It's not good enough to close the ticket when the chat ends. Your follow-up methods can have a significant impact on future customer interactions.
Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) team needs to address every chat request quickly and professionally. Suppose a lead asks a question about a potential purchase or has a service inquiry. In that case, it's essential to follow up afterward—and do it correctly.
Before you set up your chat services, you should know the answers to these questions:
- Who will follow up on the leads?
- What kind of distribution method are you going to use to assign leads to your staff?
- How many employees do you need to address all lead follow-ups promptly?
- Does your staff understand how to use your CRM system to access the chat leads?
- Where will the chat transcripts be stored for your team to review?
- How quickly should your team follow up on chat leads?
After you answer the above questions, you can train your employees to properly execute a chat lead follow-up.
You should have standardized practices to make sure all of your customers have a seamless experience, no matter which of your employees handles the lead.
The most common forms of contact you will use to follow up on a chat lead are
phone and email.
When following up on a chat lead via text or email, follow these crucial steps:
- Read the chat transcript thoroughly.
- Gather the details the shopper was looking for and include them in your email response. This can include things such as vehicle availability, price, and specifications. It can also cover leasing offer details, service package information, and available sales or rebates.
- Make sure to attach any photos or coupons requested.
NOTE:
You must answer the shopper’s questions in your follow-up communications. Doing so is necessary to build a relationship with your customers and earn their trust.
Pre-Screening Leads for Quality
Stop wasting your best efforts on leads who aren’t truly interested in becoming a customer. Pre-screening leads for quality will help your service agents focus their efforts where it will have the most return.
Use important information markers to prioritize communications, such as whether or not the client has provided:
- BOTH a first and last name
- An email address
- Their phone number
- Any possible trade-in information
- Their purchase intent and timeframe
Leads without one or more of these critical info pieces are more likely to be only casual browsers. You should still give them your attention, though. A good chat experience will provide them with a positive view of your dealership that could enter into their future buying decisions.
Use these informational cues to focus your efforts on the leads who:
- Are ready to buy
- Know what they want
- Want to know their trade-in’s value
- Want to set a test-drive appointment
Bonus Question
What is your lead’s pre-qualification status?
Before you pick up a convo thread, imagine already knowing how your lead could qualify for the financing you offer.
Would that affect your sales approach?
Of course it would!
Customers want to cut to the chase and buy their car. Tedious financing details could kill anyone’s car-shopping buzz. Get a jump on the game by utilizing ActivEngage’s 700Credit integration to help customers know all of their options up front. With the ability to perform a soft credit check, you can bring your leads further along the process before they make it to the showroom. And speaking of the showroom...
The Importance of Setting Appointments
Internet leads that come with appointments have significant value over leads that don’t.
Internet leads that show for their appointment.
When an internet-based lead schedules (and keeps) an appointment, the resultant closing rate hits almost 50%.
Traditional Internet leads.
Meanwhile, traditional web leads close around 12-14% of the time, with a best-case scenario topping out around 20%.
Internet leads who have a quality dealership experience.
But it gets even better. If dealers go above and beyond (by having the vehicle cleaned, making the shopper feel special during their showroom appointment, and so on), the closing rate for an Internet lead can exceed 80%!
Internet shoppers who research before making contact.
Furthermore, 92% of shoppers report researching online before contacting a dealer. Car buyers tend to be informed about what they want, and they will ask you for the further details they need to continue through the buying process.
Don’t ignore these statistics. The evidence is clear that Internet leads have distinct advantages over traditional ones, because they:
- Allow the dealer to set an appointment, establishing a relationship with your shopper
- Let dealers gather valuable information about shoppers’ needs, which they can use to help close the deal
- Enable the dealer to prepare for a superior showroom room experience, while also developing rapport via the initial conversation
- Give the salesperson the means to provide immediate answers for a potential buyer before they lose interest
ActivEngage puts all of these tools at your fingertips. Our experienced sales and service chat professionals will nurture the customer through the sales funnel and place them cleanly into your hands. We can provide vehicle history reports, soft credit checks, and standardize all of our interactions to match your dealership’s colors, logos, and methods. Get a dealer chat that goes to work for you.
