How do you qualify high numbers of leads in the most cost-efficient and time-saving manner? Growing businesses must find a way to answer this question in order to capture as many qualified leads as they can. Lead management is integral for successful businesses, and smart businesses make sure that their time and resources are utilized in the most efficient and effective manner.
With traditional lead scoring systems, such as web-behavior-driven lead scoring and outbound sales representatives, qualified leads fall through the cracks all the time. According to a study by DemandGen, 60% of businesses found their lead nurturing to be subpar and ineffective. Growing businesses, if they want to continue capturing and nurturing leads effectively, must evolve from the conventional ways of qualifying leads.
Knowing that long-established lead scoring systems are archaic and not scalable, many AI-driven conversational marketing platforms have been developed to help your business create a superior lead qualification process. These platforms help your business qualify leads, nurture conversations with leads, and schedule meetings with interested customers at scale. Your marketing and sales teams can utilize the extra time and energy to focus on high impact activities.
Today we’ll be comparing the capabilities of the two industry leaders of AI sales assistants – Exceed.ai and Conversica. Understanding what these tools can do for your business will allow you to determine which of these platforms will assist your teams and their needs most effectively.
Attributes
Exceed.ai and Conversica both incorporate an AI-powered email assistant that is constantly learning and refining its performance via machine learning. Both utilize natural language processing, allowing the AI to improve over time and take over the preliminary steps of lead qualification on their own. They can respond and engage with every lead at scale, ensuring that no leads will fall through the cracks due to human error.
In this Marketing Profs survey, companies that utilized AI found their lead conversions improving by 52%, and reported an increase of 59% sales closing rates.
Communication Through Chatbot and SMS
Exceed.ai and Conversica both offer website chatbots and SMS capabilities. However, Exceed.ai’s product provided many functionalities that Conversica did not have. Conversica’s chatbot and SMS were limited in functionality, only able to engage with consumers through traditional button options or preset text to guide prospects to take specific, desired actions. Currently, it does not have the ability to respond creatively and can only operate within its known sequences.
Exceed.ai’s chatbot was found to have far more capabilities than its competitor. It could engage, qualify, and schedule meetings, giving more time to sales and marketing teams that previously had to handle these tasks. A prospect could converse with these chatbots, ask questions, and receive appropriate and informative responses in real-time – all without feeling as if they were being pushed to take a desired action. While this is happening, Exceed collects responses from leads and looks for data to determine qualification. The chatbot will guide the lead or prospect through a seamless transition, transferring them to a sales rep when conditions for lead qualification have been met.
Who Handles Meetings and Handoffs Better?
Closing rates are important for sales teams, which means the AI assistant you choose should be able to seamlessly transition leads to your sales team. While Conversica offers the possibility of scheduling meetings and handing off through third-party integration, Exceed.ai offers built-in scheduling tools. Having built-in scheduling tools means your sales team doesn’t have to worry about learning how to navigate new (and sometimes clunky) third-party tools or risk disruptions in the sales cycle. From the lead’s perspective, they’ll experience a smooth transition from chatbot to human sales rep without a bump on the road.
Customization and Personalization with Email
Many businesses have realized that their customers want more than just product and service offerings – they want to receive personalized emails that cater to them and display what is most relevant to them. A recent study showed that sending personalized emails were 6x more likely to drive conversion. Having the flexibility of customizing emails can be important if your business is servicing consumers who desire personalization.
That being said, not all businesses find the need to customize their emails. Some like to stick to standard email templates, and don’t see the necessity of customization. For these businesses, Conversica may be sufficient for them – they do not have fully-customizable email copy, persona-based conversations, and lead qualification for their emails. This service caters for businesses who do not require such functionalities.
However, if your business is looking for a service that allows you to fully customize email copy, qualify leads through questions, custom playbooks, and seamless integration with chatbot, Exceed.ai is the better option for you. Exceed also has a unique capability that allows you to create follow-ups for out-of-office responses and leads who may be interested in further conversations later down the line. Exceed.ai’s email services will allow you to add in personal touches that create deeper relationships with individual leads.
Final Remarks
Exceed and Conversica are two AI sales assistants that provide services for different kinds of businesses. If you work with leads that do not take much consideration and nurturing, favor simple personalization and customization, and do not care about cross-channel qualification and conversations, Conversica’s email capabilities may be right for you. If your business is looking for a fully customizable solution that gives you personalization options, built-in auto-scheduling, intelligent chatbot with seamless handoff to sales reps, and many more powerful functionalities, Exceed.ai is the right platform for you.
Take a look at customer reviews about Exceed.ai on G2!
