Dealers put a lot of work into their websites and frequently spend a lot of dollars to put in technology that helps them maintain the content and keep inventory fresh.  In the current scenario for most dealers they wait for the phone to ring or the email lead to pop up in their lead management system.  But what are you doing to connect with your online prospects when they visit your website?

Here are two solutions that are being used by manufacturers and dealers today to help consumers communicate during the online shopping phase. The first one is a chat feature not unlike the Instant Messaging (IM) we are all know and love.  We download one of the IM tools, set up a screen name and then share that info with our friends and put our IM address in all of our emails we send out.

This chat feature takes a more proactive approach and provides live chat application that integrates live chat capabilities with real-time website monitoring, support and sales team integration, site visitor data management, website report analytics, and advanced sales performance reporting modules.  WOW that’s a lot of functionality.  Let’s get past the marketing hoopla and talk about how it can be used.  You are the Internet sales person and sitting at your desk enjoying a Coke or bottle of water.  You’ve installed this chat functionality on your site and integrated with your desktop computer.  Now you get a little beep that says, Susie Q. Public is on your site looking at the one year old Chevy Cobalt you have posted on the site.  At this point you do not know who the person is other than they are in your market area, based on IP information collected by the system. 

You initiate the Chat messaging feature, and say something like, “Hi I am Bill here at Valley Motors and I work in the Internet department. I see you are looking at our Cobalt, and wondered if there are any questions you have about this vehicle or the others we have on special right now?”   If you use some language with a hook, like other cars on special you get a better response.  And so the online conversation begins.  It is unobtrusive and the shopper can turn it off any anytime or choose not to respond, but it offers you a way to speak to online shoppers. Best of all it some of these plans are very cost effective, and some of the basic plans are less than $25 per month per person and they can carry on up to 5 chats at a time.  Some of these vendors also offer free trials.

If you don’t feel like typing, you can do what the Chrysler Group is doing on their site and that is to incorporate an instant call me button, or Click to Call as it is named by eStara the provider of the service.

As consumers browse the Dodge site and then select a vehicle a box appears at the top with a telephone handset icon and the text, “Need Help?”  A box pops up and the consumer has the option of entering their phone number (land line or cell phone) so someone instantly calls them or the user can connect via the PC as long as they have a headset with a microphone.
Specific to Chrysler, the product has converted 20 percent of push-to-talk calls compared to 10 percent for standard inbound calls. The call completion rate off the push-to-talk button was 92 percent and the total call volume increased, as 10 percent of total calls are now push-to-talk. Most importantly, according to the Chrysler Group, twice as many push-to-talk customers are converting to purchase versus standard inbound calls. www.estara.com
Both of these technologies can bring dealers closer to consumers in the market to buy vehicles and are worth exploring.

Mark Dubis is director for the Dubis Group, an automotive marketing services company, the former editor of Digital Dealer magazine and a 26 year veteran of the automotive retail and finance business. He can be reached at mark@dubisgroup.com