Sales teams may not say it blatantly, but generating leads and maintaining a steady flow of new prospects isn’t a cakewalk.

Conventionally, sales teams have relied heavily on lead generation forms. In other words, lead generation forms have been a trump card for them. The forms have delivered too, converting visitors into leads.

But the downside is the process of acquiring information. It’s too boring, non-interactive, and clerical. There is one-way traffic, where visitors fill in the details at their end but there is no dynamic and enthusiastic response from the other side, because, “Forms don’t have feelings”. The process is not experiential for visitors.

Experiential Chatbots

Experience is everything for consumers in today’s ecosystem. A product is an experience, therefore the funnel to bring in more customers should be experiential.

In this context, we cannot ignore the relevance of a Chatbot, and when we say “Chatbot”, we are considering the intuitive and intelligent ones. In the ever effervescent IT ecosystem, some exciting players are coming up with futuristic, no-nonsense chatbot builders.

They are helping businesses of every scale and size. Any business who wants to upgrade its technology fears the ‘Coding’ part. It’s not always easy to find the right bunch of people who can code for you. Here’s a guide on how to find the right technology partner for your business.

The new-age chatbot builders have neutralized this fear, as they are simple drag and drop, no code builders.

The idea is to empower businesses by letting them build their own chatbot without any coding and that too in a quick span. Businesses can build different types of chatbots according to the functionalities they are looking for, like sales, support, to name a few. At the end of the day, their customers need timely responses and help.

So businesses shouldn’t feel stuck if they either lack programming skills or are unable to find the right set of the team. They can simply enhance their lead generation game by building a highly intuitive Chatbot on their own.

So is Chatbot a better alternative to Lead Generation Forms? At present, it will be premature to say that. But yes, I do believe that the former can replace the latter in the coming time. Here are some of the reasons substantiating my belief.

1. It engages and makes the visitor stay

It’s a no brainer. A perceptive chatbot can give a static form a run for his money. Let’s dig further.

If you have visited a website and fill the form, you will relate to what I am about to say. The one-dimensional process dampens a visitor’s curiosity. A visitor has a lot of questions in his head, the FAQs so to say, and he wants someone to address them. He wants to converse with someone.

Lead Generations Forms aren’t able to fill that void and fail to add any value to the interaction. A Chatbot, on the other hand, creates a give and take scenario which glues a visitor to the product.

For instance, if a visitor requests a quote, the Chatbot can ask for more information before providing a quote. Not only that, it can pace up the process by quickly asking a series of relevant questions.

If you don’t waste visitors’ time, they feel valued.

2. Personalization is the key. A Chatbot makes that happen

A static form can’t give preferential treatment. It’s the same for every visitor landing on your website. To put it differently, it can’t be adjusted to the visitor’s preferences.

In this day and age, who doesn’t want to personalize things. People may not reveal that, but that’s the case. But how can a Chatbot personalize a conversation?

Suppose you start interacting with a Chatbot. It will ask your name right away and address you by your name for the rest of the conversation. And who doesn’t like to hear his or her name? A person feels recognized and the conversation becomes more human-like.

Also, based on your background, it can create a specific workflow for you. For instance, if you are an interior designer and give that input to a Chatbot, it may ask you to further breakdown your expertise. In case you cater to residential spaces only, then it can create a workflow for you accordingly.

The thing is, it can streamline the questions and make the process less time-consuming. It can bring more relevancy to the conversation and increase the chance of a conversion.

3. It can capture the full screen and cut off distracting elements

The mantra behind converting visitors into leads is, “Don’t clutter their mind”. The more lucidly you can tell them about your product, the better it is. This is where UI plays an important role. You must know which element of your website should be more prominent than the other.

Most websites have too many distracting elements, which impede visitors from sensing the brand or the product, the way they should.

For example, ‘Call To Action’ buttons are often misplaced or lead generation forms are not appealing enough. This sabotages the entire conversion funnel.

A full-screen Chatbot having a minimalistic design can easily solve this problem for businesses. It won’t leave much scope for distractions.

According to various surveys, using a full-screen chatbot has improved the conversion rate by 5%.

I hope this write-up helped you develop a better perspective on Chatbots and Lead generation forms. Feel free to share your views, and maybe your experiences with Chatbots.