Phil Risher says chatbots on home-service websites backfire because visitors just want to know price and availability. A chat widget traps them on the page. Better to capture their number with a text widget, then continue the conversation off-site where AI can help without the friction.
What we found with AI chatbots, you go to e-commerce website, it's okay. Like as consumers, we'll converse with it and try to solve our problem. Usually with home service businesses, there's a couple questions that they want to know. How much is it going to cost and when can you do it? And okay, it's nice to be able to have a chatbot answer their questions. I prefer to have it as a text chat widget. So basically they fill out their information and then it texts them and starts a text conversation and then have some automations or AI on the back end of that to support the conversation because no one's going to sit on the site and communicate with AI. They're going to get frustrated and leave. I'd rather capture the lead. And then automate some type of responses with chat or AI. So that's my two cents. There are companies out there that build these AI knowledge bases in chat. I just feel like it's a hindrance on capturing leads, and that's why I don't like to do it.
