Guide 02
Most websites lose potential customers in the same way. Someone arrives with a real question, finds a contact form asking for everything at once, and leaves. This guide covers lead capture: a chatbot conversation that collects a visitor's needs and contact details in place of that form. It explains what to ask, in what order, when to stop asking, and where the answers should go so that somebody actually follows up.
A contact form asks a lot of a stranger. It asks for name, email, phone and a written description of the problem, all at once, before it has given anything back, from someone who has committed to nothing. Then it says "we will get back to you", which most people read as "sometime, maybe".
A conversation reverses each part of that. It asks one thing at a time. It answers questions along the way, so the visitor gets something useful before giving anything. It can respond to what was said, which a form cannot. And it can tell someone what happens next, with a real timeframe rather than a vague promise.
The improvement comes from the order of the questions rather than from the novelty of chat. A form that asked one question per screen and answered a question between each would perform about as well. Nobody builds that form, because it would in effect be a chatbot.
This approach does not create demand. A page with no visitors produces no leads whatever is on it, and a bot on a page where nobody has a question is only an annoyance. The improvement appears where people arrive ready to buy or book and the site previously made that difficult.
We have put numbers to this in what changes when a conversation replaces a contact form, which shows where the additional leads actually come from: mostly people who would have left, rather than people who would have filled in the form anyway.
Almost every small business lead conversation follows the same pattern. The wording changes by industry, but the order rarely should.
Those four questions are enough. The urge to add a fifth and sixth question is strong and should be resisted, because each extra question causes more people to leave before finishing, and the extra answer rarely changes what you do. Apply one test to any additional question: would a different answer change who calls them, how fast, or what they say? If not, the question serves your comfort rather than the visitor's needs.
Lead scoring, which means giving each lead a number based on its details, is often copied from large sales organizations into businesses that have no use for it. A twelve-point model that weighs seven different details produces a number nobody acts on differently.
For most businesses, qualification is a yes-or-no question that needs an answer right away: is it worth someone's time to call this person back today? Answering it requires two facts, what they want and when, and the conversation above has already collected both.
Sorting leads is most useful for routing them, meaning sending each one to the right person, rather than for ranking them. A lead that says "burst pipe, right now" and one that says "quote for next spring" should go to different places at different speeds. A simple rule handles this better than a score, because rules are easier to write, easier to explain to whoever picks up, and easier to correct.
It is tempting to have the bot politely end conversations with people who look like a poor fit. Be careful, because four questions reveal very little, and a business that automatically turns away anyone whose budget sounds small will sometimes turn away somebody asking on behalf of someone else. Send low-priority leads to a slower follow-up list rather than ignoring them.
For how to turn answers into a routing decision, qualifying a visitor without interviewing them explains the rules themselves rather than the principle behind them.
Placement and timing affect the results more than the wording does, and most people never review them after launch.
Some chat tools also offer exit intent, a prompt that appears when the visitor seems about to leave. Alma does not open the chat on its own. If you add a prompt like this with another tool, use it sparingly, because a pop-up that covers the page someone was reading is the reason people install blocking software.
A lead sitting in an inbox nobody checks is worth nothing, and this is the most common failure in lead capture. The bot works, the leads arrive, and three weeks later somebody discovers forty conversations that nobody followed up.
Three things have to be true before you turn any of this on.
This has an uncomfortable consequence. If your business cannot follow up within a few hours, capturing more leads will make things worse, because more people will now have a reason to be annoyed with you specifically. Fix the follow-up first, then work on getting more leads.
Where a calendar is involved, much of the follow-up problem goes away, which is the argument in letting people book inside the conversation: a booked appointment needs no callback and cannot sit forgotten in an inbox.
Conversations started is a number that looks impressive but means little. It mostly reflects how visible the widget is, which you can change at any time, so it tells you nothing about results. Four numbers are more useful:
Every week, also read a sample of transcripts, the written records of each conversation. The numbers tell you where people leave, and the transcripts tell you why. The reason is often simple, such as a question worded in a way that seems nosy.
All of this assumes the chatbot already exists and has been built with some care. If it has not, the guide to building a website chatbot covers the whole process, from deciding its one job to what tends to break in month two.
On nearly every site, the most common opening message is some version of "how much does this cost". How a chatbot handles that one question affects more leads than the rest of the script combined, and most businesses handle it badly in one of two ways.
The first mistake is avoiding the question. "Pricing depends on your needs, can I get your email?" is understood, correctly, as a refusal. The visitor asked a direct question, did not get an answer, and now has to give contact details to go further. Many of them will simply ask a competitor who answers.
The second mistake is saying too much. Reciting a full price list to somebody whose situation you know nothing about invites them to compare a number that may not apply to them, and it ends the conversation just as it was about to become useful.
The approach that works gives a real range and then asks for the details needed to narrow it. "Most jobs like this land between six and nine hundred. It depends mainly on access and how much has to come out. What are you looking at?" That answer does three things. It treats the question as reasonable, it filters out anyone for whom the range is impossible, and it asks a question the visitor now wants to answer, because answering it will get them a more precise price.
This is also the clearest reason to give the bot your real price ranges rather than a set of approved phrases that avoid them. If you would say a range out loud on the phone, the bot should be able to say it too. If there is no number you are willing to state, consider the reasons separately, because your competitors are stating theirs.
When the honest answer is "it depends", say what it depends on. "It depends" on its own tells the visitor nothing. "It depends on square footage and whether the existing floor comes up" is useful information, and it usually prompts the visitor to provide both details.
There is more to say about this question than fits here, including what to do when you cannot publish a number, and answering the price question without losing the lead covers it in more detail.
Across industries, the four questions differ mainly in the third question. Here are three versions that show the pattern.
In all three, the structure is identical and only the third question depends on the industry. If you need two questions in that position, keep the one whose answer would change the callback, and let the person making the call ask the other.
Three industries have their own detailed articles: real estate, ecommerce, and software and subscription businesses, where the third question and the rules for passing a conversation to a person differ most.
Every lead capture conversation has a point where the bot should stop and pass the conversation to a person, which is called a handoff. Recognizing that point is a design decision rather than a technical one, and getting it wrong is costly in both directions.
If the bot hands off too early, you have built an expensive contact form: the visitor types two sentences and is told somebody will be in touch, which is what the form already did. If it hands off too late, a person ends up repeating themselves to a machine that keeps missing the point, which is worse than having no chat at all because it feels insulting.
Three situations reliably call for a handoff. First, the visitor asks twice for a human, a request that should never be argued with. Second, the conversation involves something with real consequences, such as a medical symptom, a legal deadline, or a complaint about work already done. Third, the bot has answered the same underlying question twice and the visitor is still asking, which means it does not have the answer and repeating itself will not help.
When the handoff happens outside business hours, say so plainly and give a time. "Nobody is here until 8am, but this is in front of them first thing and I have your number" keeps the lead. Silence loses it. A cheerful promise at eleven at night that somebody will respond shortly is even worse, because the visitor will also see that the promise was not kept.
If you are comparing a website chat assistant with a service that answers your phone, what an AI receptionist does for a small business explains the two kinds and the work that still needs a person.
Ask three or four questions before asking for contact details, and only ones whose answers change what you do next. If you cannot say what you would do differently based on an answer, do not ask the question.
Ask for whichever one you will actually use within the hour. A phone number you never call is worse than an email you answer, because the visitor gave you the more personal detail and got less in return.
Usually, and the reason is the order of the questions rather than the technology. A form asks for everything at once and gives nothing back until the visitor submits it. A conversation asks one thing at a time and answers questions along the way.
It should be available on the pages where people hesitate, without interrupting anyone the moment they arrive. The Alma chat window stays closed until the visitor clicks the chat button. Use a more direct opening message on a pricing page than on a blog post.
A lead is qualified when you can tell whether it is worth calling them back today. For most businesses, two facts are enough: what they want and when they want it. Any other question is usually asked only to feel thorough.
Four questions
The industry pages below are the same four questions with the third one already chosen for you.