Lead capture
Turn on lead capture and visitors can leave their contact details without ever leaving the conversation.
How it works for the visitor
Lead capture is offered, not forced. Nobody is blocked from chatting until they hand over an email.
When it is enabled, the visitor sees two ways in:
- A Leave Details chip alongside the quick prompts
- A Leave details button in the chat header, available at any point in the conversation
Either opens a short form inside the widget. They fill it in, submit, and go straight back to chatting. The form does not reappear once they have submitted it.
Enabling it
In Chatbot Settings, turn on lead capture and choose which fields to ask for:
| Field | Default |
|---|---|
| Name | On |
| On | |
| Phone | Off |
Ask for less than you think you need. Every extra field costs you completions. Email alone is usually enough to follow up; name and email is the standard choice. Add phone only if someone will genuinely call.
Where leads go
Captured details are attached to the conversation they came from and appear in your dashboard's leads view for that chatbot.
That attachment is the valuable part. You do not just get an email address — you get the email address plus the full conversation that produced it. You can see what they asked, what the bot answered, and where they got stuck, before you reply.
You can delete individual leads from the dashboard.
Getting more leads
Give them a reason. A visitor who has just had a useful answer is far more likely to leave details than one who has just arrived. The chip sits next to the quick prompts precisely so it is available at that moment.
Say what happens next in your welcome message or quick prompts. "Leave your email and we'll send the full price list" converts better than a bare form.
Watch the handoff path. Somebody asking to speak to a human is your warmest lead of the day. See Human handoff.
Read the conversations. The live inbox shows conversations where the visitor was clearly interested but did not submit anything. That gap is usually a prompt problem, not a form problem.
Your responsibilities
You are collecting personal data from visitors on your own website. Standard obligations apply and SiteMesh does not discharge them for you:
- Say what you will do with the details, and do only that
- Make sure your privacy policy covers chat-collected contact data
- Honour deletion requests — you can delete any lead from the dashboard
- Do not add submitted emails to a marketing list unless they agreed to that specifically
Depending on where your visitors are, GDPR or similar rules may apply. If you are unsure, ask someone who advises you on data protection.
See also Security and privacy.