A visitor lands on your event page. They ask your chatbot about parking options, get a helpful answer, and leave. You never find out who they were.
Another visitor asks about dietary accommodations for your workshop. Your bot answers perfectly. They close the tab. Gone.
A third visitor spends four minutes chatting about your services, asks three detailed questions about pricing and availability, and then... disappears into the internet void.
This happens hundreds of times a day across millions of websites. Helpful chatbots answering questions, providing value, and then watching visitors walk away without a trace.
The chatbot did its job. But your business missed the opportunity.
Here's what most business owners don't realize about their chatbot: every conversation is a signal of intent. Someone who asks about your catering menu is thinking about hiring a caterer. Someone who asks about your workshop schedule is considering signing up. Someone who asks about pricing is already past the "just browsing" phase.
These aren't random clicks. These are potential customers actively researching you.
Traditional websites try to capture this intent with forms. "Subscribe to our newsletter." "Request a quote." "Fill out this contact form." We all know how that goes—most people ignore them. Form completion rates hover around 3-5% for most businesses. That means 95% of interested visitors leave without you ever knowing they existed.
But here's what's different about a chatbot conversation: the visitor already demonstrated they trust your content enough to engage. They typed a question. They read the answer. They're in a conversational mindset, not a "fill out bureaucratic paperwork" mindset.
That's the gap. And that's exactly what intake questions are designed to fill.
Imagine this: after a visitor has chatted with your bot and gotten useful answers, the bot says something like:
"Before you go, can I ask you a few quick questions?"
No popup. No form. Just a natural continuation of the conversation they're already having.
If they say "Sure," the bot asks your custom questions one at a time—right in the chat. Their name. Their email. Their dietary preferences. Whatever you've configured. Each question can be skipped. Nothing is forced.
When they're done, the bot asks: "Would you like me to send your details to [your name]?"
If they say yes, you get an instant notification with everything they shared. If they wander off without answering, you still get notified after an hour with whatever they did provide.
That's not a form. That's a conversation. And conversations convert better than forms.
There's a reason every sales trainer teaches "ask questions" as the first rule of selling. Questions create engagement. They make the other person feel heard. And critically, they lower the psychological barrier to sharing information.
When someone fills out a form, they're making a conscious decision: "I am now submitting my personal information to this business." That triggers all the usual resistance—spam fears, commitment anxiety, the mental effort of switching from "reading mode" to "form-filling mode."
When someone answers a question in a chat, they're just continuing a conversation. The context is already established. The trust is already built. The information flows naturally.
This isn't theory. Conversational interfaces consistently outperform traditional forms:
The key is timing. You don't interrupt someone with questions the moment they arrive. You wait until they've gotten value, and then you ask naturally.
Here's how it works in Boty:
Step 1: Open your bot settings and find "Intake Questions." Toggle it on.
Step 2: Add your questions. Click "Add Question" and type whatever you want to know. Or use the suggested quick-add buttons for the basics: name, email, phone.
You can add up to 10 questions. Drag them to reorder. Each one is free-text—your visitors answer in their own words, not from a dropdown.
Step 3: Set your completion message. This is what the visitor sees after they confirm sharing their info. Something like "Thank you! We'll get back to you within 24 hours" works great. Customize it to match your voice.
That's it. Your bot now collects leads automatically.
What you don't need to do:
The questions appear in your bot's chat as natural conversation. Your visitors won't even realize they're filling out a form.
Not every visitor will complete the intake flow. Some will answer a few questions and then get distracted. Others will answer everything but not click "confirm." That's fine—you still want those partial leads.
Boty has two notification triggers:
1. Instant notification (visitor confirms) When a visitor answers your questions and clicks "Yes, send my details," you get an email immediately. If you have WhatsApp configured, you get a WhatsApp message too. The notification includes every answer they provided plus a link to the full conversation.
2. Timeout notification (visitor leaves) If someone answers at least one question but leaves without confirming, Boty waits one hour and then sends you everything they did share. The notification is clearly marked as "auto-collected" so you know the context.
Why one hour? Because people get distracted. Their phone rings. Their kid needs something. They meant to come back but forgot. An hour gives them time to return while ensuring you don't lose the lead entirely.
Every response is tracked in your bot's Leads section. You'll see:
No leads lost. No manual tracking needed.
This depends entirely on your business, but here are patterns that work well:
For service businesses (plumbers, landscapers, caterers):
For events and workshops:
For consultants and coaches:
For real estate:
Notice the pattern: start with low-commitment questions (name), then ask for contact info, then ask qualifying questions. People are more likely to share their email after they've already told you their name—that's the commitment escalation principle at work.
Let's say your bot gets 100 conversations per month. With no lead capture, you know nothing about any of those visitors.
With intake questions and a conservative 15% completion rate:
If your average customer is worth $500, and you convert just 20% of those leads, that's $1,500 in monthly revenue from a feature that took two minutes to set up.
The visitors were already there. The conversations were already happening. You just weren't asking.
Your chatbot is already doing the hard part—answering questions and building trust. Intake questions just add the step that turns anonymous conversations into real business opportunities.
Go to your bot settings, enable intake questions, add 3-4 questions that matter to your business, and let your bot do the rest.
The next visitor who chats with your bot won't just get an answer. They'll become a lead.