Challenge
In the automotive industry, experts predict that by 2020, almost 60-70% of car sales leads will come from digital channels. At the same time, the number of visits made to dealerships before a purchase has radically dropped.
This poses new challenges to businesses. But what is the sad reality?
• If you fail to trigger customer interactions and provide web visitors with engaging customer experience, you may never see most of your online customers ever again.
• Yet if you can’t find a way to transform your web visits into qualified leads, you will lose valuable sales opportunities.
So you have to ask yourself a painful question: are your web visits actually making a business impact?
To cure this, Automotive companies need to find a way to maximize the number of qualified digital leads and send them to the dealerships.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles was well aware of all this. With regard to their iconic Jeep brand, they wanted to:
• Better monetize their web visits, getting the most value out of their online leads.
• Differentiate themselves in the market and stay competitive.
• Create a powerful fusion between online (where the product discovery often begins) and the dealerships (where the sales process usually ends).
Solution
Luckily, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles found the answer in Whisbi and its Conversational Marketing platform, which they’ve also been successfully using for their Fiat brand.
This is part of an engaging omnichannel customer experience, synchronizing a phone call with video, co-browsing, chat, and tracking, all at once with patented technology.
Whisbi is the only solution that in one click, automatically ‘teleports’ online visitors to showrooms or dealerships, where sales reps can use the camera of smart glasses or smartphones to showcase vehicles in real time.
Thanks to Whisbi, companies can:
• Let customers ‘take a seat’ in the latest car models displayed in a showroom – such as the new Jeep Renegade in our case.
• The technology is of course just as great for showcasing used cars: the sales rep can just switch his or her camera on while talking to the customer on a phone headset and walk around the vehicles to give a first-hand look.
How does it work?
Whenever a potential customer arrives at Jeep’s website…
• An engaging Call-to-Action button encourages them to reach out and discover more about the cars as part of a virtual showroom experience.
• The customer may request an instant callback or book an appointment, providing valuable contact information in both cases.
• The customer is connected to a salesperson at the showroom.
• In a few seconds, they can see the chosen car through the eyes of the salesperson who’s using the camera of a smartphone or tablet.
• The sales person walks around the car, takes a seat inside, runs his hands across the dashboard…all the while, the customer is watching this via real-time video, as part of an interactive online experience.
• All the customer needs is an internet-enabled device of any kind – wherever they might be, even if their broadband is not strong. No downloads, no logins, no hassle either.
• After seeing how great the car actually looks and ‘feels’, the salesperson prepares a first customized offer, sharing it with the customer in real-time.
• Once the customer engaged with the presenter or watched for several minutes the automated lead capture feature appears for the viewer. This feature allows booking a test drive with the nearest dealership in real-time.
Jeep has just secured a valuable follow-up appointment with a potential customer – driving a qualified lead who’s already interested to the dealerships!
Results
Thanks to Whisbi, Jeep has managed to increase the number of test drives booked and customized quotes for prospect customers made, better monetizing web visits and sending leads to the dealerships.
The stunning KPIs of the project have once again proven that live video and the possibility to bring the real dealership experience 100% online are the next revolution in the automotive industry.