Capture Leads (Name, Email, Phone) Inside Alee Chat

A chatbot that only answers questions is half a tool. The other half is collecting who you were talking to, so a real conversation can happen after they close the tab. Alee can ask a visitor for their name, email and phone right inside the chat, store every lead against the bot, and push it straight to your CRM, a Google Sheet or your inbox. This guide covers turning lead capture on, controlling exactly when the form fires, choosing required versus optional fields, adding qualifying questions, and a short GDPR note for India and the EU.

What lead capture actually does

When lead capture is on, Alee shows a small in-chat form (or asks conversationally) for contact details. The visitor fills it without leaving the chat window, the answer is saved as a lead on that bot, and it appears in your analytics with the conversation attached. Your lead-rate, the per-bot lead count, and the activity-over-time chart all update from these captures.

Two things make this more than a contact form:

• It is tied to the conversation. You see what the person asked before and after they handed over details, so a bare "Rahul, +91…" becomes "Rahul, asking about the weekend batch fee."
• It can fire delivery. A captured lead can be pushed in real time to a CRM, Google Sheets or email through a webhook, and automated further with n8n — it does not just sit in a dashboard.

Turn on lead capture

1. Open the bot you want to edit and find its lead capture (or "collect contact details") setting. It lives with the bot's behaviour and customization options, near where you set the welcome message and starter questions.
2. Switch lead capture on for this bot. Settings are per bot, so a support bot and a sales bot on the same account can behave differently.
3. Choose which fields to ask for — name, email, phone — and mark each as required or optional (covered below).
4. Write the short prompt the bot uses to ask, for example "Before we continue, can I grab your name and email so the team can follow up?" Keep it one line and say why you are asking.
5. Save. Open the live widget and run through it once as a visitor to see the form in context.

That is the minimum. The settings below are where lead capture goes from "works" to "actually fills your pipeline with people worth calling."

When the form fires (timing)

Timing is the single biggest lever on lead quality. Ask too early and you interrupt someone who just wanted a price; ask too late and they have already left. Alee gives you a few common trigger points — pick the one that matches the bot's job:

• After the first reply. The visitor asks one question, gets a grounded answer, and is then asked for details. Good when almost every visitor is a potential lead (a coaching enquiry bot, a gym).
• After a few messages. The bot waits until the person is clearly engaged before asking. Higher quality, slightly lower volume. Good for considered purchases or B2B.
• On intent. The form fires when the conversation signals buying intent — pricing, booking, "how do I sign up," "do you ship to my city." This catches warm leads and leaves casual browsers alone.
• At conversation end / on the booking step. Ask only when someone wants to book a call or get a quote, and pair it with a booking link.

A practical default for an India-heavy audience: ask after the first useful answer, with phone required and email optional. WhatsApp-era visitors give a phone number far more readily than an email, so leading with phone often lifts your capture rate.

You usually only want to ask once per conversation. Once a visitor has given details, Alee should not keep re-prompting in the same session — check that "ask only once" behaviour is on so you do not annoy people who already converted.

Required vs optional fields

For each field you collect, decide whether the visitor must fill it to continue or may skip it.

• Required blocks the conversation until the field is filled. Use it sparingly — every required field lowers completion. One required field (usually email or phone) is the sweet spot for most bots.
• Optional asks but lets the visitor skip. Use it for the "nice to have" — a phone number when email is your real channel, or a name when you already have enough to follow up.

Field-by-field guidance:

• Name — keep optional in most cases. It personalises follow-up but is rarely the reason a deal happens. A missing name costs you nothing; a blocked visitor costs you the lead.
• Email — the safe required field for newsletters, SaaS trials and agencies. Universally accepted and easy to validate.
• Phone — the strong required field for local, high-intent businesses (gyms, clinics, real estate, coaching) where you will call or WhatsApp. For an Indian audience, phone often out-converts email. Allow the country code (+91) and don't over-validate formatting, or you will reject valid numbers.

Rule of thumb: one required field, the rest optional. You can always ask for more later; you cannot un-annoy someone who bounced off a five-field form.

Add qualifying questions

Contact details tell you who. Qualifying questions tell you whether they are worth your time — for one extra line in the chat. Alee lets you ask a short extra question (or two) as part of the capture step. Use them to route and prioritise:

• "What are you looking for help with?"
• "Which city / pin code are you in?" (handy when you only serve some areas)
• "What's your budget range?" or "Which plan are you considering?"
• "When do you want to start?" (now / this month / just exploring)

Keep it to one or two questions. Each extra question trades a little completion for a lot of context. The answers are stored with the lead, so a rep opening it sees "Pune, weekend batch, wants to start this month" instead of a bare phone number. Recurring qualifying answers are also a useful signal for which FAQs to improve in your question-triage inbox.

You can also shape how the bot asks using the bot persona / system prompt — for instance, asking the qualifying question naturally in conversation rather than as a rigid form.

Where leads go: storage and delivery

Every captured lead is saved on the bot and visible in analytics — that is automatic. To get leads into your workflow, set up delivery:

1. In the bot's lead or integration settings, add a webhook URL — this is the endpoint Alee calls the moment a lead is captured.
2. Point it wherever you work: a CRM's inbound webhook, a Google Sheet (via a connector or an n8n / Make scenario), or an email/notification endpoint so you get pinged on every new lead.
3. For richer automation — tag the lead, add it to a sequence, send a WhatsApp message — send the webhook into n8n and branch from there.
4. Save and submit one test lead from the live widget. Confirm the row lands in your sheet or CRM, including any qualifying-question answers, before you rely on it.

You can also share a booking link in the same flow, so a qualified visitor books a call immediately rather than waiting for your follow-up.

Worked example: a gym enquiry bot

A gym trains Alee on its website, timings and pricing. Lead capture is set to fire on intent — when someone asks about fees, trials or timings. The bot asks: "Want our team to call you back with trial details? Drop your name and number." Phone is required, name is optional, and one qualifying question — "Which branch are you near?" — is added. A webhook pushes each lead into a Google Sheet and pings the front-desk WhatsApp via n8n. Result: the desk sees "Anjali, 98xxxxxxxx, Koramangala branch, asked about morning batch" and calls back the same hour.

A note on GDPR and consent

If you collect personal data, be straight about it. A few habits keep you clean under GDPR (EU/UK) and India's DPDP Act:

• Say why you're asking in the prompt: "so our team can follow up about your enquiry." No dark patterns.
• Get consent where it's required. For EU/UK visitors, add a short consent line and a link to your privacy policy at the capture step — word it in the capture prompt or bot persona. For marketing follow-up, make consent explicit.
• Collect the minimum. Don't ask for a phone number if email is all you'll use. Fewer fields is better consent practice and better conversion.
• Honour deletion and access requests. Leads are stored against the bot and exportable, so you can find and remove a person's data on request.

Alee gives you the controls; the legal basis (consent, your privacy policy, your retention) is yours to set. When in doubt, ask for less and be clearer about why.

Frequently asked questions

Can I make lead capture optional so visitors can still chat?

Yes. Mark fields as optional, or set the form to fire only on intent or at the booking step, so casual visitors can ask questions freely and only engaged ones are asked for details. Blocking everyone behind a required form usually lowers both answers and leads.

Do captured leads sync to my CRM automatically?

They do once you add a webhook in the bot's lead settings — Alee calls it the instant a lead is captured, so it lands in your CRM, a Google Sheet or your inbox in real time. Route it through n8n for tagging, sequences or WhatsApp. See more guides for integration walk-throughs.

Is lead capture available on the Free plan?

Lead capture works across plans; the Free plan includes one bot and 200 messages a month, which is enough to test the full flow end to end. Paid pricing lifts message and bot limits as your volume grows. Compare capabilities on Alee vs SiteGPT.

Ready to turn conversations into contacts? [Start free](/signup) and switch on lead capture in your first Alee bot today.