When it comes to lead generation, various marketing channels can be used to grow awareness and reach engaged users from your target audience. However increased volume doesn’t always translate to increased sales. 

It’s important to focus more on quality over quantity in your lead generation strategy, and discovering how you can quality your leads as early as possible can lead to more efficient and effective growth. 

An often underlooked tool to help qualify your leads at the very beginning of a customer journey is through an integrated web chat feature on your website, giving you the ability to understand your leads' motivations and habits in an approachable way. 

In this article, we will show you the top ways that SmartChat can help you to improve your lead quality, not only allowing you to connect with your customers, but build relationships with engaged and interested potential ones too. 

What is SmartChat?

SmartChat is a human-led, AI-enhanced web chat function that enables your customer to speak to real people 24/7. 

It is a live chat product that can be added to your e-commerce website, or integrated with social media messaging and even mobile text messaging to help you connect with your customers on platforms that they spend most of their time on - enabling you to increase your lead volume organically. 

However, quantity ≠ quality. There are some key ways that live chat can be optimised towards lead qualification in a customer-centric way, encouraging relationship building and promoting loyalty right from the beginning. 

How to use SmartChat to boost quality lead growth

Address AI fatigue with real conversations with real people

Although AI is improving analytics, targeting and many other areas of marketing operations, there is an increased backlash against it from customers suffering from AI fatigue. Unlike other automated, AI-powered web chats, your customer is talking to a real person, having real conversations with your visitors. 

This provides more flexibility and can improve a customer's experience of your brand, potentially their very first communication with your business. Speaking to someone real means they won’t only receive templated, fixed responses that often lead to frustration and may even cost you a conversion! 

Conversational marketing over conversion messaging

Another benefit of using a people-centred web chat is the art of conversation. Conversational marketing can be hard to implement authentically. Customers can often tell if it’s forced or fake, especially when using a chatbot that uses machine learning.

Instead, SmartChat operators can have conversations that also naturally learn more about the potential customers' pain-points, motivations, spending habits and other qualifying factors in a more conversational, less salesy manner, enabling your business to better understand this customer and how best to encourage conversion after lead gathering. 

Use feedback surveys to improve SmartChat and tailor ongoing customer communications

Customers are accustomed to having to fill in a short survey after using a web chat tool. This could be as simple as filling out a star rating or could be a few questions in relation to their experience, i.e. ‘Did we answer your question today?’ or ‘Did you get everything you needed?’. 

However, reframing this to include more personalised details, such as the name of the live chat operator they spoke to (‘How did Sarah do?’) can increase engagement with surveys like these, often resulting in more specific, constructive and detailed feedback. 

This can then be used to develop your live chat responses and processes and used as training tools when onboarding new operators to further improve your quality lead generation from SmartChat.

Similarly, paying attention to customer responses and the overall interaction through chat history can help you to tailor your customer interactions and communications. Personalisation is key for successful marketing that cuts through the noise, and referring to specific points in their enquiry or survey responses can let customers know that you have read through their feedback and care about their experience, resulting in increased trust in your brand and promotes customer loyalty. 

It may even lead to further lead generation, through word-of-mouth recommendations for a company that cares for their customers so well! 

Final thoughts 

Taking a customer-centred approach to lead generation, with conversational techniques and personalised experiences can help you to increase quality lead generation in a strategic and organic way. 

Want to explore how SmartChat can improve your quality lead generation? 

We are experts in blending human-led and AI-enhanced live chat experiences that put your customer first. Get in touch to see how SmartChat could help your business.