Live chat and chatbots

Live chat lets website visitors start conversations instantly. Chatbots handle common questions automatically and route qualified leads to sales. Together, they convert more visitors and save time on repetitive enquiries.

The balance between automation and human touch matters. Too much automation frustrates visitors. Too little wastes your team's time on basic questions.

‍

Use live chat for high-intent pages. Pricing pages, demo request pages, and product pages are where visitors have buying questions.

Use chatbots to qualify leads before routing to sales. Ask a few questions, determine fit, then connect qualified visitors to a human.

Use chatbots for support deflection. Answer common questions automatically and reserve human time for complex issues.

Use chat for real-time engagement. When a target account is on your site, a proactive chat message can start a conversation.

‍

Bot builders let you create conversation flows without code. Visual builders make it easy to design qualification sequences.

Routing rules send chats to the right person. Route by page, by company size, by question type, or by account ownership.

Integration with your CRM logs conversations and creates contacts automatically. Chat history should be visible alongside other touchpoints.

Availability settings match your team's hours. Show chat when someone's available, show a bot or contact form when they're not.

‍

HubSpot chat and chatbots are included with most HubSpot plans. Good enough for basic use cases with native CRM integration.

Intercom is the premium choice with advanced bot capabilities and messaging features. Higher price, more powerful.

Drift focuses on B2B with strong sales use cases. Worth evaluating alongside Intercom.

Start with HubSpot if you have it. Move to Intercom or Drift if you need advanced bot logic or a dedicated chat experience.

‍

Chat converts visitors who wouldn't fill out a form. Start simple with a basic chatbot for qualification and route to humans for real conversations. Improve the bot over time based on common questions and drop-off points.

‍