At Tars, we are building the future of lead generation software. Our approach involves building a user interface that makes the lead capture process as engaging as possible for prospects to complete. Part of this means recognising that not all leads look the same. Most of our customers for example, capture emails and follow-up with more information at a later date. Others capture phone numbers. A unique form of lead capture, which a strong minority of Tars users capture however, is the all-important appointment booking.

To make the lead capture process easier for these marketers and their prospects we have built a new form of input UI: Calendar UI.

What is the Calendar UI?

The calendar UI allows bot creators to ask for a date and time at the same time:

Previously, creators would have had to ask for each individually, using a date scroller and a time scroller:

Why is this important?

As with most of our updates, the answer boils down to one simple answer: Conversion Rates.

Giving marketers the ability to book meetings and appointments within the lead capture process reduces the steps it takes to get onto an actual call with a prospect. Without this as an option, marketers would have to schedule an appointment via email, which adds another step in the customer acquisition process and increases the chances that leads will go cold. In a similar vein, capturing an appointment using two separate date and time questions is not the way prospects think about the appointment scheduling process. Date and time are often thought of as being inseparable from one another. In human conversations for example, you would say something like “I’m free on Thursday at 5.” Asking for each element of this time slot separately feels unnatural, and increases the chances of a prospect dropping.

How can you add Calendar UI to your Chatbots?

Check out this awesome help doc we created to find out more: http://help.hellotars.com/make/new-calendar-time-input-ui

Arnav Patel

Arnav is the Director of Content Marketing at Tars. He spends most days building bots, writing about conversational design and scrolling through Giphy’s trending section looking for the gifs that go into the Tars Newsletter.