Chatbots

June 26, 2023

Leah

8 Sales Chatbot Providers That Hook Customers

Are you missing leads? Is your customer base stagnating? Instead of revamping your strategy, it may be time to get a little help from some digital friends.

You don’t need to invest your time and money into building your own chatbot to take advantage of AI in customer service. Today’s pre-built solutions are a cost-effective option that yield results for small and big businesses alike.

• What is a sales chatbot?
• How does a chatbot increase sales?
• How to use a chatbot in sales: 8 strategies
• The best sales chatbots for your business
• Get started with the top AI chatbot for sales

A sales chatbot is an AI-powered conversational agent designed to engage with website visitors or customers via chat or messaging apps. Its primary job is to help with sales-related tasks such as interacting with users, answering their questions, providing product information, and guiding them through the sales process.

Texas barbecue and pie shop Goode Company uses their chatbot BotBQ to let customers know how their freshly-made pies and meats are packaged and shipped.

Sales chatbots are typically powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP), making it possible for them to understand and respond to users in a human-like way. They can take on various tasks, such as recommending products, collecting customer information, scheduling appointments, and even processing basic transactions.

Chatbots increase sales by providing immediate customer support, personalized recommendations, and streamlining your sales process.

They are available 24/7, ensuring instant responses and higher chances of lead conversion. Chatbots can collect lead information, making it easier for sales reps to follow up with and nurture potential customers.

Userlike makes it simple to re-engage customers directly from their customer profile.

An AI chatbot connected to your knowledge base can offer personalized product suggestions, increasing the likelihood of a sale. They can also handle customer inquiries and guide site visitors through your sales funnel. By automating repetitive tasks with a sales chatbot, such as placing orders and payment processing, you simplify your business’ sales process and improve your conversion rates.

How exactly do you get started with a sales chatbot? What are the crucial areas where you should use your new chatbot?

Here are the key strategies you should focus on:

1. Give personalized welcome messages
2. Stop customers from leaving
3. Reduce cart abandonment rate
4. Answer frequently asked questions
5. Communicate in multiple languages
6. Help customers track their orders
7. Collect feedback
8. Keep your team motivated

If sales assistants welcome customers in physical stores, why not do this online?

A proactive chatbot helps break the ice with a personalized message, making it easier for the customer to either engage at that moment, or return to the chat at a later time.

Whether your visitor is a new or returning customer, you can write multiple messages and scripts tailored to their experience. Here are some examples:

For new customers:

• “Thanks for checking out (website name)! I’m around if you have any questions or just want to chat.”
• “Hey there, welcome! If you get stuck or need a quick answer, hit me up. I’ll be around :)”
• “Haven’t seen you here before! Want a quick tour of (website name)? I’d love to be your guide. Click on one of the page options below to get started.”

For returning customers:

• “Welcome back, (customer name)! You know the drill, I’m around if you need help. Let’s chat when you get a chance!”
• “Good to see you again :) Want to check out our newest products? There’s a few things I think you’ll like: (URL)”
• “Hi (customer name)! How’ve you been? Is there anything you need help with?”

Omega Bank adds subtle personalization by addressing returning customers by name:

“13 Surprising Examples of Facebook Messenger Chatbots”

It may seem simple, but it can help make your business appear more approachable and available.

According to Forrester’s “ Raising the Bar ” survey, 1 in 5 Generation Z customers will abandon a product or service if the live chat response time is too slow.

At the same time, tech-savvy Generation Z shoppers are more likely to engage with new platforms like chatbots and other digital assistants.

Chatbots satisfy young shoppers’ expectations by being a click away. This means your sales chatbot is always the first point of contact for all new incoming requests, which helps significantly cut response times and engage customers before they consider leaving.

Sales chatbots also make great promoters, which can hook customers into taking advantage of deals. If you’re having a sale or just updated your site with new products, use a chatbot to communicate these offers in a proactive message.

For customers that open chatbot messages, make them feel like they’re in on a secret by offering them a discount code.

“ Using a Chatbot to Offer Dynamic Promo Codes ”

You can tailor these discounts or messages to the page they’re browsing to further personalize the experience. Little details like this can make customers stay and help set you apart from the competition.

Adding items to a shopping cart and abandoning it in the middle of a store is super rude. But adding items to an online cart and then closing the page is the norm nowadays.

Why is that? According to Barilliance , customers are most likely to abandon their shopping cart after seeing unexpected shipping costs.

If you offer free shipping when a customer spends a certain amount, or have a “buy now, pay later” payment option, then use a chatbot to communicate that. Sometimes a shopper just needs a little incentive.

A second big culprit of cart abandonment are people shopping around for deals. Get your customer’s attention with a chatbot message like,

“Hey! We’ve got some new promotions going on that are too good to pass up. Let’s chat!”

Your chatbot can then keep your customer’s interest by talking about sales or by answering questions about the product, shipping, payment security, etc. When a unique issue arises, chatbots can forward the chat to your team.

Live chat is a double-edged sword: it’s faster than phone and email, but agents are quickly overloaded.

It would be a shame to lose a sale just because the wait time is taking longer than usual. A chatbot can take a load off your team by tackling the simple questions customers may have.

For example, you can use Userlike’s AI Chatbot and Smart FAQ to instantly answer common questions. Both pull answers from a central knowledge base so the information stays consistent.

Give your leads consistent, accurate answers across messaging channels.

The Smart FAQ is an intelligent self-service option that will also help reduce repetitive chat inquiries. It attempts to answer the visitor’s question even as they’re typing and learns from every conversation to improve its accuracy.

According to SuperOffice, 40% of consumers actually prefer self-service over human contact. What’s more, in our consumer chatbot perceptions survey , customers said they would rather speak to a chatbot immediately than wait for a human agent. For a lot of customers, talking to a chatbot or using an intelligent FAQ page appears to be the better, more ideal option.

For businesses with a global reach, it’s easy to just make your company language English and expect customers to be okay with it. It’s spoken worldwide, right?

Imagine how much more comfortable a customer would feel if they knew they could contact you in their native language. AI and chatbots make this possible.

Companies like Unbabel offer multilingual chat integrations that let you respond in your customer’s language in real time. Inbound messages are translated into the respondent’s preferred language, and replies are automatically translated after hitting send.

According to Common Sense Advisory Research, 74% of customers said they were more likely to make a second purchase if post-sales support was offered in their native language.

Take a look at your analytics to see where most of your customers are from. Chances are you only need to offer a few core languages like German, French and Spanish.

Don’t leave your customers hanging after they click “Purchase.” Give them peace of mind about their orders by offering a chatbot that can help with all tracking and returning purposes.

The chatbot builder service called, wait for it, ChatBot, offers easy-to-use pre-made chatbot platforms, such as a Package Tracking Bot.

Sure, customers can click a tracking number link in their email to check their shipment status. But why make them dependent on a third party website?

If there are issues with the shipment, or if the customer needs to reroute or cancel the order, then a chatbot can forward the request to one of your agents.

This shows that you’re still assuming responsibility and not forgetting the customer after the transaction is complete.

Reviews = sales. G2 reported that research shows 72% of customers won’t take action until they’ve read reviews.

In addition, 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to make a purchase after reading trusted reviews.

However, the truth is that customers rarely leave reviews when they’re satisfied. And when they do, it’s likely just star ratings and generic remarks like, “Works great!” or “Love it.”

Negative reviews aren’t always a bad thing, and the New York Times says people pay more attention to them because they highlight what could go wrong. People want to feel secure in their decision-making process.

For reviews to be helpful and trustworthy, they should come from customers who have definitely bought from you.

A winning combo solution is to connect your bot to your email. By giving it access to the emails of customers who have made a purchase, you can use your chatbot to draft and send emails asking for star ratings and reviews.

ChatBot has a Zapier integration with Gmail that lets a bot create and send an email. Using a pre-drafted script, a chatbot can send an email some time after the customer receives their order to ask for a rating and review.

Etsy uses a similar practice by asking customers for a star rating in an email that redirects to a review form.

Since writing reviews takes time, make it easier for your customer by offering a few pre-written texts or prompts they can use to quickly draft a response:

“We love reviews, but we know they take time to write. Here are a few quick questions you can choose to answer. Feel free to respond to as many or as few as you like!”

• Is the quality as expected?
• Are you happy with your purchase?
• What are two things you like about your purchase?
• What are two things you don’t like about your purchase?
• Would you recommend this product?

You can then publish these results directly to your website under their respective products. Potential customers will appreciate the reviews, and you’ll gain insight into how existing customers feel about your products.

It’s not easy getting rejected on a daily basis. Spending a lot of time and energy on answering questions from interested visitors only to get a “no” in the end can be frustrating.

To save your team the pain, you can use a sales chatbot to analyze potential and existing customers and filter valuable leads. This prevents your agents from speaking to every person who sends a chat, and lets them focus on genuinely interested customers the chatbot finds.

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For example, Whisbi offers several chatbot solutions that independently qualify leads without forms and route conversations based on the rules you set. If the customer meets all the requirements, a chatbot sends them your way.

Even the most resilient sales team needs results as motivation to keep moving forward. A chatbot helps everyone invest their time well.

If you search for “chatbot providers” on Capterra or any other review site, you’ll have too much to comb through. Sure, there are popular solutions that are always at the top of the list, but that doesn’t mean they’re right for your business.

Take a look at our comparison chart to see which sales chatbot best fits your needs and budget:

Intelligent sales chatbots are no longer just for enterprise businesses. Userlike offers an affordable, rare combination of sophisticated AI features and customer messaging software.

Our AI chatbot can be used as a proactive first contact for customers, as backup for your agents or to answer requests received outside of service hours. It can even pick up conversations where customers left off — a perk not every chatbot platform provides.

Most chatbots “reset” once you leave the website, but customers can see their previous conversation with the AI chatbot before deciding to continue it or start a new one.

Within the chat, you can display button options and carousels to help customers quickly find what they’re looking for. In-chat media also makes it easier to send important documents - such as insurance applications and invoices - or a catalog of your products.

Send your latest catalog or share a feature overview with interactive button options directly in the chat.

You’ll gain more customers by proactively approaching them with an AI chatbot that’s not only easy for customers to use, but simple for your company to implement.

Sign up for our free 14-day trial to get an impression of Userlike’s AI Automation Hub. If you like what you see, we’d be more than happy to set up a call to discuss our AI features to see if it’s a good fit for your business.