Chat is nothing new to the industry. It is has been around for some time. Yet so many Dealers are still getting it wrong. Causing dealers to have a bad taste in their mouths paired with a sincere disinterest in what the service has to offer.

Customers want convenience, which can come at a cost for the service lane (some as much as $1,200 a month - who is your favorite provider?) However, if chat is managed and run efficiently it can increase your traffic, which in-turn will increase profits.

Here are some reasons and suggestions to help your service lane turn website traffic into service customers.

Most Importantly How many customers visit your service site and *DO NOT*  convert?

Most if not all chat providers for auto dealers have an online scheduling tool where customers can conveniently set-up their service appointment with the industry standard only being a 28% set ratio! That is a low number considering the average amount of visits to the site on a monthly basis.

The low set rate could be because there are customers who have questions that cannot easily be answered on the website regarding his/her visit that requires calling the store.

In most instances, the customer will exit the “appointments page,” as s/he is not going to spend more than a minute or so searching your site. Certainly not on their phone, either. They’ll either call the store or simply show up to the dealership. Hoping for the best not taking into consideration that there might be increased wait times as they did not have an appointment scheduled.

This scenario does not always end well for the dealer. Especially for the customer whose concern cannot be addressed due to a part needing to be ordered. Or in some cases, the wait time far exceeds their expectations. All of which could have been avoided if they had an appointment.

How to Add Chat to Your Service Site

There is a lot of debate on what the best practices are regarding offering chat services on your website. That is how, where, and who will manage the service. It's far too easy to setup a chat service, and just hope for the best!

That is not how to run a successful chat service. In fact, that will not only cause for you to lose customers. But also collect a bad taste in your mouth on what you think is a horrific ROI for a really *invaluable* service.

That said, there are best practices in adding chat/text services. That is making sure that the placement is in alignment with the usage. Wherein, you do not want the chat message option popping up every click. Causing the customer to exit in sheer frustration. This is especially important on mobile devices. Time permitting, check your dealer site this morning on your iPhone or Android device, and see how chat appears.

Rather, you might want to consider offering the service to pop-up if, in fact, the customer has been on the page for more than “X” time without booking an appointment or completing a CTA.

As you use the service, you can monitor the chat sessions per department vs. the total amount of customers that converted as a result of the chat service.

When is the last time you used a chat service and either had a good or bad experience?

What Chat/Text is Not Replacing

Offering chat/text services on your website is not to replace correspondence with the customer. Instead, it is designed to enhance/increase your communication with the customer. Allowing you to capture customers who might exit without converting. The ones with questions about their services that are not able to be answered simply browsing your site!

If you are concerned about staffing issues or having their answering service respond to the chat leads. Take a minute, and go to a dealer website that offers their service, and test it out!

The bottom line is that every conversion counts and if you are able to convert enough customers organically through chat than it more than covers the cost!

Do you use chat? If so, what kind of results are you noticing? What is one thing you learned from when you first started using the service?