How Most Companies Ignore Their Leads? (Easy Fix)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lance Hood (FranPro) (00:00):
Today I would like you to meet Aslam
Abbas, the co-founder of CollectChat.
Aslam welcome.

Aslam Abbas (Collect.chat) (00:08):
Hi Lance, Thank you for having me.

So 25,000 happy businesses using Collect
Chat Pretty impressive.

Yes, it has been a very long journey
, a five-year plus journey forCollect, not Chat.

What makes chatbots so important for
business nowadays?

See, chatbots embody the best form
of communication between humanbeings.
We like to chat and chatbotsare basically conversational
interfaces which mimics chat.
So that's a very easy,comfortable form of
communication and that naturalinterface conversation interface

(00:59):
means the user has no frictioninto having a chat, giving their
details and submitting thedetails to the business owner.
They're more comfortable inthat.
So that is why I believechatbots are important for all
businesses of all kinds.

Right, so instead of sitting there and
filling out this huge form,people can be asked one question
at a time, just like they'retalking to a person.

Aslam Abbas (Collect.ch (01:27):
Exactly In a form.
There is a lot of friction.
They literally feel like, oh,I've got to fill this details
and fill the next one.
But in a chatbot you're askingone question at a time.
You're not telling them youhave 30 questions to fill.
It's just a good one forquestion, so you pick this
option.
Okay, what's something else weshould do?

(01:47):
That is what the chatbotactually does.

Right, and so you know people are familiar
with you know you have thechatbots and then you'll also
have live chat, which aresimilar, but the thing is is for
people, live chat can be a lotmore expensive, so they both
have their uses.
I think that the chatbots areaffordable for everybody and

(02:12):
easy to use and quick to deploy.

Yes, chatbots are definitely quick
to deploy.
Live chat also, when it worksbest, it does a good job.
If you have the right team toattend all the customers that
you have globally spread out,speaking in different languages,
then, yes, live chat is anoption.
But many companies andbusinesses do not have such a

(02:38):
big team.
First of all, you have to hirea good set of people.
You need to train them.
There's a lot of money and costand time involved in that.
But when it comes to chatbots,this is about creating a
conversation which is repetitive.
90% of conversations withcustomers are repetitive.
You're asking the same set ofquestions, so why not make it

(02:59):
automated?
Have it in one single chatinterface and put it for the
customer to interact with.
It runs on an autopilot andinteracts with everybody all the
website visitors.
So you have the data in aninstant.
So that's what chatbots actuallydo.

I have found that, even for a single
person who has a website and abusiness, chatbots fit into any
budget just because you're notpaying that human and you're not
coming up with all thosedifferent FAQs and responses
that a human would have tounderstand to ask any question a
person would ask.
Instead, there's guardrails onit, there's specific questions

(03:40):
and people just go through thatprocess.

Yes, yes, basically one thing that
people should understand whenyou are adding a chatbot, you're
not removing the human out ofthe equation.
You're making it easy for thecustomer agent on the other side
, giving them all theinformation they need to act
upon that particular customersupport ticket so that they can
provide support faster.

(04:04):
They will know their name,account, email or whatever
service or problem they'refacing In all its details.
They'll be available via thechatbot conversation.
So that's the beauty of it, it'sa much simple process for
providing assistance, gettingleads, getting feedbacks and
much more.

Right.
And if you think about if youhad a salesman that worked for
your company and they neverasked for people's business.
They just stood in front ofpeople and they just stood there
and looked at them and theynever once asked them for
business, that wouldn't be aneffective salesperson.
But people will have a websitethat just sits there with no

(04:45):
chat on it or no nothing.
It's not communicating withpeople, it's just something to
read and think that it'sacceptable, but it's not.
Every page should beinteractive for the purpose of
that page, instead of makingpeople go look through your
website to find a contact uspage.
I mean, that's crazy.
Even your purchase pages couldhave a chatbot that would assist

(05:09):
people with those pre-purchasequestions or ask if they'd like
to take an order.
I really see it as adding lifeand interaction versus just a
dead site that doesn't.
It's just out there.

Aslam Abbas (Collect.cha (05:25):
Coming to the salesman analogy, a
salesman is one man can onlyhandle one person, but as a
handling a person, you mighthave another curious customer
who might be more interested inpurchase or buyer surveys.
You cannot attend that person.
You have to keep them waiting.

(05:45):
Customers do not like waiting.
They do not like delays.
With a chatbot it's allautomated.
But the thing is you need tokeep the conversation as
human-friendly as possible.
Don't make it like give me allthe information I need.
No, keep it very simple so thatthe human at the other end can

(06:06):
easily assist in an organizedmanner and attend to all these
different humans later and makethem happy.

And you said it's not just one person,
and I see that, because you canhave different bots on different
pages.
But if you have a thousandpeople on a page, they can all
be serviced by their own botsimultaneously, so you're not
limited in any way, and really abig purpose of these bots is.
There's other purposes, but oneof the biggest is lead

(06:38):
generation right Like it'scollecting leads for you from
people who are on your site andinterested in what you do.

Exactly , lead generation is one of the
primary use cases of ourchatbots.
That's something that we haveseen over and over with
customers using collect chats.
Chatbots fold and it's prettyeasy to create a lead generation
bot.
And also, once the lead data iscollected, we have very good

(07:06):
set of integrations to send thedata from the chatbot to perhaps
a CRM that they're using, sothey can do all those
integrations within a singlelink in our dashboard.

Right, or you can use the scheduling bot
that you guys have to have thembook right into your calendar.
So the other, oh, go ahead,aslam.

I was just saying appointment
booking is another use case thatalso people use the chatbot for
.

Right, and then maybe objections, like if
you have sales objections, theycan handle a list of a few of
those.
You also have the what do youcall it, your customer support
type pages where they cancollect that data.

Yes, yes, you can actually send data
to tools like FreshDisk, zoho,to create a ticket.
In those tools, support toolsand all those conversations
become a ticket.
That is also possible.

What are the?
For everybody who hasn't beenin the system, I just said we've
been through a demo and it wasthe simplest, shortest demo I've
ever seen in my life.
That was, I think that anybodycould walk in there and build
one.
It just takes seconds and thenyou just grab that code and
paste it in your header, headeror footer, whatever, and you're

(08:32):
done Exactly.
I was shocked at how simple itwas.
Thank you.

One thing we have focused on always
is people who the businesspeople who are signing up on
Collector Chat.
They know the output they wantand they don't really want to
spend a lot of time in creatingit, because if they spend a lot
of time trying to learn theproduct or figuring out XYZ

(09:01):
features, that's going to createadditional friction and they're
going to drop off.
They may hires or maybe pass onthe task to someone else.
Whenever we design the product,we made sure that they got the
output they needed in a matterof minutes, which is why we
created over 50 templates.
No matter from which domainyou're coming from business

(09:23):
domain we will have a templatethat you can use out of the box.
You just need to edit out somenotes and you will have a ready
made chatbot for you to use onyour website.

I think anybody that has a lead page or
an opt-in page or is paying forpaid traffic.
You should really have a leadgenerating chatbot on those
pages, because if you're goingto pay to have a bunch of people
go to a sign up page orsomething, you should have a
secondary backup that willengage them.
If they're going to wait onmaking that decision because

(09:57):
they have questions, you couldadd a chatbot as some sort of
communication tool to grab thoseleads.
So what are the?
How many can they do at once?
It's unlimited, right.

Yeah , there are no limits on the
number of bots they can create.
In fact, we encourage ourcustomers to create different
chat bots for different pages,because people visit your
homepage for one reason, butpeople might be visiting a
feature page, or maybe aparticular product page, for
another purpose.
So the conversation that shouldbe on that page should be

(10:38):
different, and we don't have anylimits on the number of chat
bots you can create.

You guys, are there some ways that people
can, things that people can doto increase conversion or
improve the how their chat boxwork by either changing the
words or changing backgrounds,anything that you guys have
learned that will increaseengagement or conversion.

Yes, so some pretty basic rules.
So the best converting chatbots do not have more than 10 to
12 questions.
So 10 to 12 questions are 10 to12 pieces of data points that
you're collecting from thecustomer.
So if you have a website andyou need to capture data, try to

(11:26):
capture the most essential datapoints in these 10 questions.
But also, you should try yourbest to make them very simple
and, instead of providingtext-based questions, make them
option-based questions so thatthe user does not have to even
type.
You can just click, click andthen next one.

(11:47):
Make it easy for the endcustomer and you'll get your
data.
So that's one thing.
Keeping the questions brief isanother point.
To not opt for very largenumber of data questions.
Yeah, that's pretty much what Ihave to say.

Okay, and then, so are there what I want
to ask you a few questions.
As a business owner, what haveyou noticed about companies that
they all have in common, forcompanies who are really
succeeding in doing well?

So okay, good question.
So all the companies that aredoing well from what I have
observed, they're only solvingone problem and they're solving
that problem perfectly well.
So, if you take our example, weare creating chatbots.
We could have done, maybe, acustomer support thing what to

(12:45):
do with the data that comes fromthe conversation we could have
built a CRM or we could havedone a lot of other features,
but we don't focus on those.
We focus on solving one singleproblem and that is to help
customers create chatbots in themost easy way.
So focusing on a one singleproblem is important.

(13:05):
Finding product market fit isimportant and communicating with
your customers.
In our early days, with almostall our first customers, we
tried to have a video call,tried to go through how they use
the product.

(13:26):
Even their minor mouse actionswill give us an idea.
Okay, is this working or isthis not working?
Is this feature clear to them?
Not clear to them?
So just by observing, withoutthem even speaking it out, we
are able to understand.
So, interacting with thecustomer, trying to support them
over and beyond, that hasactually helped them.

(13:48):
We have customers for fiveyears the ones who started then.
They are still using Collectorbecause it works for them, they
are happy and they stillcontinue to use it.
So focus on making the productsand we'll solve one problem.
You know, pay attention to yourcustomers.
Understand what they really,really want to do, what

(14:09):
customers say in an email.
They might say I want to do X,but you got to ask in a
PoliTrade why do you really wantto do X?
That will give you a lot ofinsight into what is your
business process, what's theirwork, and that will give you
ideas.

Right.
That why?
Question really would beimportant, because you're going
to learn the context behind thatdecision, which helps you
formulate your business Exactly.
And I like what you said aboutkeeping having a single focus
and keeping it simple andintuitive, because really, the
more complex things get, themore we need to simplify them

(14:52):
and make them naturallyintuitive for the user so that
they can do it, because noteverybody wants to go out and
hire someone who can do thesecomplex things.
These chatbots is somethingthat I believe, from walking
through behind the scenes,anybody can do, like you don't
need to hire anybody.

Exactly Now that you mentioned about
hiring.
I have seen on Fiverr and otherupward marketplaces people are
hiring chatbot experts for otherproducts because the product by
itself is not intuitive.
It's powerful, but there is alearning curve to it.
So you yourself are not able tomake the output you want to,

(15:34):
and very, very rarely I haveseen somebody asking for an
expert with a collect chat,because people are very easy for
them to create a chatbotTemplates are only the system is
completely intuitive, so thatis something we are very happy
about.

Well, and the thing that I like that I
haven't seen other people reallydo, that you guys did is as you
, as you click through differentchatbots, or as you flip the
switches and make adjustments,you get a real time preview
right next to it, like youactually see it as it's changing
and what you're, what you'reactually going to get at this
moment in time, which is verycool Was that based upon what

(16:18):
you watch?
The customers wanting?

So again, this is again saving and
extra click.
Usually all platforms have makea change.
Click on save, see the change.
So we took away the save button, so everything is on auto save
and that actually means peoplecan work faster.
People when you want to change,when you're working on creating

(16:42):
the conversation script, soyour brain is so focused on how
should I format these sentencesand then you instantly want to
see the output.
But in the meantime, if you'redisturbed by going to click on
save changes and see the changes, you're disturbed and you break
the flow.
So we don't want to do that.
Everything runs on auto saveand you get to see the instant.

And then you have to go back into the
process just to make the nextaddition, Like I mean, this is
very, very smart.

Yes, you don't need an extra moment
to work with the same point.

And then what have you seen with
companies that struggle?
You've probably seen peoplecome up and they try things and
they just they're struggling andtrying to get off the ground or
stay in business or they tendto get pushed out by the new
people that have it moreorganized.

So that's a very broad question.
I will write in my perspective.
So one is lack of focus.
You are spending your moneyprobably in ads or in getting
leads, paying influencers tofeature your product and all

(18:12):
those activities, but you forgetabout improving the product
itself.
Your time is spent in trying totalk to customers to evaluate
the idea, but you do not have aready made product to showcase
and see if you get a livefeedback about, on the product

(18:33):
that you make.
That is something that we havetried to avoid.
We always try to make a productthat has set out to solve that
single problem.
Now, if you do that, oneadvantage is, whenever you are
having a call with a customer tovalidate the idea, you have a

(18:53):
live product which you can pitchthem.
Hey, remember the idea I spoketo you about.
I have this idea and I havethis product ready made.
Maybe can you spend fiveminutes to just test it out.
So there you get a very activeand strong feedback which helps
you improve, and that's a cycleprocess which you have invested
a lot of time to help us createa good product.

(19:16):
Many companies that I know theytry to skip this.
They try to save it for laterwhen they have a lot of
customers, or maybe when theyhave a lot of investors and
money.
But that should be somethingthey should focus on from day
one.

Well, I agree, and one of the things
that you said is they focus onmarketing or getting new
customers, versus improving theproduct, and I've mentioned that
in this series.
A lot is that if you don'tcontinuously improve and
simplify and make your productor your service better, then

(19:53):
you're going to spend a lot moremoney on marketing to try to
get it out there, because it'snot going to naturally take off,
because it's okay, it's justnot as good as it could be, and
then you're going to have todeal with the customers or the
people who buy into the productthat aren't as happy as they
could be.
So you're adding friction tothe process by forcing yourself

(20:14):
to grow with it, not as anoptimized business.

Yeah , you're just simply eroding
yourself away with time and eventhe money.
You're burning it too fast inmarketing.
So don't do that.
Do not let that be your firstfocus.
Make sure you have created aproduct or a service which is so

(20:42):
good that people will notrefuse it.

Right, and if you have too high of a burn
rate of capital, like the moneyto pay for your staff and all
your expenses is high then itforces you to be driven to focus
on new sales to pay and coveryour monthly burn rate versus
have a profit, and so sometimesyou might have to trim that back

(21:07):
while you're focusing onpolishing your product.
Otherwise you're really notable to focus on being excellent
.
You're forced to focus on thenext sale.

Also , they just don't focus on sales
to get more cash, you might betempted to go after investors to
bring people on board and thenall your time as a founder will
be to create a pitch deck topitch before a lot of people

(21:42):
give out.
share your metrics andeverything and then only to
bring investors.
Sometimes it will backfire verybadly and might even let you to
close down the company.
I've seen that happening, soit's a pretty good escape place.
So get your product or servicecorrect not to the very best in

(22:04):
the market, but it should dowhat it promises.
If it says you can create achatbot, it should do that in a
very simple way.
So if you're able to solve thatproblem, others should take
care of itself.

And then, another thing that you mentioned
was clarity.
And I think that's true,because when I look at
businesses and I'm evaluatingfranchises or stuff there's so
much time that I'm like, when Ijust look at their marketing
materials, I don't know whatthey do.
They're like we're the best, wesave time, we do this, we lower

(22:39):
your, raise your bottom line.
But I'm like, but what do youdo?
Because they're selling theirfranchise business.
But I'm like I see this name,but nothing in the logo tells me
what you do and nothing in thething.
I wish that they would take thetime to distill down the
essence and core of what they dointo one or two single

(23:00):
sentences.
And that is the very firstsentence they say, because that
is the context of all the otherstuff they're going to teach you
is based upon the clearstatement of what they do.
And the next one is how are youdifferent?

That is very important.
Even our product is namedcollect chat, so that means
collecting data via chat.
So that's how we name theproduct.
It is very.
You use the word clarity.
I'm going to use a word value.
It is important for customersto understand the value of using

(23:39):
your product or service.
The marketing copy that you'recreating should highlight the
value.
Why should people use collector chat?
Because it helps you collectdata on autopilot.
It saves you time and money, alot of time and money.
That simple statement hits onthe right code with the right

(24:01):
customer.
So that is something that youshould focus on whenever you're
pitching your product to anybodyyour customer, to your friends
or to investors, whatever youhave to focus on your marketing
copy and bring in a use valuebased statements.

What do you think?
Times are always changing.
We always have to stay on whatwe're doing but kind of adapt.
People are different, times aredifferent.
How do you guys stay relevant?

So we always look out for how the
market is changing.
What's the new, latest productout there?
For example, a couple of yearsback, Webflow was not in the
picture, but now everybody usesWebflow to create a website and
very recently, chat GPT hasbecome a storm.

(24:57):
Everybody is creating newproducts, trying to discover new
use cases.
Always keep an eye out, Alwayshave this mindset of being able
to learn.
Even if your product wassuccessful any year back doesn't
mean your product is going tobe successful today.
You need to be able to learn toadapt to new marketing

(25:21):
conditions.
So the reason I brought Webflowis you need it is important for
products like ours to make surewe have a presence in those
platforms.
To be able to tell the customerhey, you can use this product on
Webflow also or on WordPressalso.
So when something new comes up,embrace it, understand it,

(25:44):
research it and then figure outhow to penetrate it.

And one of the strategies I've seen people
that are really good way as astick strategy is for us to stay
in business.
A lot of things.
Collaboration is a very goodtool and I've seen companies do
things where they integratetogether.
I mean people understand thatwith software and web based
things, well, we'll just have anintegration between the

(26:12):
companies and so customers ofthis company will see that we
exist or it's easy to use us ifyou use them and vice versa.
But I mean that can happen withany businesses.
There could be a franchisecompany right now that could
integrate or have a strategicpartnership with somebody who
would be an ideal pairing of thebusinesses, which then just

(26:34):
gives them moreinterconnectedness and keeps
them as part of the conversationwithout spending money on
marketing.

Yes, collaboration.
You have to be very smart whenyou're collaborating.
You have to go, walk in theshoes of your customer.
Try to understand where thecustomer is getting their
information from.
Now, I'm not trying to talkabout using influencers, perhaps

(27:06):
if Starbucks Coffee wanted tocollaborate with to get more
customers.
People are riding the metro allthe time, which means having a
metro ad, or maybe in the metrotickets that are issued back
behind it.
If you give a Starbucks coupon,that would be a great

(27:29):
collaboration.
It's very pretty cheap.
You already have the ticketbeing issued.
You just need to have theStarbucks logo in the back.
So that's one great easy way tojust collaborate with brands
that you don't even think forthe first time, but a great easy
way to navigate through thecustomer's eyes, see where you

(27:52):
can make an impact, where youcan make yourself visible, and
then make such collaborationsand it will have an impact.
Excellent, I think it works.

Any other thing, aslam, that you think
that we should discuss today,that you'd like to share with
people?
Any thoughts or ideas, or justone last thing about collector
chat.

In collector chat, we say that
anybody can make a channel, andthat is true.
The product that we have is sosimple to use and so simple to
integrate with any website thatyou have running on any web
framework.
You can also share this chatbotas links, so this is one

(28:46):
feature that we also highlight.
Most people talk about thepre-sales aspect of the chatbot,
which is interact withpotential customers or visitors.
However, I'm talking right nowabout what to do after the
customer has used the product orservice the post operations.

(29:08):
Our chatbots can be shortenedand used as a link, which means
if you're sending out surveys inemail or SMS campaign, you can
include the chatbot in thisparticular message and there
also with very less frictionyou'll be able to collect data
from the customers, so that isone thing that you can use

(29:29):
collector chat for.
Just keep doing what I shouldshare.

Right?
No, I was thinking about thatbecause it's actually like, when
they click on the link, it goesto almost like a web page
dedicated to that chatbot andyou can ask, post sales
questions how did you like theproduct, how was the service,
you know, or how was it likeworking with a person that
helped you or anything like that.
It's a very simple way to passit.
It's not really just attachedto your specific website and

(29:57):
that is a great tool.
The link right here next to thevideo.
Go there, check it out.
Check out collectchat.
It's a great company.
It's simple product.
I mean, I really like how itrenders it in real time, because
you guys were smart enough tohit auto save and eliminate all
that stuff.
So in real time, every singlechange you make, you can see it

(30:20):
rendered on your screen.
So very cool, very easy,unlimited chatbots to collect
leads, customers, scheduleappointments and everything.
Thank you, aslam, I reallyappreciate it.

Yes, thank you Lambs, and we'll talk
soon, I hope.

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