Tesla has joined many companies in offering online chat to their list of support options. When you visit Tesla.com. the chat experience is in the bottom right of the screen and can be used to connect to a Tesla support agent.
A quick look under the hood and Tesla are using Twilio Chat to power this experience. Twilio for those who don’t know is a communications platform that is incredibly flexible and programmable to meet business requirements.
To try out the service, I asked the Tesla representative when the Model Y was coming out to Australia and in about 20 seconds, I had this response.
Currently, we have no confirmed date for when you can place an order for the Model Y. Production of the Model Y has now commenced in the US however there is no confirmed date of it’s arrival in Australia and New Zealand To be sure you’re one of the first to know of its release, I can take down your phone number and post code and will reach out once a local delivery time is confirmed. Would that work for you?
This was fast, helpful and a great experience. Tesla has traditionally not been the easiest of companies to engage with, sure you can roll the dice and Tweet @elonmusk, or may be lucky enough to get hold of an unpublished email address or phone number, but much of it left up to the website which does lack detail in areas.
For customers seeking information, chat now goes a long way to get things resolved and answered quickly.
A word of warning, I did navigate away from the front page while the chat session was in progress and you lose the chat window. Navigate back to the home page and you can resume where you left off, but it would be nice to have an implementation that enabled you to browse the site while chatting.
