Most websites already have a Contact Us page with a form. Websites that take a consultative sales approach also offer Scheduling calls to action. However, only a few websites engage visitors with an AI chatbot for sales. In this article, I will argue that the role of AI chatbots in the digital sales process is mostly misunderstood. I will look at the current misconceptions and make the case for an AI chatbot as a must-have engagement option for engaging website visitors.
The digital buying journey
In today's information-rich ecosystem, a typical digital buying journey may look like this:
This graph presents a successful digital buying process; alternatively, it is the way we would want our customers' digital buying journey to look.
People start their research by speaking with friends and colleagues. They search for similar experiences on social media, check out review sites, and then look at vendor websites. All this research is done using digital information that is already available. The buyer needs to find it and consume it. This process is done with the buyer in control over the pace of progress and the information they consume.
Only when the buyer feels ready will they initiate engagement with the vendor and evaluate their offering.
Hot and warm leads
Buyers in the digital buying journey can be divided into two categories:
- Hot leads: These are leads who already know your brand and are coming to your website to facilitate an engagement or transaction with your business. It is probably not their first visit to your website. These leads will look for a Contact form, a Scheduling link, or a phone number to call. At this stage, they are evaluating your business based on how quickly and easily they can engage with you and the quality of the engagement.
- Warm leads: These leads are in the process of researching your offering. They are looking for a solution but not necessarily from you. These leads need information and will review your website for the information they need. This is the research stage where leads want to control the evaluation process, set the pace, maintain objectivity, and keep salespeople from taking them off course. Warm leads are unlikely to engage as they evaluate your business based on your ability to give them the information they need passively. Pushing warm leads to engage at this phase will do more damage than good.
AI vs. traditional chatbots
On the surface, AI chatbots may look like traditional chatbots. When a website visitor sees the small chat icon at the bottom right corner of the screen, little do they know that the experience they would get from an AI chatbot is completely different from that of a traditional chatbot.
Traditional chatbots, often called scripted or structured chatbots, are based on a logical tree structure that aims to model all possible scenarios for the conversation. They must maintain the structure on which they are built. They will guide the conversation according to how it was designed rather than necessarily what the customer wants to discuss.
AI chatbots are entirely different. The conversation flow needs to be defined in advance. The AI bot is given instructions, just like an employee. This is referred to as prompting the chatbot. The AI chatbot is also instructed to use specific information as its knowledge source. With defined instructions and knowledge sources, the AI chatbot can reason and converse with website visitors just like a human, and even better.
So, while traditional and AI chatbots may look the same to the website visitor, they are actually completely different tools with a completely different target audience.
Traditional sales chatbots are a tool for facilitating engagement for hot leads. They are an alternative to the Contact Us form, the Scheduling link, or a place to get the phone number to call. When the term "conversational marketing" was coined in 2016, the promise was to do more than facilitate engagement for hot leads. However, the technology needed to be more advanced to support the vision, and traditional chatbots became linked with a poor customer experience. Prospects expected these chatbots to be capable of asking only a few questions and assisting with interacting with the business.
Traditional chatbots follow scripted paths, while AI chatbots engage in dynamic, human-like conversations. Use traditional chatbots for simple, structured interactions, ideal for hot leads. AI chatbots are best for personalized, meaningful engagements, making them perfect for warming up leads who aren't ready to talk to a human yet.
With the recent advancements in AI technologies, AI sales chatbots can now fulfill the promise that traditional sales chatbots failed to deliver. The ability of AI chatbots to engage in a meaningful human-like conversation is a solid alternative to the first conversation that a prospect would have with a human. However, in contrast to a conversation with an actual human, the website visitor can engage with the AI chatbot anonymously and at the time of their choice, considering the conversation part of the passive information the website provides. The quality of the conversation may be similar to a conversation with an actual human or better. Still, for the website visitor, it does not count as a conversation with a human where their identity, interest, and motivation have been revealed. This makes AI chatbots an ideal tool for warm leads who still need to be ready to engage with a human.
Since the term conversational marketing was coined in 2016, people have been trying to use scripted chatbots to engage with website visitors and warm up cold leads. With a real AI sales chatbot, we finally have the right tool!
The impact of an AI sales chatbot
When most people think about AI sales chatbots, they think of them as extensions of traditional chatbots. I need them on my website since traditional chatbots are an alternative to existing engagement options. I already have a Contact Us form and a Scheduling button on every website page. Why do I need an AI sales chatbot as well?
AI sales chatbots can transform your lead engagement. While hot leads make up only 15% of visitors, warm leads account for 70%. Engaging these warm leads with an AI chatbot can boost your hot leads by 50%, from 15% to 22%, significantly enhancing your conversion rates.
People often need to realize that the AI sales chatbot isn't just an upgraded version of the traditional chatbot but a significant improvement. The AI sales chatbot is designed to help warm leads who still need to be prepared to interact with a human. If you can get these warm leads to engage with an AI chatbot, their next natural step could be to engage with a human.
Only a tiny fraction of visitors to any typical website are hot leads ready to engage. Most website visitors are warm leads who still need to be ready to speak with a human. If you can engage this group of leads with an AI chatbot, you could significantly improve the number of leads and conversion rates in your funnel.
Warm leads typically comprise about 70% of website visitors, while hot leads constitute around 15%. The other 15% are normally cold leads. So if 10% of the warm leads can be warmed up to a hot lead status, the number of hot leads would increase by approximately 50% from 15% to 22%. This has a significant impact!
Implementing an AI sales chatbot
When implementing an AI sales chatbot, you must first consider the customer experience and remember that the AI chatbot is targeting your warm leads. These leads are not looking to engage, so you must ensure they do not mistake your AI chatbot for a traditional one. The role of the AI chatbot is to provide information and get them what they need fast. It is the path of least resistance for them to evaluate your offering. If this evaluation goes well, they may want to continue discussing with a human.
An example of a sales methodology used by OnceHub’s AI chatbot is the following:
This is one example of a sales methodology. AI chatbots are flexible and can be configured to use the specific sales methodology optimized for each business.
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What all this means is that an AI sales chatbot must not look like a traditional chatbot. Rather than a mere icon at the bottom right part of the screen, AI sales chatbots should present themselves as an AI alternative to a human conversation. It should be clear to the website visitor that this is not a traditional chatbot but an alternative to speaking with a human. What warm leads are looking for - Quality information at their fingertips without committing to anything and consumed at their selected time and pace. |
Unlocking the full potential of AI sales chatbots
AI sales chatbots are essential to your passive content that warm leads want to consume. AI sales chatbots can engage in high-quality conversations that are just as good, if not better than, a real human conversation. The conversation with the AI sales chatbot is conducted without the need to reveal identity, make special time commitments, or be subject to aggressive sales tactics.
When we consider AI sales chatbots in this way, we can easily see that any website would benefit from one.
What can be better than a super knowledgeable, always available human-like agent? Your warm leads will love it!