Vee24’s online customer service has been extended to cater to late night car browsers on Halliwell Jones' website. 

The current offering for online customers is limited to dealership opening hours, but the new service ensures that online customers can receive assistance from a customer service agent until 10pm daily.

The live chat service has a range of functionalities including voice, text or video chat with the daytime hours managed by Halliwell Jones and extended hours by the Vee24 PACE team.

This team has been trained to discuss a customer’s requirements and pass this information with test drive requests to Halliwell Jones’ loyalty team.

This means that the dealership is well-informed about a customer’s preferences before engaging with the customer for the sale.

Halliwell Jones’ group marketing manager Sue Carden said: “We’ve offered online customer service for some time and could see each morning that we had missed online customer support requests from the previous evenings when our team was unavailable.

“It made sense to extend our opening hours to see what effect this would have on calls, test drive bookings and car sales.

"I’ve been very encouraged so far on the number of additional sales we have made since we started in January and customers are delighted with the extended service hours.”

Vee24’s chief executive Priya Iyer said: “Purchasing a car is a big decision and customers spend a long time researching options at home in the evening, when a dealership is typically closed.

"Offering a facility to talk though options late in the evening makes perfect sense for an organisation that prides itself on delivering excellent customer service.”