Turning chats into leads: capture contact details and receive them by email or webhook

Many visitors who ask a question are not ready to buy on the spot. They want a quote, a call back, a viewing or an appointment. If nobody takes their details, that interest disappears the moment they close the tab. ZolAi turns those moments into leads your team can follow up.

How the agent captures a lead

When a visitor shows interest, for example by asking for a quote or wanting someone to contact them, the agent asks for their details naturally, one question at a time: their name first, then a phone number or an email address. No long form is thrown at them.

A lead is saved only when the visitor has actually given a phone number or an email. The agent never makes up contact details, and a person you cannot reach is not a lead. Along with the contact details, the lead records what the visitor needed, so your team knows what the conversation was about before they call.

Where leads go

Every lead appears on the Leads page of your dashboard. On top of that, each agent can deliver its leads automatically to two kinds of destination, set in the agent's settings under Lead delivery:

• Email: up to five addresses receive one message per lead, written in your workspace's language, with links to the lead and to its conversation.

• Webhook: one https address in your own system, such as a CRM or an automation tool, receives the lead as a signed request.

Each destination has its own on/off switch, and both stay off until you turn them on. Because destinations belong to the agent, a business with several sites or brands can send each agent's leads to a different team.

Webhooks, for your developer

If you connect a webhook, here is what your developer needs to know:

• Every request is signed: a signature header carries an HMAC-SHA256 of a timestamp and the request body, made with a secret that belongs to that webhook, so your system can check that the request really came from ZolAi and is not a replay.

• Every request carries a stable event id that stays the same across retries, so your system can drop duplicates.

• The address must be public and use https. Redirects are not followed, and each attempt has a 10-second limit.

• You can replace the secret at any time, and send a test lead to check your setup.

When delivery fails

Networks fail and servers go down. ZolAi retries temporary failures, such as a timeout or a busy server, up to five attempts over about ten minutes. A clear refusal, such as an address that rejects the request, is final at once. The Leads page shows each lead as Sent, Failed or Not sent, with the reason for a failure, and you can send a lead again in one click. Emails that already went out are not sent twice.

Delivery never slows the chat down. The visitor gets their reply first, and the lead is sent right after.

Working through your leads

On the Leads page, your team can follow up on every lead:

1. Search by name, email, phone or need, and filter by status, agent or delivery.

2. Move each lead through its status by hand: new, contacted, then won or lost. Nothing changes the status automatically.

3. Open the conversation behind a lead to see exactly what the visitor asked.

4. Export the leads that match your search and filters as a CSV file, up to 5,000 rows at a time, ready to open in Excel or Google Sheets.

Every step respects your team's permissions: who can see leads, who can change their status, who can delete them and who can export them are all set by role.

Leads when you reach your limit

Every plan includes a number of conversations a month. When you reach yours, you do not get a surprise bill and your site does not go silent: automatic replies pause, the agent asks visitors to leave their contact details, and conversations still reach your team's inbox. You can add a conversation pack at any time.

In short, every interested visitor leaves your team something to act on.