CarChat24 Blog
CarChat24 Blog
CarChat24 Blog
CarChat24 Blog
Leads are the driving force of a car dealership. Some dealers have the advantage of great location or a huge inventory, but most dealers rely on their ability to generate leads to create opportunities to sell more cars. How a dealership’s website gathers leads is crucial.
Live chat is one of the best ways dealers increase their leads. The live chat software and services industry has been growing for years, but there are still dealers who are not looking at live chat through a critical lens. Those who want to make improvements to their leads and sales should take a closer look at what they’re doing.
Is Your Live Chat Effective?
One of the most common questions we hear when discussing live chat solutions is whether or not there’s really a difference between chat providers. After all, it’s just a website widget and a conversation between potential customers and an operator representing a dealership, right? What could possibly go wrong?
The truth is that there are major differences in appearance, practices, and effectiveness when it comes to car dealer chat. Some of the differences are basic and philosophical such as goal alignment. Others are more technical, including a constant need to test the various chat factors and word tracks. There are also differences that are essential for success such as having a full-time presence, or using a proactive approach to generating more leads.
There are differences in opinion about how to generate leads and even what to call a lead. We do not believe in “soft leads” such as taking visitors to an hours and directions page. Can this turn into a sale? Sure it could. Should it be called a lead if you did not get any contact information? We say ‘no’, and most dealers would agree. That’s not always the case with live chat providers.
If your current live chat system is effective, you should be seeing a noticeable increase in the total number of leads your website produces. You can’t always just look at the number of chat leads. You have to look at the totals and compare those numbers to the past so that you can know that your chat solution is generating more leads rather than just becoming a different lead source that is taking from other areas of your website.
Those Without Chat
There are plenty of reasons that dealers do not have chat on their website. Perhaps they tried it in the past and did not have success. Maybe they have their budgets allocated to other lead generating measures. Maybe they simply haven’t gotten around to it. Regardless of your reasons, you should definitely be taking a closer look at it this year.
It’s not like it was in the recent past. The total number of leads generated by properly managed chat is going up rapidly, faster than the growth of the industry. This is happening for a few reasons, but the most important one to understand is that chat represents a method of communication that is “safe” to the consumer and similar to the favorite method of communication for millions of Americans: texting. We’ve become a society that is reliant on text. Chat is very similar and offers a way for your website visitors to communicate with you on their own terms.
Even if you’ve tried chat in the past, we strongly encourage you to let us show you what it’s like today. If you’ve never even considered chat, now’s the time. Many of your competitors are selling cars as a result of chat leads. Shouldn’t you be doing the same, only better?