AI-powered chatbots qualify visitors as leads faster than web forms or slow reply emails. By answering immediately, asking intelligent questions and directing buyers to the next step in the sales cycle your bot can help your sales team own more demand without introducing friction.
Conversational Lead Qualification
AI chatbot acts as an automated frontline salesperson. It answers questions visitors may have, qualify their interest and directs them to appropriate next steps or sales contacts before their interest wanes.
You’ll notice many of the qualifying questions below which is because an AI sales chatbot also intelligently learns from those conversations. The machine learning capabilities enable your bot to get better at intent recognition and responding with relevant answers buyers want to hear. Speed + relevance = conversion advantage over web forms.
Speed Matters
If someone visits your website and submits an inquiry via contact form they can expect to wait. How long depends on your team but either way it’s long enough for some visitors to jump ship and browse competitors.
A bot cuts down on that delay by engaging immediately when someone shows interest. This matters because a lot of buyers want information quickly. They want pricing details. Product clarification. Or simply an easy way to book a demo without having to wait until morning.
Qualifying Questions Lead to Better Leads
Asking qualifying questions enables you to better determine how qualified the lead is. Instead of treating every website visitor as a legitimate opportunity you can ask questions about budget, job title, timing and more.
Helping your bots qualify leads better allows your team to focus on real opportunities instead of wasting time dreaming up follow ups for generic inquiries. It also allows for faster routing because when a lead is transferred to a rep they’ll have the context they need to continue the conversation.
- Identify budget.
- Determine timeframe.
- Ask open-ended questions.
- Discover jobtitle.
- Get contact info.
When you pre-qualify leads through conversation they will feel less like they are being screened and more like they are being helped. This allows them to freely give information that will help your sales team without feeling like they are just running through a checklist.
Conversational Tactics
You know how some bots sound robotic and generic while others are quite helpful? Humans tend to engage longer when your chatbot is more conversational. That includes realistic prompts, well timed responses, and messages that feel personal to their situation.
Mimicking human behavior is a large part of why it works. From using the visitors name to tailoring answers based on the page they’re viewing your chatbot should do everything it can to sound less bot-like.
Help Your Bot Help Leads
Chatbots work best at the top of the funnel diverting attention, in the middle addressing concerns, and at the bottom scheduling meetings or connecting prospects to sales directly. Consider placing chatbots anywhere buying signals are strong.
Many websites will see positive results from deploying bots on their pricing pages, product pages, landing pages and homepage.
chatbotsai.net is a great platform to start building these experiences quickly without heavy development resources.
- Homepage: Hello and welcome! How can we help you?
- Pricing Page: I can help walk you through pricing options. Want to give me a try?
- Product Page: What information can we provide to help you decide?’
- Landing Page: Give me a moment to gather some details. What is your company size?
- Exit Intent: I noticed you’re about to leave. Can I answer any questions?
- Support Style: Let me help you with common questions. What would you like to know?
Deploying chatbots strategically allows you to remove friction from your funnel rather than adding a new layer to it. By greeting newcomers, assuaging fears of cost and engaging in helpful conversation your bot can assist with each step of the buying journey.
Understand Your Results
If all you do is install a chatbot and hope for the best you’ll likely lose interest before realizing any value. Take notes on engagement metrics within the tool you’re working with. Is your conversation rate high? Are visitors who chat becoming leads?
Another useful metric is to gauge bot performance against your organic bounce rate. Are more people chatting on your website since installation? Are those chats turning into sales conversations? If you answer yes to both you are on the right track.
Strategies for Deployment
Just like one conversion goal per page, your bot should only try to accomplish one task at a time. Don’t mix too many objectives or your bot’s performance will suffer. If they’re greeting visitors, learn how to greet visitors well.
Focus on training your bot about your specific offers. Common objections. And ideal customer profile so that the replies remain relevant and on point. Then, as you start to review chat transcripts you can make adjustments to apply human observations to how your bot prompts conversations.
- Focus on one primary goal per page.
- Keep replies brief and conversation advancing.
- Match questions to your buyer personas.
- Automatically funnel into CRM/inbox.
- Experiment with different welcome messages.
- Audit conversations to discover opportunities.
- Refresh responses to reflect current offers.
Improvements no matter how small can have large ripple effects. Assume your website will continue to receive traffic and realize that as traffic goes, conversation rate improves, so does your lead volume. Same goes for your lead quality.
Start Conversations, Not Screeds
We see bots fail when they ramble on too long in an attempt to be helpful. Alternatively we see bots fall flat because they lack any personality. Bear in mind that these bots are conversational tools.
Don’t overload them with lengthy messages when a few short prompts works just as well. You’re starting a conversation with your bot not writing an essay. Keep that in mind when crafting replies and prompting your bot to engage website visitors.
Keeping Your Bot Relevant
Like any channel your sales bot needs maintenance to keep it functioning properly. The more dynamic content, campaigns and external factors your business has the more your bot will need tweaking.
Seasonal campaigns, blog content, frequently asked questions, product updates and pricing adjustments all can influence how your bot is interacting with potential leads. Neglect your chatbot and it will soon feel irrelevant.
Why Conversations Lead to Sales
Implementing AI chatbots into your sales process allows your team to own more conversations without eating away at precious resources. Capturing leads through chat means your sales team can focus on more qualified leads that have had history with your brand via your website.
Plus, AI doesn’t sleep. Chatbots can collect leads around the clock allowing you to capture global traffic moving at whatever time frame they prefer. Conversation = coverage. And coverage means more opportunities to sell.
