ATLANTA — One in three users of auto website chat, included in a recent Polk analysis commissioned by Contact At Once!, bought a vehicle after having an online conversation with a dealer. Contact At Once! is the market-leading provider of automotive website chat. Polk is the premier provider of automotive market intelligence.

Polk analyzed 10,000 Contact At Once! chat transcripts in which consumers volunteered personally-identifiable information. The chats included conversations originating from dealer, OEM and third-party advertising sites. Results were derived by matching people who chatted to households with vehicle sales and registration data over a 60-day period.

The analysis also found that consumers who started chats on third-party sites such as Cars.com and Edmunds.com were just as likely to purchase as those who initiated chats from dealership websites.

“For years, Contact At Once! has observed auto dealers experience a 25% lift in customer contacts from their web sites and advertising products when they start using live chat, but this is the first industry analysis that empirically proves chatters are buyers. It validates the many anecdotal reports we have received from dealers that chat does help them sell cars,” says Marc F. Hayes, Contact At Once! founder and executive vice-president of strategy.

For more information about the study, call 1-866-358-3880 or chat with Contact At Once! now.

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Contact At Once! pioneered the use of website chat in automotive advertising, enabling instant connections between online shoppers and dealerships through search websites, dealership websites, social media and mobile sites. More than 10,000 customers rely on Contact At Once! chat to drive incremental sales opportunities and increase return on advertising investments. For more information, visit www.autodealerchat.com.