Home  ›   Blog   ›  How to Use Live Chat Software for Lead Generation

How to Use Live Chat Software for Lead Generation

live chat for lead generation

Do you often worry and feel confused about why you aren’t getting leads for your business?

Well, this is something that can happen to a lot of business owners, even those who’ve been in the market for a decade or more.

To generate more leads is a challenge for many, but only a few overcome this hurdle effortlessly.

However, a lot of business owners have found live chat for lead generation to be a beneficial tool as it also helps them engage with leads in real-time.

Live chat statistics reveal that 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person during an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer.

So you not only use live chat for lead generation for visitors who prefer real-time support during online purchase, but also for converting them into customers.

But you may wonder how live chat can generate more leads for your business?

Don’t worry, we’ll help you explore different ways to use live chat for lead generation in this blog. So, let’s get started!

How Live Chat Boosts Lead Generation

Did you know that a business can gain 305% ROI from sales chat with a payback period of 6 months?

And that usually happens when your live chat helps you capture qualified leads for your business. That’s why we need to see how to drive the most leads possible from live chat to scale your sales and company growth effectively.

1. Customize Your Pre-chat Form to Capture More Details

One of the best ways to boost lead conversions with live chat for your business is to add a pre-chat form to your chat widget. It helps you capture details that help you understand your leads better and enables your sales and marketing teams to come up with strategies that’ll convert them into full time customers.

Pre-chat forms

However, merely adding a pre-chat form isn’t sufficient. You need to focus on what type details you’d like to capture when visitors fill this form. Here’s a list of questions you need to ask yourself when customizing your pre-chat form for the chat widget.

  • How will I know if it’s an authentic lead for the business?
  • What all details are necessary for the sales team to get in touch with them later?
  • What all details will prove to be fruitful for the marketing team to come up with a re-targeting strategy?
  • How do we make sure the leads engage with us in the conversation longer?

Keeping these questions in mind, it’ll help you customize and add the right fields to your pre-chat form and capture the right details that’ll surely help your business reach out to the target audience effortlessly.

2. Use Real-Time Assistance For Chat Leads

According to a study, live chat increases conversions by 20%. Live chat helps answer customer questions and remove buying objections and results in a more confident consumer.

When you aim to provide real-time assistance to customers, make sure to use the awesome live chat features to deliver a delightful customer experience. Some of the features that will help your operators provide real-time assistance will include:

i. Chat Greetings

Live Chat Automated Greetings

Initiate a chat greeting when a customer has been on a page for a very long time. These can be automatic and manual greetings that will popup based on the visitor’s behavior on the website. What’s more, if you add these greetings on pages that are more likely to convert, you will end up with qualified leads for your business.

ii. Chat Routing

Live chat routing

Route your visitors to the right department to help them get real-time assistance effectively. Not only will this feature help your admin distribute the workload as per the existing workload of the operators but will also help them avoid long chat queues.

iii. Chat Canned Response

Manage Multiple Chats Using Canned Responses

Use canned messages to reduce response time and manage multiple chats at the same time. Not only will your operators keep customers engaged but also give them the time to come up with a solution to their problems. This can help not only in capturing qualified leads but also converting them into sales.


Read More: Live Chat Canned Responses Examples


iv. Chatbot

Create a Free AI chatbot for your website to connect and engage with your chat leads in real-time. There are occasions or instances where your support operators may not be available to offer real-time support to customers. They could be busy with others on chat or there may not be too many operators to manage a huge volume of chat.

This is where Lead Generation Chatbot becomes useful for your business. It’ll help you identify the intent of the lead and why they wish to seek support for the same. If the chatbot transfers the chat to the operator, then he’d know what to expect and prepare for a solution in advance. Such intuitive real-time assistance will help your leads find a solution and arrive at a decision faster.

These features will help your operators provide real-time assistance to your visitors and learn if they are qualified leads for the business or not. Plus, during the real-time assistance process, operators can determine the needs of the visitors and what they came looking for at the website.

This way, they can make sure that only qualified leads are stored as contacts that can later be approached for sales purposes.


Read More: A quick guide on Chatbot and how it works


3. Awesome Mobile Support Experience to Generate Leads With Live Chat

Another way you can generate leads with live chat is by using its mobile app. It might sound a little off when you think how a live chat mobile app can help your company capture qualified leads for the business. But, it does.

Live chat mobile app tends to help in a lot of ways like:

i. Help Operators Answer Questions Anytime, Anywhere

Your operators can’t be available at all times at their seats with eyes all set on the screen of their systems to answer incoming questions from prospects and existing customers. That’s why the use of live chat mobile apps seems to be the perfect fit.

They can:

  • Initiate a chat
  • Answer an incoming chat
  • Browse visitor behavior
  • Check how many operators are online

This and a lot more allows them to ensure that they never miss qualified leads for the business.

ii. Creates Browser Like Experience

Live chat software tools like ProProfs Chat offer great mobile app interface that creates a browser-like experience.

live chat mobile app

For example, operators can track multiple activities at the same time. They can see how many operators are online, how many chats are managed simultaneously by each operator, how many pages have the visitor browsed, what pages have they browsed, how long have they been on a page, and more.

The availability of this data allows operators to understand the customer intent and capture leads efficiently through proactive conversations.

Other than this, abilities like multiple chat settings options and operator performance metrics create a browser-like experience, thus allowing the operators to extend help from anywhere and keeping customers delighted with seamless support experience.

4. Use Live Chat to Announce New Updates & Generate Leads

Do you know that 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person during an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer?

No matter where a website visitor gets stuck, the use of live chat helps them overcome a lot of troubles.

Trust me, it’s not something I presume. Visitors who browse a website expect to see a live chat so they can approach a business for help whenever needed.

That’s where business owners should take the clue. Live chat is not just for lead generation, customer service or for the support process. It can also be used for marketing purposes.

You may wonder how. Well, let’s understand this below.

Live chat tools like ProProfs Chat offer features like announcements that allow a business to market products and offers effectively.

All you have to do is add crisp yet engaging offers to engage website visitors. You can announce your upcoming product updates, sales, discounts, and offers to boost your chat leads.

In a nutshell, you can take your marketing efforts to the next level without added investments using live chat as a lead generation tool.

5. Personalize Live Chat Support to Increase Lead Generation

If you thought that the use of particular live chat features helps a business to boost leads, then think again.

Powerful live chat lead generation features are essential, but tend to describe only one side of the story. The way your operators use a live chat tool is another side of the story.

Studies show that “customers who chat are 3x more likely to buy. Live chat provides a method for more direct and personal interaction with customers, increasing the likelihood that they will make the purchase.”

But to achieve this goal, your operators need to understand the customers and their pain points before they solve problems for them. The following features allow operators to understand the customers and create a personalized support experience.

i. Chat Transcripts

In case it isn’t the first time a visitor has browsed your website and asked for support, then chat transcripts are one way to understand the customers better. Operators can use transcripts to understand customers better, understand their pain points, and deliver solutions that meet their expectations.

ii. Chat History

Well, chat transcripts are a part of the chat history. However, this report section consists of insightful data that allows your operators to figure out ways to create personalized support experience. Operators can track how many times the same visitor browsed the website, which operators have actively engaged with them in real-time, whether visitors were satisfied with operator support, and much more.

iii. Visitor Monitoring

Live chat visitor monitoring

While the feature mentioned above real-time visitor monitoring helps you understand the visitor’s mood and what your operators can expect when they browse the website again, this one takes the personalization of the support process to the next level.

The use of live chat software helps your operators to see how many visitors are currently browsing the website.

Here they can track how long the visitors have been on a page, what pages did they visit subsequently, did they take action or not, how many times did they land on the same page, and a lot more. This allows operators to understand whether visitors came with a purchase intent or not and accordingly create a personalized support journey for them.

These features help you improve:

  • Product quality
  • Website experience
  • Support experience
  • Response time

And these outcomes result in delighted customers.

6. Figure Out Upsell & Cross-Sell Opportunities

We’ve all understood how features and the correct use of live chat help your business capture qualified leads effectively. Now, let’s see how it enables you to figure out upsell and cross-sell opportunities that lead to further lead generation possibilities.

When you integrate live chat support tools with a powerful platform like CRM, it becomes a lot easier for your operators to access every visitor detail in seconds. This allows them to provide a product recommendation before the visitor gets ready to checkout with the cart.

Now, personal product recommendations tend to leave an impact on your customers, especially the ones that popup in real-time. While some may avoid your efforts, others might find your approach conducive.

With the right information on your visitors and existing customers, operators get to provide suggestions that help you to boost leads for the business.

How does that happen through product recommendations is probably the next question you may ask. Well, excellent customer service tends to leave a good impression on your customers.

And this impression results in word-of-mouth publicity for your business. That’s exactly how you come across new potential leads for the business.

In a nutshell, when your operators identify upsell opportunities, they not only find the possibility to keep your existing customers engaged but also prompt them to bring in more business with seamless service. That’s another way in which you can generate leads with your live chat software.

7. Greet New or Returning Visitors to Close More Leads

Have you noticed a live chat pop-up when you visit a website? Some state fact or welcome you as their new visitor on the website, while some may know that it’s not your first visit and you may see a fitting message accordingly.

live chat pricing page help

Greetings are a great way to engage your potential leads and boost opportunities for conversions on your website. A few live chat for lead generation tools like ProProfs Chat even help you track the performance of your greetings.

You will get to know how many people saw your greetings, how many people clicked on them and how many people ended up closing them through these visual reports of new leads captured from web chat. This will not only help you come up with better content strategies for your greetings but also help you work towards capturing leads effectively in future.

8. Add Offline Messages to Capture Leads Using Live Chat

While the idea of 24×7 support sounds amazing, it is not possible for your operators to be available for the support process at all times. There are going to be times like the holiday season when operators may be spending time with their families too.

But that doesn’t mean you miss out on your leads. They too can have urgent support queries that need attention. Keeping that in mind, you can make use of features like offline messages to catch your leads and get back to them when your operators are online.

Chat offline message

And if you integrate your live chat with a help desk system, you can store these offline messages as tickets that can later be taken up by your support operators easily. In short, if you add offline messages to your chat widget, you’re ensuring that none of the opportunities to capture leads using live chat slips away.

Boost Lead Generation Using Live Chat

To boost customer service and leads for your business, you not only need the right team members but also the best live chat support tool.

A good live chat tool can help you capture leads, store them and even identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities for your business. It can even help you personalize the experience for your leads and result in converting them as customers for your business. However, you need to get a live chat that does it all for you.

In case you’ve been searching for one yourself, then you can give ProProfs Chat a try. As a lead generation tool, it can help you capture leads, create an awesome experience for them via its mobile application and much more.

FREE. All Features. FOREVER!

Try our Forever FREE account with all premium features!

ProProfs Editorial Team

About the author

ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a passionate group of customer service experts dedicated to empowering your live chat experiences with top-notch content. We stay ahead of the curve on trends, tackle technical hurdles, and provide practical tips to boost your business. With our commitment to quality and integrity, you can be confident you're getting the most reliable resources to enhance your customer support initiatives.