If you’ve ever found it boring to fill in a form, think of how your customers feel. None of your customers and prospects prefer looking at the same old format of forms with common fields. This is precisely why you need lead generation chatbots.
Lead generation chatbots are like your friendliest digital salesperson, who greets your visitors, asks relevant questions, qualifies them, and fills CRMs with their details. So, a lead generation chatbot cuts down the pressure of filling out forms and awkward silences. Instead, they help you with real-time personalised conversations that make your prospects feel heard.
In this blog, we will explore how lead generation chatbots work, their benefits, and their applications across various industries, as well as some popular lead gen chatbot platforms and more. So, let's cut to the chase and dig in.
What is a lead generation chatbot?
Lead generation chatbots are like virtual smart assistants available 24/7, addressing all your customer queries and recording their data on your behalf. Unlike those old widgets, lead generation chatbots take the initiative to ask your customers while striking up genuine conversations. These chatbots ask the real questions, based on the pain points of your customers.
Let’s be honest. All your customers want to engage in live chats with your human agents, until they are offline or take a long time to reply. While you ask the customers to wait for a while, they slowly close the tab. However, with chatbots, your visitors are attended to right when they show the most interest in your product or service. Instead of being nosy, these chatbots are strategic. Without even lifting a finger, these chatbots tag the lead and seamlessly drop it into your sales pipeline.
Benefits of a lead generation chatbot
Generating leads manually is exhausting. You spend hours looking for email addresses, filling up CRMs and answering customer queries. However, the lead generation chatbots automate repetitive tasks to save your time and effort. Well, this is not it. There’s more. Let’s check out the benefits of lead generation chatbots here:
1. Always on lead capturing
Imagine this: You spent quite a lot of your budget on driving more traffic to your business website. Results? Radio silence. This means missed opportunities. Even if someone is genuinely interested in your product or service, you have no one to address their concerns.
This is where you need lead-gen chatbots. It takes care of leads even at midnight, understands their intent, and continues to follow up until they are turned into paying customers.
2. Cost-effective automation
It’s great to hire support agents and sales reps to keep your visitors engaged. But that falls heavily on your pockets. On the other hand, when you handle leads manually, the process is time-consuming, and the entire sales process is delayed. So, either you spend a fortune or miss a valuable lead.
However, chatbots are affordable and produce results quickly. They automatically initiate conversations with leads, utilise logic-based flows to qualify leads, and connect with prospects without sounding robotic.
3. Instant qualification and scoring
Let’s be honest. Your sales team should not ask customers about their budget or whether they are willing to commit. Unfortunately, in most cases, sales reps chase leads that have just discovered your business. Naturally, they do not convert.
However, the lead generation chatbots qualify leads instantly with the help of AI and smart logic. For this, they ask relevant questions of the prospects, score their responses, and push only the suitable ones to your sales pipelines.
4. Real-time interaction
Understand that your visitors want answers now. They are not willing to wait for an hour or tomorrow. And, submitting a form - that’s the least they want. Every second of delay increases the likelihood of a bounce. Don’t think that people bookmark your form and come back to it later. Instead, they move on.
Here, lead generation chatbots are the real heroes. They lead the conversation, respond immediately and keep visitors engaged throughout. This prompt response makes your visitors feel heard and understood.
5. Better personalization
Most of the time, automated responses and engagement feel robotic. And, customers and visitors hardly prefer engaging with such rough and dry answers. Situations turn even worse when customers get impersonal responses. That’s nothing less than a breach of trust.
However, NLP and AI enable chatbots to understand your customers' intent. To be more precise, even when your customers do not frame a message properly, chatbots figure it out. Chatbots customise responses based on the users’ query, what they are browsing and their requirements.
How do lead generation chatbots work?
Although lead generation chatbots may work like magic, there’s a distinct strategic setup that leads to such automation. Let’s check out what goes behind the working of lead generation chatbots:
- Welcome message flows: First, chatbots begin by sending warm welcome messages. Since these are proactive bots, they start analyzing and keeping track of the tone, style and language of the users and capture them soon to feel natural.
- Data gathering: You want the chatbots to figure out everything about users. To do this, chatbots ask some qualifying questions. This helps them identify what your users are interested in and what’s bothering them. What’s even more interesting is that chatbots store all this information in the backend while chatting with the users
- Sync with CRM: When it comes to setting up an admin, none can be better than these lead generation chatbots. When a user shares information, the bot passes it to the CRM platform. In short, everything gets synced automatically. This gives your sales team the latest and most accurate sales data.
- Set up fallback and human handover: Not every conversation with the chatbot goes smoothly. When a user types something completely off-script, chatbots step in with human handover and fallback messages. Chatbots understand when a human escalation is needed. This saves sales and offers a smooth customer experience.
Best practices for chatbot-based lead generation
Congrats! You now have lead generation chatbots. But that’s not enough. You need to follow a strategy and an innovative automation process. Here’s how you can make your lead generation chatbots make the most out of it:
- Use proactive triggers for engagement: There’s no point in waiting for users to communicate first. If you don’t want to miss out on opportunities, let the lead generation chatbot trigger your users with a welcome message to grab attention.
- Provide incentives: If you want users to consider your business or brand, offer them something valuable to build trust and credibility. Here, incentives work wonders. Let the lead generation chatbot share some discount codes or free downloadable material to engage with passive visitors.
- Segment leads through logic-based flows: Since not every user or visitor has the same demands, do not force them to follow the same path. Steer the conversation with the help of conditional logic. For this, ask qualifying questions to tailor their journey.
- Continuously text and optimise: Launching the lead generation chatbot and implementing it doesn’t end your work there. Instead, optimize it regularly. Keep on testing with different messages to maintain the freshness and flow of the conversation.
Real-life use cases of lead generation chatbots across industries
Lead generation chatbots are no longer restricted to answering the FAQs. Instead, they go way beyond and serve various industries accordingly. Besides automating welcome messages, these chatbots also take care of attracting, qualifying and nurturing leads. Although each industry has its own set of lead generation policies, but the ultimate goal is the same for all. Here are the real-life use cases of lead generation chatbots according to different industries:
1. E-commerce
Most online shoppers visit your e-commerce website, hover around for a few seconds, and then vanish. The cart is left empty, and the checkout untouched. It’s impossible to chase all visitors with discount coupons or expect them to remember your brand or business. This is where chatbots come in. They recommend offers and deals, suitable products and subtly nudge the lead.
2. SaaS
In the case of SaaS, visitors arrive at your homepage or the pricing page and bounce without booking a demo. You may have a fantastic product. What happens when your users do not understand what you sell? They don’t buy from you. Here, lead-gen chatbots act as a bridge between your business or brand and the customers. They guide users to case studies, offer trials and schedule demos.
3. Healthcare
Your patients want appointment bookings. But your front desk is swamped. Naturally, the follow-ups get lost. When patients experience long waiting hours, unclear booking processes, and back-and-forth phone calls, they become frustrated and seek a smoother option. This is where your healthcare business needs a lead generation chatbot the most. These chatbots streamline bookings and nurture follow-ups.
4. Education
Educational websites often overwhelm students with information overload. They have questions and no one to address them. Naturally, they move on to more engaging institutions and forget you. This is where a lead generation chatbot can be particularly helpful. Here, the chatbots act like digital admission counsellors that understand students’ interest in academic subjects and suggest courses accordingly.
5. Real estate
Both renters and buyers are eager to learn more about properties. When reviewing your real estate listings, buyers and renters want to learn more about them. Here, people will not initiate asking and getting their queries resolved. When they don’t find what they need, they move on to another portal. Here, just like digital agents, chatbots ask questions about budget, size, location, and type and suggest listings that align with the user's needs. Some of them even offer virtual tours to build trust.
6. Finance
Getting financial information can overwhelm people. They are ready to choose the perfect financial plan, but they are confused about long-term applications and layouts. Here, lead generation chatbots simplify financial processes. First, they ask questions. Second, based on the answers to these questions, they match products and push interested leads into the sales pipeline. This leads to better-qualified leads and more informed customers.
7. Events
Planning an event is a tedious process. Things get even worse during the registration process. Result? Low attendance. Either people forget to register, or they forget to attend. A particularly nightmarish condition is having to follow up manually. All of these processes can be automated by chatbots, from inviting users to answering common queries and sending registration links.
8. Automotive
Interested buyers visit your website, but they often refrain from filling out boring and lengthy forms or waiting for calls. When you miss a test drive with a potential customer, you miss out on a sales opportunity. Like other industries, chatbots in the automotive sector ask questions and suggest models accordingly. Additionally, chatbots assist users with booking test drives, downloading brochures, and calculating EMIs.
9. Travel
Travel websites have too many filters and options. As a result, it confuses visitors. They don’t understand what’s more suitable for them. While planning trips, people get stuck while navigating the website and comparing itineraries. However, just like a travel agent, a travel chatbot plans everything according to your preferences and seasonality.
10. Legal
Your potential clients can have urgent legal questions. When it’s urgent, people barely have the time to wait for answers. Neither do they prefer relying on static forms. Obviously, they move on to another law firm that has a faster response rate. However, legal chatbots understand the details of the cases through structured questions. They store the data and segment it to produce faster lead response.
Top 3 chatbot platforms for lead generation
Now you know what lead generation chatbots can do. But the question is - which chatbot platform should you trust? Some chatbot platforms are flashy but shallow, while some others are smart but hard to set up. Worry not. We've done the digging for you. Here are the top 3 best lead generation chatbot platforms that bring serious business. Let’s break them down.
1. Copilot.live
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If you’re looking for a no-code lead generation chatbot platform, Copilot.live is a great solution. It understands the content of your website and conducts smart chatting with the user based on the context of this content. This platform is perfect for people with a non-technical background.
- Auto-learns your website.
- Hooks up with existing CRM
- 50+ multiple language support
- AI sentiment analysis and insights
- Multimodal AI (OpenAI, Anthropic and more)
- 4-step installation and implementation process
- Smooth human handoff escalation
2. Tidio
AI powers the Lyro chatbot of Tidio. Along with automation, Tidio combines a live chat feature. When it comes to lead generation and customer support, Tidio tailors conversational flows, produces instant replies and connects with leads in the most natural fashion.
- Handles FAQs, lead collection and intent-based replies.
- Proactive engagement converts visitors to leads.
3. Giosg
If you prefer visual workflows and want to impress customers with utmost interaction, Giosg will never disappoint you. This platform goes much beyond being a chat bubble. It features button-based bots and even video chatbots to create a dynamic conversation flow that engages customers more effectively, while also appearing responsive and engaging.
- Visual lead flows.
- Advanced segmentation based on user behavior.
Challenges and limitations of lead generation chatbots
Undoubtedly, we are all big fans of lead generation chatbots because they are fast and efficient. But again, chatbots are not superheroes. They have their bad days, too. Here are a few things you must watch out for:
- Sometimes, chatbots lack intelligent fallback responses or a seamless escalation process. This is where your users bounce back.
- If your chatbots do not understand human language quirks, it’s sure to produce poor responses. Besides, bots without an NLP mechanism confuse users.
- Although chatbots are smart, they are not therapists. They lack emotional intelligence and empathy.
- Chatbots are very efficient in gathering data. However, with data and insights comes the responsibility to protect and secure them from cyberthreats.
Here, Copilot.live flips the script. As a renowned lead generation chatbot building platform, Copilot.live develops intelligent chatbots that facilitate seamless human escalation to prevent fallbacks. Besides, it has a sentiment analysis mechanism to understand the intent of the customers and respond accordingly.
Future trends in lead generation chatbots
Today, lead generation is more sophisticated than it was in the past. However, we are now entering an era where chatbots are no longer restricted to chatting only. Based on what your users want, chatbots now think, predict and reflect. Here are the lead generation future trends you can expect in the upcoming days:
- Omnichannel integration: Soon, lead generation chatbots will be everywhere - on SMS, WhatsApp, websites, voice calls, emails, and more. These chatbots understand where your potential customers can be. Through omnichannel integration, your customers never lose context of conversations. They ask a question on Instagram, get a follow-up via email and get replies over WhatsApp.
- Voice bot expansion: Typing queries is already an outdated method. Your customers are always on the lookout for an innovative approach. In the future, voice-enabled chatbots are expected to take centre stage. They want to get the feeling of chatting with a friend. This is great for mobile audiences as it offers more accessibility.
- Predictive lead score: Now, your lead-gen chatbots can qualify leads. Good. However, it will soon start analysing user behaviour and offering predictive scoring. So, the lead generation chatbots will track clicks, scrolls, and time spent on the site and assign a score, even before users drop their contact information. This means more hot sales coming into your sales team.
- Adaptive chat flows: The new lead generation chatbots are dynamic. Unlike traditional bots, lead-gen chatbots now send messages based on a customer’s journey. So, if there’s a first-time visitor, the chatbot behaves helpfully and warmly. However, in the case of a returning customer, the chatbot directs them directly to the return options.
Conclusion
So, the lead generation chatbots are no longer a luxury. Instead, they are a need for the proper escalation of your business. You cannot attract more customers with a single, universal message. Here, implementing customised lead generation chatbots is the key.
Chatbots no longer simply capture the names and emails of your customers. They engage in genuine conversations with customers who matter. They ask the right questions, assign scores based on customer behaviour, and integrate with existing CRMs. And with AI taking the lead, the possibilities are only growing.
So, if you’re still relying on those tedious forms, it’s time to give your lead-gen strategy a new wing. Get a customised chatbot, train it well, and see how things work like magic.
