In an ideal world, each of your prospective donors would be able to donate to your cause while fully understanding your mission and not needing any technical support during the donation process. Alas, people are human, and unfortunately, this isn’t the reality.

Research shows that an estimated 60% of your prospective donors will visit your site and leave before completing a transaction. When a prospective donor leaves your webpage, we have no clear understanding of why they didn’t finish their transaction. Did they not understand your nonprofit’s mission? Did they have technical difficulties during the transaction? How do we make sure these leads don’t fall through the cracks?

One answer, we believe, is chatbots. Chatbots have been taking the online world by storm. Consumers have quickly grown accustomed to having a direct line with brands to schedule appointments, ask questions, and seek support at a more human and conversational level. And while this is something that’s become almost commonplace in the retail world, we see that chatbots have the ability to make an immense impact on the nonprofit world.

We activated our chatbot functionality during a recent fundraising campaign, and the results we found were fascinating. The chatbot was powered by a small team of off-site representatives, with one of our support staff monitoring all the incoming conversations for an hour a day. Our team of representatives answered most questions, but any question that required more advanced support was passed along to our support staff.

We quickly found a solid correlation between people who received support from the chatbot and those who donated—a large percentage of people who used the chatbots donated shortly after as a result. From the most basic questions about tax receipts and credit card processing to more advanced technical questions, we found that these donors would have given up and left the site had they not received this prompt support.

Additionally, we could better understand how our donors are thinking and adjust our donation flow and advertising strategy accordingly through their support requests. During a tree-planting campaign, we quickly learned that our donors cared about the details and process of tree planting. Something that we otherwise wouldn’t have known. Within days, we revamped our site to include information on the types and location of the tree planting. Multiple supporters reached out asking for a document certifying that they ‘planted’ a tree in Israel. Within days, we were sending every person that ‘planted’ a tree a custom personalized certificate.

Chatbots allow you to open up a direct line into the minds of your customers, allowing you to quickly fine-tune your advertising strategy, better inform your donors, and prevent valuable leads from falling through the cracks.

To learn more about Chatbots, please contact us here