Increase Sales with AI: Implementing a Sales Chatbot Strategy

Keeping your sales going is critical for the success of any business. Build the greatest product you can or offer the best services available, but if you can’t get the orders to ship those products or clients to request those services, whatever business you’re running begins to face an existential risk.

But what exactly is hampering your sales goals?

Do you have so many competing activities that you devote less and less time to closing deals? Do you feel like you're spread too thin across various initiatives which ends up impacting your sales performance? Finding it hard to make sufficient time and effort toward prospecting and moving deals forward? Need assistance in streamlining your sales processes?

A lot of things could be going wrong with your sales strategy, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly emerging as a favorite technology to help businesses drive sales. AI can revolutionize your sales strategy by automating repetitive tasks, gathering valuable customer data, and even predicting buying behavior. This translates to increased sales, improved customer satisfaction, and a significant boost to your bottom line.

But when it comes to harnessing the power of AI for real-time sales impact, there's one AI tool that stands out: AI chatbots. These intelligent chatbots can engage with website visitors and answer their questions 24/7, identify buying signals, and even personalize product recommendations—giving your sales team everything they need to close those much-needed sales. But how exactly do AI chatbots fit into your sales equation and how can you use them to boost your sales?

How to Use AI Chatbots to Increase Sales

Forget just saving time and money. AI chatbots are sales game-changers. These powerful tools can automate your entire sales funnel, from attracting new customers to guiding them through the buying journey. With features like lead generation, qualification, personalized messages, and smart product recommendations, AI chatbots can significantly boost your sales and optimize your strategy. Here are some ways to use AI chatbots to increase sales and optimize your sales strategy.

1. Lead Generation

Struggling to find new customers? AI chatbots are a game-changer for lead generation. They're cost-effective, work 24/7, and integrate seamlessly with your marketing tools. Using AI chatbots to generate leads is a modern and cost-effective method every business should try. Chatbots can be integrated with diverse marketing tools like CRMs to push the limits of your sales game. Unlike human salespeople, chatbots never sleep. They can engage website visitors and capture leads any time of day, maximizing your lead generation potential. Chatbots can have engaging conversations with potential customers, understand their needs, and answer their questions in real time, building trust and keeping them interested.

2. Lead Qualification

Chatbots can determine the level of interest a lead has for your products and services. The sales team can use this opportunity to figure out the leads with the possibility of making a purchase. It is done by automating chatbots to ask qualifying questions like "budget, how the product can solve their problem, the purchasing power, time of probable purchase, and other specific questions". This allows the bots to quickly classify the leads based on their conversion potentials and helps the sales team focus resources on them. As a result, AI chatbots reduce the time and effort sales teams spend on fishing out prospects from the leads.

3. Immediate Responses and Improved Customer Engagement

Nothing makes you lose customers more than slow responses. When visitors land on your website or business page, they look for something and are most likely ready to discuss it. However, when they send a message and do not receive a response almost immediately, they start to seek alternatives. With AI chatbots, you can get immediate responses to your leads inquiries. Imagine having a sales representative with no breaks, mealtime, or sleep routine who can work day and night tirelessly. Yes, you just imagined what AI chatbots are in reality. They are innovative means to interact with customers anytime, creating an opportunity to drive a sale.

4. Lead Nurturing

To help increase your chances of making sales, chatbots can be used to send automated follow-up messages and relevant resources to potential customers. This helps to steadily remind them about your products and services until they are ready to purchase. For example, a software company looking to make sales can use chatbots to send personalized emails, targeted offers and helpful content to a potential customer who has been marked as a qualified lead. Chatbots can be used to tackle technical questions or issues that the prospects might have. A lead nurturing strategy can help a brand demonstrate its expertise in the industry, build trust, and generate satisfied customers.

5. Complete Purchase Process

Reducing cart abandonment is another strategy an AI chatbot can use to boost sales. When prospects are ready to initiate a purchase on your business page, they may need to ask some important questions, and not getting a response can cause cart abandonment. With AI chatbot in the picture, their automated customer support capability will aid in providing the right answers to their questions. Not only that, it can guide them through their purchase journey. In cases where a user has added a product to a cart without any further action, AI chatbots can be automated to ask questions like "Are you stuck?" or remind them to complete their order. They provide necessary assistance and encouragement to boost users' interest in purchasing.

6. Generate Sales During Non-Business Hours

With AI chatbots at the forefront of your business page, even non-business hours and holidays can stop you from making sales. AI chatbots can work 24/7 and take over customer service when your human agent or sales team are resting. This approach is an effective way to keep your users' queries answered during your inactive hours and can be a strategy to continuously make sales.

7. Personalized Messages

Marketing teams can use chatbots to send targeted messages to leads based on their relevance. This is possible because chatbots can record user interactions and behaviours. By gaining data and insights into a lead's interest, a customized message can be sent to inform them accordingly on their interest and preferences, which is an efficient sales-driven method. Personalized messages can also trigger customer retention. Since the customers' interests have been acknowledged, they can always easily return to make more purchases.

8. Product & Services Promotion

Chatbots are intelligent marketers, and they can promote a brand's product and services by proactively sending notifications, offers, and reminders to leads and customers. They can also be used for newsletter sign-ups, discount and coupon alerting and loyalty program awareness. You can also use them to inform your customers about new products, features or latest releases, which can be a great way to keep them up to date. With seamless integrations with CRM systems and other supported marketing platforms, chatbots are a useful tool for human marketers to drive sales.

9. Cross-Selling and Upselling

Did you know you can land extra sales through a cross-selling and upselling strategy? AI chatbots can suggest additional items to customers based on their preferences. With their intelligent analytic skill, they can identify opportunities and make personalized recommendations to increase sales. AI chatbots can also upsell by convincing customers to upgrade or purchase versions of your products and services by spelling out their value and benefits. The cross-selling and upselling strategy using AI-powered bots can encourage customers to purchase more items and pursue higher-valued transactions.

Real-World Examples of AI Chatbots Used to Increase Sales

To confirm that AI chatbots are a working tool for significant conversions, here are some real-life success stories of popular brands that have successfully used AI chatbots to boost their sales.

Pizza Hut's Chatbot

Pizza Hut has a chatbot that helps customers order food online. The chatbot is integrated with Facebook Messenger and uses natural language processing to understand customer's orders. It also allows order tracking, and change of order and provides order updates in real-time.

With a 4.5-star rating and more than 100k monthly user interactions, Pizza Hut's chatbot has successfully facilitated 60% of the brand's total order volume.

Starbucks's Barista Chabot

Starbucks is a popular brand known for its food and drink services. The brand uses Barista, a chatbot, to take customer orders. Customers can make enquiries and get immediate and personalized responses from the chatbot. With its place and pay order feature, Barista has helped increase Starbucks's engagement and sales. Starbucks has reportedly achieved a 20% increase in purchases with the use of chatbots to streamline sales.

H&M's Kik Chatbot

H&M's chatbot is designed to assist their luxurious brand in styling customers based on requests. Integrated with a popular messenger app called Kik, the chatbot renders fashion advice and recommendations to customers. The chatbot has recorded more than 15 million monthly users and achieved a click-through rate of 8%, which is 6% higher than the brand's email marketing click-through rate.

Sephora's Beauty Chatbot

Sephora launched a round-the-clock chatbot on Kik to streamline the customer booking process and act as their online in-store assistant. The chatbot answers customers' questions, provides beauty tips, and recommends products based on customers' preferences. Other features of Sephora's chatbot include product reviews, appointment booking, and customer support. According to CBinsights, Sephora has increased bookings by 11%, and customers who book appointments through the chatbot often spend up to $50 in-store.

These real-world examples show the power and importance of chatbots in providing outstanding customer service experience and streamlining the sales process.

Ready to build a successful chatbot for your brand?

Building your AI-powered chatbot can help push up your sales and provide a cutting-edge solution to meet customer's needs. To build a quality chatbot, you should consider Chasebase as your go-to platform. With Chatbase, you can access several marketing tools to help you achieve your goals of deploying an AI bot for your business.

Chatbase offers a no-code installation mode to build and model your chatbots with simple clicks. Chatbase bots can help you generate, engage, capture, and qualify leads across multiple business platforms. Harnessing their natural language ability, the bots can interact with customers in a natural, human-like conversation. Chatbase bots can also provide personalized experiences to customers by sending targeted messages based on their preferences.

The powerful technology Chatbase uses allows its chatbots to attend to customers 24/7 without getting tired. It also offers a seamless integration option, which allows you to deploy chatbots on different channels, including websites, mobile apps, and messaging apps. Chatbase also allows you to integrate your chatbot with payment gateways, CRMs, and other supported marketing channels. Chatbase is affordable and scalable, with pricing plans starting from as low as $19.

Want to put chatbase to the test? Start your free trial today and begin your journey to building an effective sales-driven chatbot for your brand.