How AI chatbots can increase sales and reduce costs

Automation offers a solution to gathering leads in bulk without creating an impossible bottleneck for your sales team. AI chatbots, used as acquisition or lead generation chatbots, allow large volumes of leads to be assessed and qualified without generating additional work.

Chatbots for customer acquisition

Customer acquisition chatbots can provide the answer to interacting with visitors on your website or third-party platforms and offer opportunities to acquire new customers or cross-sell to existing customers.

These AI chatbots can quickly assess the intent of a customer or potential customer and begin to qualify their likelihood of generating a sale. Using AI chatbots for sales frees up your human sales agents to focus on qualified leads and move them down the funnel to conversion. Meanwhile, AI chatbot software can interact with your customers in a natural, conversational way.

While chatbots are adept at answering repetitive customer queries, AI chatbots can simulate human communication, can be deployed in a variety of situations, from customer service to sales, and can learn as they interact. Chatbots for sales, for example, can ask eCommerce customers questions to find a product that fits their requirements, doing some of the initial contact work on behalf of the sales team. As we’ve already touched upon, chatbots have become vastly more advanced in the past few years and can now hold convincing conversations with potential customers.

How can a chatbot help increase lead generation?

As part of the acquisition process, lead generation refers to the top-of-funnel activity that begins to attract potential customers to your brand and interacts with them to move them down the funnel towards conversion. Chatbots can gather and qualify leads, initial processes that are useful throughout the sales funnel. In that sense, chatbots are the first line of communication between your brand and potential new customers, so the conversation must be compelling. It’s important to ensure your approach is continually updated and that you test different approaches for different audiences to find out what works best.

What is an acquisition chatbot?

Acquisition or lead generation chatbots are a cost-effective way to speak to new customers and to re-engage and cross-sell to existing ones. You can use your acquisition chatbot to provide potential customers with useful content to help them move down the funnel and build trust in your business’s ability to deliver for them. The acquisition chatbot serves the purpose of automating much of the lead qualification process, allowing your sales staff to focus their time on qualified prospects that are more likely to lead to a conversion.

How can acquisition chatbots benefit sales teams?

1. 24/7 sales coverage

Alongside helping your human agents, chatbots also provide 24/7 acquisition coverage. That means you don't miss out on sales simply because your agents are enjoying their life outside work.

2. Reduce acquisition cost

Because you’ve automated a large part of the acquisition process, you can generate more qualified leads without tying up valuable human sales resource. That means reduced acquisition cost and more qualified leads for your sales team to do with what they do best.

3. Increase new business

Automating the customer acquisition process allows your team to interact promptly with qualified prospects and drive more new business quickly and efficiently. DFS, for example, uses its chatbot 'Sofia' to drive sales. Since implementation, the percentage of sales converted from 'Sofia' has risen from 4.51% to 7.09%.

4. Effectively measure ROI

It also helps that your chatbot is adept at measuring ROI since it doesn’t rely on human input and can impartially measure its own impact, so you can instantly see your chatbot's effect on sales.

5. Increased ARPU

Average Revenue Per User (or ARPU) is an important gauge of your acquisition chatbot’s success, and cross-selling is a crucial function.

6. Cross-sell to existing customers

Acquisition chatbots allow you to intelligently recommend new products and services to your existing customers that will augment their current technology. Cross-selling is essential to increase ARPU. Radius Payments Solutions' acquisition chatbot, for example, will enable them to upsell and cross-sell their other services to their existing customers and introduce a new channel for Radius and Radius customers.

AI chatbots for sales

Automating the acquisition process with AI chatbots helps your sales team focus on generating revenue and ensuring existing clients get the most from their products and services. It takes one of the most laborious elements of the sales process out of the mix and allows your team to have meaningful conversations with genuine, qualified prospects, setting them and your business up for success.

Want to learn more? Check out our guide to acquisition chatbots or speak to an expert to dive into how AI chatbots can help your sales team.