One of the crucial differences in your actual lot and your virtual one is that your website is open 24-7, rain or shine and even on holidays! So how do you ensure that you engage your customers and utilize your chat capability to its capacity? This isopen where a blended or managed chat solution is worth its weight in car sales!

Managed chat has been around for some time an dis defined differently within the industry. Some third party chat providers will define managed chat as a passive or automated system that will capture name, email or phone number and forward to your CRM similar to a web lead. Others provide staff to answer chats after hours. This model is widely used to also generate leads for your during off hours then forwarded to your CRM.

On the other hand, blended models are undoubtedly the most effective. This model gives you or your staff the ability to answer leads either during business hours or after and to have them rolled over to a chat representative at a predetermined amount of time if the chat is not answered by you or your staff. For example, you can set your answer time to 15 seconds. This would mean that if you or your staff did not answer within that time, the chat provider’s staff would take the chat and get the customer’s information and forward to your CRM for follow-up.

The third option is to completely outsource your chat. Some dealerships do not have the staff to manage chats coming into the dealership so they completely rely on a third party company to answer all chats. While this might be a necessary option for some dealership, it is not the best option simply because you are most familiar with your inventory.

Give us a call for your free 30 day trial of Chat ConneXion and we can help you figure out the best option for your dealership!