In his book, Customers for Life, Carl Sewell says to MEASURE EVERYTHING. So how do you measure how well your team is doing with live chat? For many dealers handling chat in-house, ‘measuring chat’ means tracking the number of chat conversations and leads, and possibly the number of sold units. But what else should a dealer take a look at to see how well their staff is doing with chat? After all, BDC team members and salespeople must learn their product, master handling phone ups and walk-in traffic, and legal requirements, as well as basic sales skills.

Here are a few of the key metrics to take a look at:

• Number of chats
• Number of leads and conversion percentage
• Time to respond to a chat
• Sales-to-service chat ratio
• Length of live chat conversations
• Staying on process with pre-written responses
• Amount of time logged on / off the chat console

By investing a few minutes to dig deeper into the available data, you can improve your chat quality, lead counts, and most importantly, increase sold units. For a more information, check out the blog post, http://www.carchat24.com/dealer-chat-2/measure-live-chat-operators/ .

Tom LaPointe CarChat24 Marketing Consultant

www.carchat24.com/ 24/7 Interactive Automotive Dealer Website LIVE CHAT Solutions Managed Chat, Backup Chat Support, and chat software options 727-638-0195

A U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Tom has an MBA in Marketing and is an automotive writer and author with nearly 20 years experience in virtually every aspect of the retail auto industry. He has been involved with the internet from the beginning, building websites at Johns Hopkins University in the 90's, and has been a performance leader in nearly every dealer role, from sales and service, to BDC / internet sales and viral marketing.