? Subscribe on Apple: https://dpb.fm/apple? Subscribe on Spotify: https://dpb.fm/spotify? All our links: https://dpb.fm/playCarol Marshall is the Chief Operations Officer at ActivEngage, Inc., an innovative leader with expertise in building teams and developing the very best collaborative environments. Carol has extensive experience in the automotive and contact centre environments, and her strategic vision and analytical skills have proven to drive results while creating trust and passionate team members in a culture of accountability.A great customer experience requires a human touch.Great discussions are memorable. You recall them fondly, and they frequently inspire future talks. They become part of our most treasured memories. Consumers are more demanding and have more options today, and dealerships must step up and cater to their customers and prospects with exceptional customer experiences. In this episode, Carol Marshall dives deep into the question of whether car shoppers want to even talk to car dealerships anymore.Answering the question, Carol says, "They never didn't want to talk to car dealers! It's vital that they talk to someone at the dealership, but their ability and their willingness to wait on that person to provide the information is shrinking."When shoppers click into a messenger-style chat box on your site, they're ready to do business. And they will tell you if their concern is a market adjustment or what their hot button is. So your staff needs to be trained. You need to make sure you have the right people who can handle those queries and address them. Be an active listener. Acknowledge what it is they're concerned about and address that concern.When people install a tool like Active Engage, the common misconception is that messaging is easier than being on the phone, but the truth is that it's more difficult because it's so stark. If you're dealing with a tricky consumer, even the smallest misstep can tick them off. So the first thing to think about is who is handling the conversations and making sure that they're ready for all objections, questions, and conversations.Active Engage has tools with the ability to track where the consumer entered your site, so you can get a sense of where that shopper has been and what they're thinking. Did they go to the new cars page, then to the search results page, and then to your used car inventory? Perhaps they didn't find what they were looking for. "It's a great question to bring up in the conversation and gives you leverage in already assuming what they might be looking for and where they are in the buyer journey."Car shoppers are predictable.Being predictable doesn't necessarily mean that the car shopper or customer is dumb. If they're asking the same questions or asking about similar things, then it is incumbent upon whoever is working with that customer to take that data, take that predictability, and for heaven's sake, find out the most efficient, personable, relationship-building way to answer those questions. Stop being robotic in your responses! Instead, think to yourself, "How can I show tender care and concern for them in a much more human approach?" And circling back to this whole concept of what's going to happen in the economy and the softening of the market and interest rates, you can leverage all of that data and all of that understanding about how consumers ebb and flow in the market to give them better service and serve them better.Web technology is a better listener than we are. Google, for example, is not a search engine; it's a listening engine. It is listening to every letter you type into that search box, interpreting your intent, and then presenting you with the results it believes are the most re