AI Chatbot for Lead Generation: Turn Website Questions into Leads
Visitors who ask a question on your site are often close to a decision. A chatbot only helps with lead generation if it answers well first, keeps the details a visitor leaves together with the question that brought them, and gets the lead to your team while the question is still fresh. This guide walks through how to set that up with OneType, from training the agent to following up.
1. Let the agent answer from your own content
People share their details with a chat that has just been useful. Start by training your agent on your website and files, so it answers from your own pages instead of guessing. Enter your URL, pick the pages, and the agent learns from your site. You can also upload PDF, Word, Markdown, text or CSV files, or paste text.
Every sentence of an answer carries a numbered source, so visitors can check what the agent says about your offer. When your content has no answer, the agent says so and offers a next step instead of inventing one.
2. Set exact answers for your key questions
For questions where wording matters, such as terms and conditions or how an offer works, create a saved answer set to reply exactly. The agent then sends your own words. Saved answers also give you one-click fixes from any conversation, so a question that came up in a real chat can become a reliable reply.
3. Choose how visitors become leads
OneType lets a visitor become a lead in three ways:
- through the contact form in the chat, which asks for an email and, optionally, a name, a phone number and a marketing opt-in;
- by typing their own details while chatting, which the agent saves;
- when the agent cannot answer and shows the contact form. What the agent does when it does not know is your choice per agent: hand the chat to your team, show a contact form, or apologize.
Saving details from the chat is careful by design. The agent keeps only what the visitor typed about themselves, it only fills empty fields, and it never records marketing consent on its own.
4. Keep the lead together with its context
Each new lead lands in Contacts with the conversation it came from and the last question the visitor asked. Your team does not have to guess what the person wanted. Signed-in users that your website identifies are marked as verified, and a verified email cannot be changed by hand or by a form.
5. Make sure your team hears about it at once
A new lead shows in the bell in your dashboard and can be emailed to your team. It also reaches Slack or Discord when you connect them. The alerts name the visitor and say which details were left, such as email and phone, but they do not quote the values; the full message is one click away in the dashboard.
If the visitor is still chatting, anyone on your team can take over the chat and reply in person.
6. Send leads to your own systems
For your CRM or any other tool, use webhooks. On plans that include webhooks, OneType sends a signed message to an address on your server the moment a lead is captured (the lead.captured event). OneType sends a lead.captured event at most once a day for each person. Deliveries follow the Standard Webhooks specification, failed deliveries are retried for about three days, and you can see every attempt for 30 days and send any event again with one click.
Ready to try it?
Set up lead capture on your own site: see how OneType turns questions into leads on the lead generation page.