Crossroads WOW

I just had to describe what we do at Crossroads Chat in three sentences to someone who has never heard about us.  This is called the Elevator Pitch.  The idea is that you're stuck in an elevator with someone who can supercharge your business: a new client, a huge celebrity, [insert important role here].

If you've ever had to talk about what you do and you're really passionate about it, three sentences is a death sentence.  Any mildly motivated homo sapien can hyper-summarize something, but to pack the breadth, depth, passion into three sentences to get the attention of a passerby is tough.  

"Hey we chat on websites" is about as brief as I could make it but that just doesn't say it.  And if that was sufficient then we'd better shut it down or get real comfortable with mediocrity.  

Do your customers serve you or do you serve your customers? It seems like an easy answer but does your company’s culture and actions “walk-the-talk”?

At Crossroads chat we have one word that encapsulates our worldview: WOW. Daily we ask ourselves “are we delivering a WOW experience better than anyone else?” It is this focus on the customer and their satisfaction that not only drives every chat, but also our every decision for changing our business. Whether it’s a new software feature or a new way of handling a chat scenario, the first question asked is “how does this improve WOW?”

One way this recently went down (slang for ‘occurred’) at Crossroads was a discussion about how to schedule service appointments on our dealership websites. The debate was whether or not to just give the link to the service appointment form to the customer or to take their information down and send it to the service department as an email. The easy-button for us would be to say “Great! Here is a link to our service form to schedule your own appointment.” We actually did this for a while, but when we asked ourselves “How do we improve WOW?” the conversation took a hard right turn. We realized that by asking the customer to fill out their own form we weren’t serving them. We just simply gave them more work. In many cases it was the difficulty of the service form that caused them to chat with us in the first place!

So after our discussion we made the change to ask the customer what they preferred. “Great! Would you like us to schedule a time for you or would you like to use our service appointment form?” Just this simple change has made a world of difference in the WOW experience at Crossroads Chat. Which is to say that it’s made a huge difference in the conversion and retention of business for our clients as well.  

This conversation prompted us to seek out the best service scheduling tool for automotive dealers.  After a number of meetings and vetting cycles we have formed our first vendor partnership with AdWorkz in Seattle, Washington.  Adworkz provides us the best-in-class automotive service scheduling tool with customized features to provide a turn-key experience for our chat clients.  We can now also provide several other service-based tools we would have never thought of offering.  Our focus on a superior customer experience has netted us a new relationship with another customer-centric business and has added a synergy to our business model we would have never had experienced if we hadn't asked ourselves, "are we offering a WOW experience better than anyone else?"

I would like to know what your business does to enhance WOW. And if you can’t think of some, let me know what you think your obstacles are to WOW. Either way let's help change the world by delivering WOW!

Crossroads Chat is in the business of WOW.  We are on a mission to change the global consumer experience with retail businesses that have a reputation for being TERRIBLE at serving the customer.  We've begun our mission in the automotive dealership industry.  We started the worlds first 24/7 chat-marketing center dedicated solely to wowing the customer shopping on our client-partner websites.  

Chat is now often the first experience a customer has with a business since it provides real-time answers with a level of anonymity.  It's faster than an email and more private than a phone call.  Chat sits at the crossroads of marketing - a message to a faceless audience - and sales - the beginning of a 1-to-1 relationship.  Hence our name: Crossroads Chat.

Where Crossroads sticks out is in our philosophy that businesses should utilize chat to establish 1-to-1 relationships by reaching out in real-time in a personalized manner instead of just having what one of our customers says is "a freaking blinking light" on the website..  Sounds easy but it's harder than it sounds. 

We started Crossroads Chat at the request of our customers who bought the pitch and wanted to buy the software.  There was a huge issue thought.  The customers didn't have the right people, processes, or management to do it right, or they bought it and quickly realized these shortcomings.

So we saw an opportunity in the marketplace to not just put people behind a software but to reshape industry reputations by creating the best online customer shopping experience in existence.  So we recruited and hired the best and most passionate team of folks who are passionate about one thing:: providing a superior chat experience.  Our motto is "NO ROBOTS'.  We don't have scripts, we are self motivated to earn the customer through excellent customer service, and we use technology to fulfill our philosophy of a 1-to-1 personalized relationship. 

 By doing these things we not only fulfill our philosophy of chat but we double the amount of business that our clients can generate from their website from the EXISTING TRAFFIC on their website.  WOW!