In their report on the future of conversational AI, Deloitte found that chatbots represent the top use of AI, and that their adoption rates are likely to double over the next few years. Gartner’s research echoes this, pointing to a 40% increase in the adoption of chatbot technology.
For those working in or familiar with the fields of conversational AI and chatbots, this is hardly a surprise. Chatbots have evolved into sophisticated marketing tools. We’ve seen businesses of all sizes, across all industries, use chatbots in interesting ways to fulfill a number of use cases.
And in this post, we thought we’d take a look at the use case of providing prospects with custom product sales quotes, and the many benefits that come from doing so with chatbots.
Conversational AI
Chatbots make use of conversational marketing to do many things, including:
- swiftly provide prospects with relevant information
- collect information on prospects to better inform marketing campaigns or business services
- pre-qualify leads
If you’re unfamiliar with the term conversational marketing, it’s a dialog-driven means by which to engage with users and identify and convert leads. Conversational AI is the digital equivalent of this process, where chatbots marry AI or NLP (Natural Language Processing) with conversational marketing to provide meaningful and personalized experiences.
In their 2022 future of sales and service research, Deloitte stated, “Conversational AI is one of the key components of automation, providing customers with a conversational interface into self-service and moving organizations gradually away from asking the customer to do all the work.”
If done well, conversational AI can be remarkably effective. For example, we’ve found that users prefer chatbots over lead generation forms when it comes to sharing information because they’re less daunting, more dynamic, and are capable of automatically booking meetings. We’ve seen one of our clients increase their lead capture by 142% as a result of replacing their lead generation forms with chatbots.
Chatbots as sales quote software
Conversational AI is vital in the context of automating sales quotes. You can build your chatbot to take users on a conversational journey, punctuated by bot nodes. These bot nodes serve to ask questions and gather information to provide prospects with custom quotes.
For prospects, the incentive to provide this information is the knowledge that they can swiftly get a custom quote from your business. For you, the chatbot does the heavy lifting of collecting all the data you need to provide a custom sales quote and satisfactorily meet prospect needs. What’s more, the chatbot can be integrated with your calendar to seamlessly and automatically book meetings.
If you’re wondering what this might look like, then check out two of our success stories below.
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Business: Smithereen Pest Management Services Industry: Services; pest control About: Smithereen is a pest control company that offers safe and effective solutions for both commercial and residential properties across the Midwest. Challenge: To meet the demand for custom quotes within a fast time frame, and to connect prospects to relevant team members. Solution: Instabot automates sales quotes by collecting detailed information from prospects about the services they require and their location. This process also serves to pre-qualify leads and connect leads with relevant staff members. |
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Business: E-Goal Kitchen & Reno Industry: Services; kitchen renovation About: Located in Ontario, Canada, E-Goal Kitchen helps homeowners redesign and renovate their kitchens using top quality materials, carpentry, and machinery. Challenge: To save time and resources by having detailed information on prospect needs before a consultation call, and to efficiently provide prospects with specific and relevant consultations to improve conversion rates. Solution: Through conversational marketing, Instabot engages with prospects to gather details – from type of renovation project to home measurements – so that E-Goal Kitchen & Reno can prepare a detailed custom quote which they can share on a consultation call. |
Benefits of chatbots as quote automation software
There are plenty of benefits to using chatbot software to automate sales quotes. These include:
- freeing up your agents, so they can focus on less repetitive and more high-priority, high-value tasks
- ensuring no leads go cold, as chatbots run 24/7 and can provide out-of-hours support
- ensuring your agents can arrive at sales calls well-prepared
- shrinking sales cycles by automatically booking meetings
- shortening customer journeys
The best chatbot platforms come with pre-built bot templates. At Instabot, we have a Request a Quote bot which can collect requests and information from your users, so you can get back to them with the answers they need ASAP. That way, your valuable time is reserved for your expertise, and your team can arrive at sales calls well-informed and ready to take things forward.
In the long run, using chatbots to automate sales quotes streamlines operations, improves customer satisfaction, increases conversions, and helps you to save on costs. If you’re interested in learning more about how chatbots can help your business, start a free trial of Instabot here.