automotive dealers live chat buyers guide

Automotive Dealer Live Chat Buyers’ Guide 11 Key Questions to Ask any Live Chat Provider before You Buy

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Although live chat has been around in one form or another for more than adecade, the past year has seen a huge surge in the number of automotivedealers (and other online retail businesses) leveraging the power and engage-ment possibilities that proactive chat provides. The technological capabilitiesand best practices have hit a tipping point and it’s now possible to avoid thepitfalls and sub-optimum practices of the past. To maximize any investmentin live chat (time, money, dealership personnel, etc.), it is imperative to askany chat vendor the following questions and have a serious discussion abouteach item. This will help ensure that you make the best decision for yourspecific dealership needs and reap the rewards of successful live chat on thedealership website. Each question is crucial for success!

Automotive Dealer Live Chat Buyer’s Guide | 3

Important note: Although all questions in the buyers’guide are important, this is perhaps the most importantpart of the discussion you need to have with chat ven-dors. Chat business intelligence is what can help yousignificantly increase lead generation; merely deploying

technology or adding a “click-to-chat”button will not increase your websiteleads by nearly as much as utilizing proac-tive engagement that leverages businessintelligence. Your dealership needs morethan technology to increase leads andsales for all dealership profit centers; youneed a comprehensive service that letsyou understand consumer behavior and offerengagement at just the right moment, withjust the right message.

5 specific features required to leverage chat business intelligence• Ability to view visitors on your website in real-time

and watch as they shop around your site. Chat in-telligence offers you the same power of watching anup on your lot look at three Nissan Maximas, beforecoming into your dealership. This incredible informa-tion helps you identify real shoppers vs. tire kickers,thus maximizing time spent chatting with shoppers.

• The referring URL and keywords shoppers used tofind your website. This gives you valuable insightabout what the shopper is thinking and looking foras they start to shop on your dealership website. Byhaving this chat intelligence you can proactively in-vite your shoppers into a conversation using the

same language and words they having been search-ing for online. This allows you to deliver just the rightmessage to encourage shoppers to engage in an ac-tive conversation with you on your website.

• First time visitor or returning visitor, with current andprevious click paths. You can review shoppers' clickpaths to identify exactly which vehicles site visitorsare interested in. This is like having a print out ofevery webpage a consumer visited to prepare yoursales pitch, before they visit the dealership. Under-standing your shoppers’ needs and desires allowsyou to craft a very powerful sales presentation. Thatis what chat business intelligence can provide.

• GEO�IP targeting to identity if the shopper is local,or even a competitor checking out your website. Lo-cation gives you insight into your online approach,especially if you are a dealership that will give moreaggressive pricing to a shopper outside your localmarket. Chat intelligence, not IM software, givesyou that information and more.

• “Shop With Me Technology.” This is a must, and aterm you will be reading more and more about in thecoming months as chat technology continues toevolve. Sending a link to a shopper on chat is onething, but controlled co-browsing is much morepowerful. “Shop With Me Technology” lets you leadshoppers around your website, explain things asyou go, and lets you give you a powerful onlinepresentation, with you in complete control. This newtechnology allows you to create a true online salesprocess with steps to complete the sale.

Does the chat service provide business intelli-gence or merely instant messaging software?


Ask any vendor if you will have access to this informa-tion because it is incredibly valuable to help understandconsumers and their needs. Also ask if you can mon-itor your sales reps during a chat. Do they have ”Whis-per” technology that allows managers to coachrepresentatives while they are chatting with a visitor, inthe same chat screen? This lets you continuously im-

prove chat agents’ skills and increase the service youprovide your site visitors. Very advanced chat intelli-gence will also let you include the keywords originallyused in the online search that brought the visitor to yoursite. This gives you a truly personalized experiencewith each shopper, giving them the right message atjust the right time.

The unique needs of automotive online retail must beunderstood by any chat provider. You will have betterresults if you work with a chat service that was specif-ically designed for dealerships and automotive, ratherthan just generic software. This is particularly true forchat data transfers. A general chat provider may notbe able to set up data feeds in the particular formatneeded for your dealership’s CRM or ILM, and this caneasily create an inefficient process for your dealership.The difficulty of technical problems and manual datare-entry can easily out-weigh the benefits of live chatand create headaches for the dealership.

Select a vendor with knowledge and technology de-signed specifically for the automotive business, andxml/adf data feeds are a must for all major dealershipCRM and ILM services. A chat service that under-stands the shoppers' behavior and needs at dealershipwebsites is also going to be a more knowledgeable

partner to help you incorporate chat into your overalldealership marketing plan. For transferring informationfrom your chat tool to your CRM here are the minimumrequirements for collected contact information:

• Full Name• Email • Phone Number • Vehicle of Interest• Complete Chat Transcript

Premium chat providers will alsooffer these extended data points:• Trade information• Financial disposition (cash, lease, finance) • Additional notes • Zip code

How much experience does the provider haveworking with dealerships?


If you plan to handle the chat from within the dealer-ship, it is important that the software be user-friendly.As simple as chat may seem, some chat applicationsare designed to be managed by technically-oriented,highly trained professionals. The provider may tell youthat you can manage the chat yourself, but be sure thatthe people who will handle the chat from the dealership(probably non-technical people) thoroughly test andfeel comfortable using the interface provided. This isa good rule of thumb: if you can’t learn to use it in fiveminutes or less, it is probably too complicated to con-sistently use in the dealership. Don’t just go on theservice provider’s word about ease of use. It is crucial

to engage in live demos to see the chat in action, fromboth sides of the system, the customer facing side andthe console side so you can see how it all fits together.

If your staff members aren’t comfortable with the tech-nology, they will either not use or not use it properly. Ineither case, your dealership will not get maximumvalue. In addition, and just as important, test how easyit is for your shoppers to use. Does it force an installon their machine to engage in chat? Does it launchquickly and smoothly? Does it crash during conversa-tions? Can it translate the chat into multiple languagesto meet the needs of diverse demographics?

Is it easy to use for both you and your shoppers?

Important note: Without proper planning and integra-tion into your overall marketing plan, you will not realizethe full benefit from live chat-- period. If a chat service

tells you that you can be up and runningin 24 hours or 48 hours, proceed withcaution. Sure, deploying the code tomake live chat available on your websitecan often be done very quickly, but thevalue of live chat is in the service, not justthe technology. Thorough discussionand planning can easily take up to aweek. On the flip side, it shouldn’t take avendor much more than a week to getstrategically planned live chat running on

your site. A good provider will take the time to under-stand your dealership and help you analyze yourunique needs and they will also have an existing rela-tionship with your website provider. They should offersuggestions and help you plan the best course of ac-tion, based on your goals and not some “canned” tech-nology or service. Can you change the location of theproactive invitation? Can you customize the invitation?Can you create a custom look and feel for the chat iconon your website so it stands out and fits your dealer-ship's overall website design? Can the graphic bechanged quickly to take advantage of a sales event thatyou want to promote to your website shoppers?

How easy and fast is it to get set up?

Beware of Low Cost Chat Providers:You get what you pay for, similar to your website provider.Make sure to compare eachprovider, feature to feature, soyou know if they offer exactlywhat you need to successfullyengage your shoppers in chat.


Successful live chat, like all communication channels,requires its own specific skill set and knowledge base.What works on the phone or in person isn’t alwayswhat’s best for live chat. If you plan to manage thechats from within the dealership, your staff must be ad-equately trained. Agents need to be fast and friendlyand provide the right answers to consumers’ queries.Make sure the provider you choose understands theunique characteristics of automotive dealerships, on-line retail and live chat communication. Make sure theywill provide training before live chat deployment andon-going training—and get it in writing. Best practices

are changing as consumers become more accustomedto live chat and this means that training should be anon-going process, rather than a one-time session.Also, having access to chat companies' best practiceexperience can set you on the fast track to chat suc-cess with your shoppers. Can you monitor your chatreps to see how long the average wait time for a shop-per to engage in chat is? Can you see how long yourreps have been logged into the system? How manychats have they taken? This information will allow youto create a continuous improvement and training planto fully leverage chat for the dealership.

What type of training is available both before and after deployment?

Does the service offer proactive chat engagement?

While passive chat (click-to-chat button with operatorsstanding by) can help consumers at your website, thereal benefit of chat comes from proactive invitations.Although chat is becoming more widely used by con-sumers, some shoppers may not think to ask questionsthrough chat. Let them know that you are there to helpand they will appreciate it. Lead generation rates canskyrocket with proactive engagement invitations. Andthis method helps create a great first impression of your

dealership. Shoppers immediately see that you arethere to help and provide great service with the infor-mation they request. This engagement can build astrong preference for your dealership, and it's just notan option without proactive live chat. Can differentproactive pop-up messages be deployed on differentpages or is only one graphic available? How fast can anew proactive, branded invitation be deployed and atwhat cost?


With the staffing limitations of most dealerships, han-dling the chat within the dealership is often simply notan option. You must make sure that trained profession-als are available to chat at all key dealership hours. Ifyou can’t manage it from the dealership, then you need

to select a chat service that can managethe chats for you with professionallytrained agents. Fast responses are keyfor chat success and chats can take upsignificant amounts of time; best prac-tices show that responses should takefive seconds or less and the averagechat length is over eight minutes. Youcan’t just ask one sales person (who’salso greeting customers on the floor, an-

swering phone calls and responding to email) to addthis assignment on. It just doesn’t work.

If the chat service does offer chat management, makesure the agents are professionally trained to under-

stand both chat lead generation best practices and theworld of automotive sales and dealership websites. Itis important to find out if the chat provider merely out-sources the chats to a generic call center, because thismethod generally does not yield the best results. Alsousing a service that performs poor chats can damage thedealership's credibility, thus eroding the benefits of chatfor your dealership. Further, discuss how the agents willcommunicate with your dealership. Will there be regu-larly scheduled calls to discuss what’s going on at yourdealership? In addition, discuss details about how livechat transcripts and contact information will be sent tostaff within the dealership for follow-up with chat leads.

Make sure to get straight answers about these issues,and get them in writing. Personalized communication withyour automotive shoppers is the best way to get shop-pers engaged and into your sales process. How will theyengage your shoppers? What information will be commu-nicated? How will they respond to price questions?

Can the service provide chat agents to manage chats for the dealership?

Can the chat be incorporated into email, eNewslet-ters, FaceBook, MySpace and other online channels?

Very important: Avoid any vendors that offer automated messages or serv-ices. Robotic offerings willdo more damage than good.

Adding chat on the dealership website will go a longway toward increasing website leads, but there are alsogrowing opportunities to engage shoppers anywherethey are online. Can the provider include live chat inthe email signatures of your staff? Can live chat be in-cluded in the dealership’s newsletter or other online

communication? These are just a few examples of ad-ditional options to enhance service and lead generationfor all dealership profit centers, and more will probablycome along as technology advances and consumerbehavior changes. If a chat service provider doesn’toffer these options, then you can probably bet that theyare not keeping ahead of the technology curve.


Although the service and business intelligence are thetrue keys to live chat success, product reliability, sta-bility, security and support must also be verified. Dis-cuss vendors’ uptime. Is it guaranteed? Can theyshow you historical reports of uptime to demonstratetheir claims? How is the data secured and transferredbetween the chat and the dealership CRM/ILM? Ifthere is downtime, how will they communicate with youand fix any problems as quickly as possible? Makesure the provider you select has a plan in place and getit in writing before signing any agreement.

Is uptime guaranteed and what is the chatprovider’s security policy?

Does the vendor offer a broad selection of service options?

Partnering with a vendor that offers a wide range ofservice options will help you select the provider thatbest meets your dealership needs, both now and in thefuture. With the speed of the rate of change, what’sbest for your dealership right now may not be best foryour dealership a year from now, or even six monthsfrom now. For example, if you decide to begin with in-house chat agents, will you be able to switch to a man-aged service if you decide that your staff cannot

adequately manage the chat? Or, can you begin without-sourced chat agents and then switch to managingthe chats in-house if you hire additional staff in the fu-ture? A solid vendor should offer a variety of optionsand help you select the right level of service based onyour unique dealership needs. Your chat vendorshould also offer complementary services that will helpyou maximize the online chat experience.


This is very important for selecting any vendor, butoften forgotten when time is limited or there is a rushto make a decision. Make sure that the chat servicecan supply at LEAST three clients who will talk to youabout their experience with the provider, and actuallytake the time to talk with each of them. Case studies,

reporting, media coverage and other objective materi-als can also help you make an informed decision aboutvendor selection. In addition, supplying these refer-ences and materials helps demonstrate a provider'scommitment to helping their clients succeed.

Can the vendor provide dealer references who are willing to talk to you and can they provide case studies, reportingand other objective material to support their claims?

ConclusionWhile live chat is a powerful first-party lead generatorwhen managed correctly, success requires leading-edge technology, service and support. Understandthat the skill set and knowledge needed to maximizeresults are very specific to the medium. In addition,dealerships will have better results by partnering witha provider who understands automotive online retailand provides an offering that is specifically suited forthe needs of automotive consumers. Chat business in-telligence, technology and service combine to createmore selling opportunities for the dealership. With theright service, incorporating live chat in the overall mar-keting plan is one of the fastest, most cost-effectiveways to increase website lead generation and sales.Make sure you discuss these important questions be-fore you decide on a service provider.

About ActivEngageActivEngage is the leading provider of chat software & business intelligence in the automotive industry.

Our technology is helping dealerships nationwide increase business from thereexisting websites.

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