Funneling Sales Inflow through a Chatbot

Shaivee Kumawat
Funneling Sales Inflow through a Chatbot

The world is emerging at a drastic pace, so does its needs and deeds. Keeping a modern change in mind, this time we are up with a mindblowing topic to share with you. For this, we would be requesting your utmost attention for another five minutes.

Well, we all are pretty aware of the fact that chatbots are elevating in magnitude and are creating an indispensable space in multiple industries, let it be the healthcare sector, a manufacturing unit, a customer service department, or a simple most e-commerce shopping website. Shortly, we would be encountering a chatbot almost everywhere.

Before moving forward, let us have a look at the terminology and the fundamental definition of a Chatbot.

→ A chatbot is a software that is programmed and designed to make a conversation with human users. This journey of a chatbot was made possible only because of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing.

Now let us understand the term Sales Funnel through a definition.

→ A sales funnel is a prescribed or analyzed road map of the client’s journey. This process onsets the moment a lead reaches a company’s landing page from a website and ends when the lead decides to buy the product or service from a seller. The traditional sales funnel consists of four phases-

  1. Awareness- Unless and until an organization is not known to the common public, that would not be able to make money. So, the first and foremost step for generating sales is to create awareness about the business in the market. These Businesses should build a mutually beneficial relationship with a prospective client at the very beginning of the sales funnel.
  2. Interest- After getting attention from the client, now it is time to seed interest in the client’s mind, so that turns towards you. So, a chatbot can be programmed to ask questions about the needs, likes, and purchase history of the customer to suggest new products and services. It can also provide instant answers to the frequently asked questions and redirect the visitors to the right page on the website to find out more. Moreover, if nothing will work from a chatbot’s end then it will put them in touch with a human sales representative.
  3. Decision- After getting all the relevant information from the customer end, the chatbot can help in driving the decision to purchase by sending additional advertisements and information based on past interactions with the lead. Essentially, it regularly collects valuable data at each stage of the sales funnel, pre-qualifying prospects and saving businesses crucial time and resources.
  4. Action- This is the final and the most important stage in the funnel that occurs when the customer makes the purchase. At this stage, a live agent comes into the picture to take over and handle the sale to completion. You will see this situation in many of the e-commerce and travel chatbots.

Now let us look at some of the prerequisites for designing a great Sales Funnel-

  1. Firstly, one needs to decide on the end goal of their sales funnel to conclude on the type of action they expect from their consumers. For example, if you want them to buy your product or service, then you need to prepare your website or mobile application to get them to a purchasing section.
  2. Secondly, focus on the quality and type of content you serve to your customers. Create content that will attract the consumer’s interest and make them stay at your website. This content must resemble your products or service and in parallel provide value to the customer.
  3. Never share any kind of false or promising facts with your customers to make good business. Do remember making a qualitative business is far more important and worthy than expanding a business in quantitative aspects on false facts. Also, never miss adding a FAQ page and an About Us page on your website because these act as a major information pool for the client’s questions to settle down with appropriate answers.
  4. Adding a Lead magnet to the funnel design is a crucial step as it helps in attracting the customers to come back to you. It is wisely said that -” Nothing comes for free in life”. But as soon as someone utters the words like — Free, Offer, Discount, etc almost everyone seems to go crazy. So, by using these sweet words one can build a good relationship with their customers, by offering them discounted services, free webinars, some vouchers, etc. This is also a great instance to get your lead’s contact details that too without any hustle and bustle.
  5. Last but not the least, one should create personalized and documented touch with their clients through emails. These emails should create a high impact on your end readers, but crafting them smartly.

How do these chatbots work in parallel with a sales funnel?

→ To understand this, let us dive into its actual process for better understanding. So, these automated chatbots are programmed to deploy a series of messages on various user prompts. And the only job left for the company’s area is to attract as many people as possible into this funnel for enriched business. After this, the entire journey is handled by the smart chatbot to carry the conversations ahead with the company’s business.

To sum up — a chatbot is qualifying from lead generation to building client relationships, answering the FAQs, and nurturing leads. Hurry Up in incorporating a chatbot into a company’s sales process and enjoy the benefits of an automated generation, providing instant and 24/7 customer support to your clients.