For online shoppers, “live chat” functionality often clears confusion and helps get questions answered quickly. A recent survey of 1,100 dealers (download results here) reported that nine of every 10 respondents felt that live-chat capability gave them a competitive advantage. Dealers also found the feature a good way to break into the younger demographic, as those consumers prefer chatting and texting to phone calls and conventional emails.
A survey of the nation’s top 10 lenders, though, turned up only one ― Ally Financial ― with live-chat functionality. And even Ally uses the service for banking in general, not auto finance.
Should more lenders add this capability to their sites? Sure, auto finance is typically an indirect transaction. But if consumers arrive at their dealerships with strong preferences toward a specific lender as a result of a positive live-chat experience, wouldn’t that help build loan volume?
And what about a scenario where dealers refer consumers with financial questions directly to lenders in their network? “Shoppers who chat are often giving very strong intent-to-buy signals,” said Ed Parkinson, vice president of Contact At Once!, the company that conducted the dealer survey.
My prediction for 2011 is 12,990,000.
Alex, E-nets private SaaS web base system brings the Customer, Dealer, and Lender together “live” over the Internet, during the loan origination and approval process. They can communicate over the phone or we could easly add live chat while their putting the deal together. We believe the phone remains the best option because the conversation with multiple parties is expidited.
In fact when you look at the new rules and regulations the CFPB is forcing everyone to comply with, only E-net has the system that keeps dealers and lenders in compliance on each and every deal during the loan origination process.