As competition becomes fiercer and margins become smaller, businesses across all manner of industries have had to become more creative to maintain sales and profits.
As someone who uses the internet, you will surely have come across chat windows on some websites before. In the past, many people were skeptical of these tools as they were often manned by chatbots. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but poorly set up chatbots could be more frustrating than helpful.
Now though, live chat is becoming a much more widely used tool to help improve customer satisfaction and their online experience. Verified Market Research shows that the live chat industry will be worth $1.28 billion by 2027, as many industries adopt this type of software.
Some car dealers have been quick to look at, and invest in live chat for their digital retail websites. But, how does live chat help to improve sales, and is it a replacement for face-to-face conversation?
What is live chat?
If you have ever had a window pop up with someone offering to assist you while on a website, you may have experienced live chat already. While many of these chat tools are run through bots, there is a very good chance you have witnessed a genuine live chat tool.
To successfully market and sell your Porsche requires the use of different digital tools. One of which is live chat. Without this, it would be less likely that digital car sales would increase. With live chat, you can provide immediate responses to any customer questions while online. The software allows any visitor to a site to pose questions regarding navigation or more complex questions about products. In effect, live chat gives the customer the same human interaction they would have in-store, but online instead.
Yet, the software-based around live chats isn’t just there to create a chat window. They can be used to track data and help with marketing campaigns. They can also help with customer satisfaction, and be integrated across different platforms including social networking sites.
Who is using live chat?
While some customers may be skeptical of online chats where they cannot see the operator, many businesses are working hard to change this perception.
Many industries and services are taking advantage of tools such as Visitor Chat to enable immediate responses to their audiences. Companies are using live chat on their fan pages to create more awareness of their products, and actively engage with their audience. This creates trust and loyalty simply through live engagement.
Counseling can take place over live chats also. This has huge potential benefits where an individual can reach out for help and receive an immediate response.
It is probably not surprising that realtors have found live chat to be very useful, and the automobile industry is also recognising all the sales possibilities for this software.
Are car dealers selling more online today?
The digital automotive sector still trails behind the traditional market by a very long way. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t growing. The growth rate of the digital car retail market is higher than that of the brick-and-mortar sector and with good reason.
If you look at what traditional and online car dealers have to offer, you will see there are many advantages to digital retail. This counts not just for the dealer, but also for the customer.
Being able to market vehicles online opens up a car dealer to a far wider audience than before. Cars can be delivered, so there is no need for a dealer to limit themselves to a small radius when they could attract buyers from further afield.
To successfully market and sell cars online requires the use of different digital tools. One of which is live chat. Without this, it would be less likely that digital car sales would increase.
How does live chat influence online car sales?
Buying a car can be a costly business and not something that is done without some research and a few questions. While most online vendors will provide information about products and photographs, you are likely to have questions about a new car that you would want a human to answer.
If you are unable to get the answers you want, and in a timely fashion, you may switch to a rival car dealer. 82% of consumers said an immediate response was very important when it came to marketing and sales questions.
So, while live chat might not involve heavy-handed sales tactics, or lots of up-selling, using it could heavily influence whether you make a sale or not.
Every consumer wants to be able to get some response when they have a query. If an informed chat operator can answer those all-important questions, they can help with a conversion. At the least, they can help to leave a customer satisfied that they were professionally dealt with.
Consumers are impatient, and online shoppers even more so. Live chat could help retain potential buyers, but if used poorly, it could also lose them.
Does live chat impair customer service?
On the contrary, if used properly, it offers the convenience of digital shopping with the human experience. Chatbots can be a turn-off for consumers. If you are looking at spending tens of thousands of dollars on a new car and the dealer doesn’t feel it is important to use live operators, you may well take your business elsewhere.
However, live chat also offers the opportunity to discover what questions are important to customers, and also the chance to really up customer satisfaction, and make improvements to marketing.
Live chat can be part of digital marketing for the car industry by providing key insights. The software can include tracking of stock and monitoring performance and productivity.
Live chat can also help sales because it is available all the time. Impatience has already been mentioned before, and live chat allows someone to ask questions no matter what the time of day is, and where they are.
Are live chat operators qualified in the automotive industry?
As mentioned before, live chat is a great sales tool for the car industry, if used correctly. Therefore it is important that the people answering the questions and providing assistance know what they are talking about.
Good live chat companies use operators that are qualified and knowledgeable in many different industries. For instance, a car dealer can choose to use an operator that is staffed with people who have worked in the automobile industry.
To keep the customer satisfaction levels up, these operators can also hand over the reins to in-house staff when needed to. What this means is, that if a chat operator has answered questions satisfactorily, then the visitor may wish to speak to someone in the car dealership to take the sales process further. The operator can then hand over the chat to the dealership in question.
Summary
Buying cars online may not appeal to everyone, but live chat has managed to take the dealership onto the internet in many ways. Instead of having to drive to a showroom to ask questions about the latest Ford, you can simply visit the site, and then speak to an operator.
The time saving alone is hugely beneficial to the dealer, and the customer. But when live chat is mixed with an informative car retail website, the promise of higher conversions can become reality. Live chat won’t work without the website to back it up, and sales are less likely to happen without live chat either.
