Toyota is engaging their customers on levels never seen before in the auto industry. Toyota claims that more than 50% of their contact with customers for the Scion vehicle is through chat and email. This change in customer interaction could bring big results, but also has pitfalls.

This change in the way companies interact with their customers will quickly become the norm. The 18-35 crowd grew up with electronic communication and the 18-25 demographic used it extensively.

Online communication with a company like Toyota offers many advantages to the customer:

• Communication when they want.
• Communication in the way they want.
• Ability to store or archive communications.

This process becomes transparent to the customer engendering more trust.

There are some pitfalls of online communications for companies such as Toyota. If these aren't considered their efforts could be for naught:

• Reliability. The services need to be available when the customers need it.
• Knowledge. Those responding to requests need to know more than just form answers.
• Privacy. Online communications need to be secure.

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