Capture and qualify leads from website chat

A contact form gives you whatever the visitor guessed you needed. A chat gives you a short conversation first, in which the visitor's questions got answered and yours did too.

Why a chat lead is different from a form lead

By the time a chat visitor sends a request, they have usually asked about service area, timing or what's included, and they have read your answers. That makes the lead warmer than a cold form. It also creates a risk: what the visitor said early in the chat and what they finally confirm can differ. A good lead-capture flow treats the confirmed request as the truth and the chat as background. For the wider trade-offs, see Chatbot vs. contact form.

Clarifying questions: asking only what's missing

When a visitor asks for a quote, a call back or a follow-up, the assistant may ask up to three short questions before offering the form, one per reply. The questions are limited to what is still unknown and useful to you:

• which product or service they need;
• when they need it;
• any specific requirements.

It doesn't ask about something the visitor already said, and it stops if the visitor would rather not answer. Someone who writes "I need three office chairs reupholstered before the end of the month" has already given the service and the timing, so the only question left is about requirements, such as fabric or whether they can drop the chairs off.

The assistant never collects contact details in the chat itself. That is the form's job, with the visitor's permission.

The inquiry form: consent and one contact method

The form opens inside the chat, with the details from the conversation already filled in where possible: product or service, timing, requirements and what the visitor would like you to do next. The visitor can change any of them. To send, the form needs:

• an email address or a phone number (at least one);
• a ticked consent box: "I agree that [your business] may contact me about this request."

The visitor then sees a review screen and presses Confirm and send. Pressing it twice doesn't create two inquiries, because each submission is recorded only once.

What your team receives: confirmed details, edited fields flagged, chat context

The notification email and the record in your inquiry inbox are both built from the request the visitor confirmed, not from the AI's reading of the chat. Two details make this reliable:

• Edited fields are listed. If the visitor changed a detail the assistant had filled in, the email says which field was changed by hand.
• The chat summary is labeled as context only. Your team can read it for background, but the confirmed fields win.

An example of why this matters: the chat talks about a two-day job, then the visitor changes the timing field to "one day, Saturday only" before sending. Your estimator sees "one day, Saturday only", marked as edited, and isn't misled by the earlier chat.

Follow-up requests from visitors

Not every visitor wants a quote. Some just want a person to get in touch. The form has a box for that, "I'd like someone from the team to follow up", and those requests are counted separately from regular inquiries in your monthly report. On Premium, your team can also step into the chat live; see Human handoff and live takeover.

When to stop qualifying

Qualification should save your team a phone call, not test the visitor's patience. Some practical rules for your knowledge:

• Name the two or three facts that change your answer the most, and nothing else.
• Write your hard limits plainly, for example service area or minimum job size, so the assistant can say "we don't cover that area" before a visitor fills in a form.
• If the visitor is ready to send, let them. The assistant offers the form as soon as enough is known.

Measuring lead quality

Every request carries a status (New, In progress, Completed), and private notes let your team record what happened. Export the inbox to CSV once a month and add your own outcome column, such as won, lost or not a fit, to see which services and pages bring useful leads. The monthly performance report adds the number of conversations, inquiries and follow-up requests, plus the questions the assistant couldn't answer. More ideas are in How to measure chatbot results.

Questions and answers

Does the assistant ask for a phone number in the chat?

No. Contact details are collected only in the request form, where the visitor ticks a consent box and chooses whether to give an email address, a phone number or both.

Can a visitor send a request without an email address?

Yes, a phone number is enough. In that case no confirmation email is sent, and the chat shows the reference number for the visitor to keep.

Can I change which questions the assistant asks?

Yes. Describe in the knowledge what you need to know for each service. On Standard, the Allinaa team makes up to 2 hours a month of knowledge updates and response improvements for you.

Is this the same as the Allinaa lead generation service?

No. This page covers leads from your own website chat. The lead generation service is outbound outreach to new prospects and is priced separately.