The Hidden Value in “Low-Value” Conversations: Why Quick Responses Matter
When you’re generating leads over chat, whether through ads, social media or your website, you’re bound to receive some irrelevant or spam conversations. While you don’t want to waste time on low-quality leads, you might be missing out by ignoring or disqualifying some too soon.
How is it even possible to tell if you’ve lost valuable potential customers? We did an experiment and discovered that 41% of what we had considered “low value” conversations were actually “high value,” that is, from people who had real questions about our product.
Customer Support Lead Nabila Hishamuddin explains how we uncovered these insights and how businesses can balance the use of human agents and AI agents to take every conversation to its full potential.
Why Drop-Offs Might Be Real Leads
Nabila shares that conversations were considered to be “low value” if the contact simply said “Hi” and didn’t give any further reply or context after receiving a response or if they entered into an automated conversation and didn’t answer basic questions like “What’s your email address?”
These contacts were not recognized as current customers and we had no other data on them, so they were assumed to be spam or to have sent the message by mistake.
Most businesses receiving messages over chat can relate. If an unknown contact doesn’t ask a clear question or doesn’t want to respond to simple qualifying questions, it’s hard to justify spending time following up or trying to draw out more information.
But think about it from another perspective. A prospect is considering several options and wants to ask a question or two to help make a decision. They say “hi” just to get started. When they don’t get a reply right away, they go on to speak to a competitor instead. Once your business responds, it’s already too late.
Automated qualifying questions can also be a blocker. Sometimes, people have specific questions about your product or service and don’t want to give out any personal information. They just want their questions answered first.
Nabila gives a personal example, “When I was moving house, I was texting so many providers about an invisible grille. I just wanted to know, ‘Is it possible for you to install the invisible grille on the outside ledge?’ I had a very specific question. But for most I had to fill out a form and they’d take some time to get back to me. I went with the provider who answered my question fastest.”
How Our Experiment Worked
Of course, if contacts drop off, it’s hard to know if they were truly interested or not. Enter our experiment. Nabila explains, “We tried using respond.io’s AI Agent as the first point of contact for certain types of conversations; for example, if the person didn’t provide their email address when asked or if they were a first-time contact who didn’t make it clear what they wanted.”
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As expected, the majority of conversations were indeed spam or irrelevant, but an astounding 41% of conversations that would have dropped off and gone unanswered were from real people with real questions.
The AI Agent successfully handled 54% of these high-value conversations and passed 8.9% of them on to a human agent when asked. While AI isn’t perfect, it’s a valuable tool for providing fast answers while allowing salespeople time to prioritize clearly qualified leads.
Reply Fast and Maximize Leads by Using a Well-Trained AI Chatbot
Many teams don’t have the time to respond to every message instantly, and it’s inefficient to spend valuable human resources trying to figure out whether a vague, unrecognized message is genuine or spam.
Automated responses to qualify leads or answer FAQs save time, but in some cases result in frustration. Using an AI chatbot allows more flexibility in replies, for example, if the lead’s question isn’t on the FAQ menu or if the lead chooses not to answer qualifying questions.
We’ve found using respond.io’s AI Agent in combination with human agent replies and automated replies manages conversations the most effectively. However, Nabila stresses that that AI won’t magically give great answers on its own. It must be trained first.
No matter what AI chatbot you’re using, providing it thorough knowledge of your business and testing it is key. It’s well worth investing the initial time to train your AI because you’ll close more deals in the long run.
Try It For Yourself
Want to find out if you’ve been writing off real leads as spam? Test out a similar experiment and see! And if you’ve already tried and seen results, let us know in the comments.
Most growing businesses find they need to use a conversation management platform like respond.io to reply to and qualify leads promptly. Tools like automation and AI are essential to streamline the process, but just remember they can’t do it all. It takes a solid strategy and insights into the customer perspective to set them up for success.
If you’ve found these insights helpful, don’t forget to follow us, and check out the following blogs for more tips on managing leads with AI and automation.
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5 个月Low-value chats? Do you mean those 'Hi' in my DM? ha