7 Uses of Conversational AI in Lead Generation

In today's highly competitive business landscape, generating and nurturing promising leads is critical for sales success. However, traditional lead generation approaches are often lacking in several ways and could cause your business to miss out on many potential opportunities. This is where conversational AI chatbots can make a real difference for businesses looking to boost their lead gen and conversion rates. We'll be taking a look at six ways to use conversational AI to build a better lead gen strategy for your business.

1. Lead Qualification Automation

Qualifying leads is an essential step to identifying high-potential opportunities for sales team prioritization. However manual lead scoring and qualification are subjective and time-intensive. AI chatbots can take over this task through automated qualification processes.

The chatbot can engage website visitors and ask predefined questions to capture key details on authority, need, timeline, etc. Based on the scoring logic, it can categorize leads as hot, warm, or cold. For example, a lead with a decision-making role looking to purchase in the next 2 months can be marked as hot.

The qualified and segmented leads can be automatically routed to appropriate sales reps for prompt follow-up. This method ensures your team focuses on the most promising conversations instead of wasting time with unqualified leads.

2. Gathering Data on Potential Leads

To convert leads into loyal customers, businesses need the right data - both the right type and quantity of data. Conversational AI chatbots can get this data effortlessly by simply interacting or having conversations with potential leads on your website or any platform of choice. While your human agents have the unique human flair advantage, they are limited in a lot of ways. There's a limit to the number of leads they can deal with at a time, there is the issue of performance variation, and of course, mistakes happen. Chatbots are better adept at overcoming these challenges by consistently following strict laid-down rules tailored to your business needs. They can collect data in a very subtle way and are better able to infer information like user preferences that are not explicitly provided. By connecting dots in user patterns, conversational chatbots provide actionable data to evaluate leads. So rather than wasting resources on misaligned messaging, conversational AI fosters meaningful conversations that engage prospects and move them towards becoming customers. The gathered data provides insights into the pain points, preferences, and buying habits of leads. Businesses can use these customer insights to refine their marketing approaches, focus on key audience segments, and direct resources in an optimized manner.

3. Providing Information

Just as conversational AI can be used to gather data, conversational AI enables businesses to supply leads with a constant flow of relevant, tailored information to progress them through the sales journey. For example, when a lead visits your business website’s pricing page, the conversational AI chatbot can pop up and ask if they need any details about the plans. The chatbot having full access to details on features, options, and costs, can furnish leads with detailed answers to help them understand what they are getting at each price point.

Going beyond passive information provision, the chatbot can take an active role in sending information to leads based on where they are in the process. For instance, after a lead downloads a product brochure, the chatbot can provide a link to a detailed demo video for the next layer of information. Or for leads that have had sales calls, the chatbot can provide proposals, contracts, and other specifics to keep the buying process moving.

A key benefit is that chatbots are available around the clock to provide instant information. Leads get their questions answered or receive engagement when the interest strikes rather than waiting for a sales rep who may be busy during business hours or not available during off periods. By tailoring information to each lead based on their actions and profile, chatbots supply personalized content that moves contacts closer to a purchasing decision. The always-on conversational approach keeps leads engaged and informed for sales pipeline success.

4. Handle Repetitive Tasks

The entire lead generation and conversion pipeline is a complex process with a lot of repetitive, time-consuming tasks. For example, imagine a business receives 200 leads on its website daily. For each lead, an agent must collect basic information like name and email, identify their business needs, schedule calls, and complete other administrative steps. While important, handling these repetitive tasks for every lead is inefficient and bogs down human agents. Conversational AI chatbots excel at automating these repetitive and sometimes mundane processes. When a lead visits the website, the chatbot can immediately engage them to gather contact info, interests, and availability. Based on the responses, it can automatically schedule a call on the calendar and prompt the lead to download relevant content. By taking over these repetitive workflows, chatbots free up the human sales team to focus their expertise on having more strategic conversations to move qualified leads through the sales funnel. The chatbot handles the repetitive task load, while agents devote their time to nurturing promising opportunities already vetted and prepared by the automation.

5. Generate Leads During Non-Business Hours

One of the biggest advantages of deploying conversational AI chatbots on your online business channels is the ability to generate and engage leads even when a business is offline or outside of normal business hours. For many businesses, lead generation efforts halt at nights, weekends, and holidays when human agents are unavailable. However, a conversational AI chatbot deployed on your online business channels can maintain conversations with prospects 24/7.

Why should you lose that potential customer who visits your business website on Sunday morning just because your business is offline? What is the guarantee that they’ll return during normal working days? An AI chatbot can still greet them, answer their questions, and collect contact information for future sales rep outreach. The chatbot never takes a day off, enabling businesses to capitalize on leads ready to engage whenever the interest strikes.

By keeping lead gen efforts going continuously, businesses ensure they don't miss that key moment when a prospect is ready to have a conversation. This way, chatbots serve as an effective tool to capture and nurture leads that might have otherwise fallen through the cracks. The round-the-clock availability powered by AI chatbots allows businesses to maximize every lead opportunity.

6. Lead Segmentation

Conversational AI chatbots can help with more effective lead generation by automatically categorizing prospects based on attributes uncovered during conversations. For example, when engaging potential leads, the AI chatbot can ask questions to segment leads by role, industry, company size, or other relevant criteria.

The chatbot can also infer segmentation cues based on the content prospects engage with. If a lead downloads a case study for the finance industry, they can be tagged as a potential financial services customer. Or if they seem quite knowledgeable on technical IT topics, the chatbot can mark them as potential leads to push software products.

This kind of segmentation allows for highly tailored follow-up by sales teams. Rather than generic outreach, which can sometimes be like shooting randomly hoping it hits something, sales outreach teams can personalize emails and calls with messaging matched to the prospect's industry, role, and interests. This kind of follow-up campaign aimed at segmented leads is more likely to yield positive results.

Segmentation also helps your business avoid embarrassing mismatches like pitching a non-halal food to someone of an Islamic background. Or pushing high-end luxury products to people who are not able to afford them. By grouping leads, the chatbot enables the business to allocate resources more efficiently and maximize the value of their lead generation efforts.

7. Proactively Re-engage Intermediate Leads

One of the biggest challenges in converting leads is nurturing those who have shown initial interest but have not taken action for a while. Keeping these intermediate leads warm is critical to bringing them back into the sales pipeline. However, human agents with busy schedules often lack the bandwidth to consistently follow up. While there are different ways to follow up on these types of leads, conversational AI chatbots can also play a good role. Chatbots, properly integrated with your core business and business website data can automatically and proactively ping such leads to rekindle interest whenever they revisit your website.

For example, for leads that previously had sales conversations but have gone cold for a few weeks, the chatbot can check in with a quick personalized message. The chatbot can also use data like website visits to identify when to reach out. If an old lead returns to the pricing page, that shows renewed interest. The chatbot can use this activity trigger and send them a message - "Our prices have significantly reduced since you last visited, who you like to set up a call to discuss?"

This method of using chatbots to proactively reconnect with promising but disengaged leads helps recapture opportunities that may have otherwise drifted away for good.

Generate Leads with Chatbase AI Chatbots

Lead generation is the lifeblood of business success. But traditional lead gen tactics are often inefficient and miss prime opportunities that could fuel your business's revenue. Just like a growing number of successful businesses, you too can take your lead generation to the next level and gain an unstoppable advantage over your competitors.

Enter Chatbase: the premier conversational AI platform engineered to help you efficiently interact with potential leads. Chatbase can help you improve how you capture, engage, and qualify leads across multiple online channels. With Chatbase's AI-powered chatbots, lead gen becomes a nonstop engine driving sales 24/7.

Chatbase deploys intelligent chatbots that spark natural conversations with your website visitors to uncover their needs. Chatbase AI chatbots are very flexible and trainable, so you can customize to perform a range of lead-generation tasks. With 24/7 availability, you’ll never miss a lead – even nights, weekends, and holidays when your sales reps are offline.

But Chatbase goes beyond basic lead capture. Chatbase AI chatbots has a lot of useful features that can be very useful in your customers' entire sales journey within your business ecosystem.

Sign up for a free Chatbase trial and see how Chatbase can improve your lead gen process.