In this video post, ContactAtOnce! VP Sales Ed Parkinson makes the case for answering your own chat leads. 

The Outsourced Chat Debate - Introduction

This is the introductory post in a series of five posts regarding “The Outsourced Chat Debate”. 

GM’s at every car dealership must ask this question…

“Should we answer our own chat leads, or should we outsource the answering to a service provider?” 

There are many tradeoffs to be evaluated before arriving at an answer for your dealership, all of which will be explored in this series of posts.   The genuine objective is to help you make the make the right decision.  ContactAtOnce! has a solution for you regarless of which approach you choose so we’re not steering readers one way or the other.  That said, as the industry leader by far with over 6,000 dealers using our solution, we have observed and learned much and we’ll not be shy about sharing those observations and opinions in hopes that you find them helpful.

Also helpful for the entire community will be your comments - especially if you have previously or are currently answering this question at your dealership.  Just use the comments feature below to chime in with thoughts, opinions, and queries.

Take Online Chat To The Next Level - DealerADvantage

Great post today on Cars.com’s DealerADvantage blog entitled “Take Online Chat To The Next Level“.   The Cars.com team wrote the post by summarizing key takeaways from the recent live webinar that featured Jim Flint, Corporate Director of Interactive Sales and Marketing for the John Eagle Family of Dealerships.  Our own Ed Parkinson contributed.  Some really helpful advice for any dealership using online chat…

The Conslidated ContactAtOnce! Blog is Live

Today we went live with this 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.  This conslidated blog assumes a format that is consistent with and fully integrated with the corporate website.    

Our previous blogs included a corproate blog, Presence Bits,  and an Auto Dealer Live Chat Tips and Techniques Blog.  All historical posts and content from those blogs has been migrated to the new blog and are easily searchable using the site search function.   This 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 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!.

Don’t Over Complicate Automotive Dealership Instant Messaging

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!