Car dealer Swansway has partnered with VEE24 to bring real-time live chat to its website customers, acknowledging the increase in consumer search outside of traditional opening hours and the importance of the internet.

Swansway found that 15% of their web traffic is between 7-9pm. The group wanted to be available to customers longer – ‘8am ‘til late’ and so its customer contact centre now has a shift pattern which allows staffing until 9pm.

Director John Smyth said: “The digital revolution has brought many great changes to the motor trade, but there is one area where websites have been less able to compete with showrooms and that’s in delivering personal service.”

“Our live chat team are just that, talking in real-time and visible to the customer via webcam, we believe that introducing that personal relationship online is vital in establishing an initial link between the customer and our centres.”

“By adding Live Video Chat to all our websites, we have around 25 customers a day choosing live chat as their preferred way of contacting us and the live chat team have, so far, made 66 additional appointments for our sales teams since its introduction at the beginning of April.”