AI Sales Agent Tips to Enhance CX and Convert Faster

Wondering how an AI sales agent can help boost your business? AI sales agents are more than just a trend, with more than half of businesses exploring the use of AI agents and 37% actively using them. It’s important to remember that not all AI sales agents are created equal. We’ll show you the benefits, pitfalls to avoid, how to choose the best one to meet your needs, and how to use them to increase sales and create great customer experiences.

What is an AI Sales Agent?

AI sales agents are often equated with chatbots, but they can do so much more. An AI sales agent can automate lead qualification, schedule meetings, answer FAQ, share product information, and manage complex routing and assignment tasks. It saves hours of routine effort so human agents have time to focus on the conversations that require a human touch.

These can be stand-alone software products or built in to a conversation management platform like respond.io. A conversation management platform powered by AI is the best choice for businesses who handle most of their customer conversations via instant messaging.

4 Benefits of Using an AI Sales Agent

An AI sales agent incorporated in a conversation management platform streamlines the entire sales process, enabling your business to convert leads to customers faster and provide prompt support to retain them. Here are five benefits to expect from an AI sales agent solution.

• No more missed opportunities due to slow replies- respond instantly to inquiries on any channel.

• Give human agents time to focus on quality leads - an AI agent can automate routine tasks like qualifying leads, identifying spam, routing customers to the right agent and scheduling meetings, so sales agents can focus on the ones who are ready to buy.

• Increase revenue by converting faster - with a faster sales process, you’ll close deals faster and boost your bottom line.

• Scale your business efficiently - an AI agent and automation helps you scale fast without needing to hire additional team members

Now that you know the benefits, it’s important to consider the type of customer experience you’re providing. While AI agents can handle many tasks, leaving everything to AI can have negative consequences. Determine how to balance AI and the human touch and choose a solution that gives you the flexibility to do that.

Good vs Poor AI Sales Agent Experiences

Some businesses may be reluctant to use an AI sales agent because, let’s face it, we’ve all had a bad experience with AI as a customer. You know the frustration of going through endless loops with a bot who can’t give you a straight answer, doesn’t understand your question and won’t let you chat with a human, so you wouldn’t want to put your customers through this.

For example, we tested out an experience with Wati’s AI agent, which does not provide any option to route to a human. First of all, it took us in a confusing loop asking whether we had an account. The correct answer was apparently “no,” as trial accounts don’t count. Then, it provided a list of topics that were not relevant to the query. Finally, it said it would take us to “chat support.” But this “support” was in fact, yet another AI agent, who lacked the knowledge to answer the question and concluded the conversation with no option to speak to anyone.

To be fair, we were having this conversation for experimental purposes, but a genuine potential customer facing this experience would be turned off and may not return.

On the other hand, a well-trained AI agent can actually improve the customer experience by providing faster answers to common inquiries and prioritizing access to a human agent for more urgent or high-value requests.

One of our customers uses respond.io’s AI Agent to collect information about tuition course interests. It passes on the data gathered to a human agent who can then easily match the customer with a tutor. That means a customer gets an instant response when they start a chat, expectations for speaking to a human are managed, and there’s no need for them to repeat information to the sales agent.

Here’s a recap of what a good and poor AI sales agent experience looks like.

Poor Experience	Good Experience
Takes customers in circles	Leads the customer on a journey
Limited answer options	Flexibility in responses
Limited knowledge	Full company and product knowledge
No option to speak to a human agent	Provides option to speak to a human agent

How do you choose and implement an AI agent that’s capable of providing a good experience to leads and customers? Here’s what you need to know.

What to Look for in an AI Sales Agent Platform

If you’re considering an AI sales agent to help manage leads and customers over instant messaging, these are the most important features to think about.

Learns from Company Knowledge Sources

Remember that any AI agent needs to be trained; to be most effective, it should learn from your own company knowledge sources. An AI agent relying on general information from the internet will not give your customers accurate answers.

Some platforms, like Sleekflow, only allow businesses to upload PDF documents. While this provides basic information and may be enough for an AI agent to answer FAQ, it’s still limiting. Choose a platform that enables an AI agent to crawl your entire website and help center, ensuring it has full, up-to-date knowledge of your business.

Allows AI to Fully Handle Conversations

While some conversations still require a human touch, others can be fully handled by AI. Select an AI agent that has this capability, essentially giving you a 24/7 sales and support team. Now this doesn’t mean AI should replace your sales and support agents. Even the best trained AI occasionally falls short when it comes to complex problems.

What AI can do well is answer routine questions and manage expectations when humans aren’t around. It can also identify whether a lead is genuine prospect or spam. For simple purchases, AI may even be able to close a sale, guiding a customer through the payment process.

Escalates to a Human Agent When Needed

For high value purchases or more complex issues, it’s important to make a human agent accessible. Select a platform that offers a seamless handover process from AI agent to human agent. For example, in respond.io, this is built into our AI Agent Builder or as an option in automation Workflows. Businesses have flexibility to decide when a conversation should be handed over.

Track Record of Success

Nearly every platform claims to have some form of AI capability, but that doesn’t mean it functions properly. Choose a platform that’s mature and has proven success for businesses like yours. Respond.io has been in the business for eight years and we’re continuously improving the platform to meet the needs of our customers. Our customers have a high satisfaction rate with AI Agent, with 91.5% of those who try it out continuing to use it.

How to Use an AI Sales Agent Throughout the Funnel

An AI sales agent can be used in any stage of your sales funnel, from responding to initial inquiries from leads, to qualifying them, to making a sale, to retaining customers with quick support.

Provide Instant Replies

When someone contacts your business, they expect a reply right away. If they don’t get it, they’ll likely go to a competitor. But keeping up with large number of inquiries on multiple channels is a challenge for human sales teams. An AI agent can provide a quick greeting, gather information and manage expectations for leads.

“Handling high volumes of conversations can be challenging for businesses, and they don’t want to sacrifice service quality. This is where conversational AI adds value by providing prompt, high-quality responses at a much larger scale and lower cost,” said Gerardo Salandra, the co-founder and CEO of respond.io, also chairman of The Artificial Intelligence Society of Hong Kong.

Streamline Lead Qualification

Businesses who are running click to chat ads often struggle to qualify leads manually when a large number of responses are coming in. An AI agent can ask qualifying questions and then take a desired action. Qualified leads may be guided by AI to make a simple purchase or assigned to an appropriate salesperson if needed.

Here’s an example of how to qualify leads based on budget using respond.io. Respond.io provides customizable workflow templates for common goals, so it’s easy to set up.

Answer Frequently Asked Questions

Another task that takes up hours of sales agents’ time is answering FAQ. An AI agent can easily answer common questions based on its knowledge of your business. Unlike an FAQ menu, AI allows flexibility for answering specific questions. As long as the information is in your knowledge base, the AI agent should be able to answer.

Manage Booking and Payment Processes

For some bookings and purchases, you can automate the entire conversation. With respond.io, use automated Workflows to send scheduling or payment links. When a payment or booking is made, a human agent will then be notified.

Here’s an example of how to use respond.io to allow leads to automatically schedule an appointment:

Route to a Human Agent to Close Deals or Handle Complex Issues

However, depending on the type of business, customers may need to speak to a human before making a decision. For high-value products or more personalized services like beauty treatments or educational courses, a human salesperson will need to step in. The AI agent can seamlessly hand off the conversation to an available agent.

Here’s an example of how one of respond.io’s Workflow templates enables you to route conversations to a human agent.

Examples of AI Sales Agents in Action

Now that you know how to use an AI sales agent with a conversation management platform like respond.io, let’s look at some examples of an AI sales agent in action.

Respond.io Qualifies Leads with AI Agent

We use our own AI agent for support when a human agent is unavailable. However, our support contact button is also sometimes the first point of contact for leads. When an unknown contact comes in, it can be difficult to know if it’s someone with a genuine inquiry or if it’s spam. Responding to spam inquiries wastes agents’ time, while ignoring unrecognized contacts may lead to missed opportunities.

Customer Support Lead Nabila Hishamuddin explains, “We tried using respond.io’s AI Agent as the first point of contact for certain types of conversations; for example, if the person didn’t provide their email address when asked or if they were a first-time contact who didn’t make it clear what they wanted.”

As expected, the majority of conversations were indeed spam or irrelevant, but an astounding 41% of conversations that would have dropped off and gone unanswered were from real people with real questions.

The AI Agent successfully handled 54% of these high-value conversations and passed 8.9% of them on to a human agent when asked. While AI isn’t perfect, it’s a valuable tool for providing fast answers while allowing salespeople time to prioritize clearly qualified leads.

GETUTOR Closes Deals Faster with an AI Sales Agent to Collect Information

One of our customers, GETUTOR, an educational consultancy in Hong Kong, needed an AI-powered solution to streamline message management over WhatsApp. First, the business subscribed to Sleekflow but was disappointed. GETUTOR CEO Jedi Hui says, “I initially had high expectations about Sleekflow’s AI features, but their performance didn’t align with our needs.” So he turned to respond.io for an AI tool that delivered as promised.

With respond.io’s Workflows automation, GETUTOR implemented an AI Agent to manage initial inquiries and gather student information and preferences. Then, the AI agent compiles the information and automatically assigns the lead to an available human agent. Since implementing this method, the number of leads the business handles per day has increased by 50%.

Choose Respond AI as Your AI Sales Agent

If you’ve decided your business needs an AI sales agent, respond.io offers a proven solution to manage chats on any channel with AI. Choose respond.io so you can:

• Answer FAQ with information from all company knowledge sources

• Create a unique AI persona tailored to your brand voice and business needs

• Qualify leads by collecting lead details

• Promptly route leads and customers to the right agent

• Automate bookings and payments

If you’re ready to get started, sign up for a free trial or contact us for a consultation today.

Frequently Asked Questions About AI Sales Agents

Who uses AI sales agents?

Businesses from all industries are using AI sales agents. Businesses doing marketing, sales and support over instant messaging benefit from using a conversation management platform like respond.io to create an AI sales agent and manage conversations on every channel throughout the entire customer journey.

What’s the difference between AI sales agents and chatbots?

Chatbots respond to chats while AI sales agents manage the entire sales process. For example, a chatbot can answer inquiries and collect information. An AI sales agent can perform complex routing processes, integrate with a CRM and complete bookings and payments.

What sales tasks can AI agents automate?

AI agents can automate the entire sales process for simpler purchases from replying to the first contact, answering product inquiries and sending payment links. For purchases that require the customer to speak to a human agent, the AI agent can route the conversation to the most appropriate agent or to the soonest available agent, depending on business needs.

What’s the ROI of implementing AI sales agents?

While the ROI of implementing AI sales agents will vary for every business, when implemented correctly, we’ve seen 77% faster conversation resolutions. That means customers are moving down the funnel faster, which translates into higher revenue. For a monthly subscription fee of just $159, your business could potentially double total sales.

Can AI sales agents replace human salespeople?

While an AI sales agent can handle the entire sales process in some cases, we don’t recommend using AI to completely replace human salespeople as this creates a poor customer experience. Certain situations require a human touch, so it’s best to have an option to speak to a human as a fall back to avoid customer frustration.

How do AI sales agents integrate with existing CRM systems?

AI sales agents can be programmed to send data to an existing CRM. With respond.io, AI sales agent exists as a step in a Workflow. In a Workflow, you can add another step to add customer information to a CRM using Zapier or Make.

How much do AI sales agents cost?

The price for AI sales agents varies depending on the solution you choose. Respond.io’s all-in-one conversation management platform includes an AI agent in the Growth plan subscription and above, while other platforms like Trengo only provide limited AI credits and then charge additional usage fees.

Can AI sales agents be trusted?

An AI agent is only as good as the knowledge that’s been given to it. That’s why it’s important to choose a solution that learns from your entire company website and documentation and has been built from years of experience and thoroughly tested. AI agents that are not thoughtfully developed and only allow limited knowledge sources cannot be trusted.

And of course, even the best AI makes occasional mistakes, so we recommend monitoring your AI agent and providing a route to a human agent.

What makes respond.io’s AI sales agent different from others?

Respond.io was built for conversations that move customers through the funnel, and our AI sales agent takes the entire customer experience into account. More than just a chatbot, Respond AI integrates seamlessly into your workflows to filter conversations and route them intelligently. It’s designed with flexibility in mind so it can be customized to your business. Other solutions follow a more rigid chatbot model which can lead to frustration and disrupt business processes if a conversation doesn’t go exactly to plan.

Further Reading

If you’ve found this article helpful, check out our other content on how AI can benefit your business.

• Conversational AI for Sales: Close Deals in the AI Era

• Respond AI: A Gateway to Conversational Excellence

• Conversational AI Platform: Securing Success with AI Chat