Short answer: Write chat prompts the way you would speak to someone standing in your doorway. Be specific about what you can help with, offer two or three concrete options rather than an open invitation, and ask for contact details only after you have given something useful. Generic friendliness converts worse than specific usefulness.
Every chat widget ships with a default greeting, and almost every business leaves it in place. "Hi there! How can I help you today?" It is polite, harmless, and it does almost nothing, because it asks the visitor to do all the work of figuring out what you are for.
Say what you can actually help with
The greeting is not a pleasantry, it is a menu. Its job is to tell the visitor, in one line, that asking here will get them somewhere.
Compare:
"Hi! How can I help?"
"Hi. I can check if we cover your postcode, give you rough pricing, or book a survey."
The second one converts better for an obvious reason: it removes the guessing. Visitors hesitate because they do not know whether their question is the kind of question this box handles. Naming three specific things answers that instantly, and the third option quietly signals that booking is possible at all.
Match the greeting to the page
A single greeting across your whole site wastes the best signal you have. Someone on the pricing page has a different question from someone on the about page.
- Pricing page: "Want a rough figure for your job? Tell me what you need and roughly where you are."
- Service page: "Questions about how this works, or want to check availability?"
- Contact page: "Faster than the form. What do you need?"
- Blog post: "Reading about X? Happy to answer anything specific to your situation."
That last one is underrated. Blog readers rarely fill in forms, but they will often ask a question when the invitation matches what they were just reading.
Give people something to tap
Open text boxes are intimidating in a way that is easy to underestimate. The visitor has to compose a sentence, worry about being clear, and commit. Two or three tappable options remove all of that.
Good quick replies are specific and short: "Do you cover my area?", "How much roughly?", "Are you free this week?". Bad ones are categories: "Sales", "Support", "Other". The first set describes real questions. The second asks the visitor to file themselves.
Keep it to three. Four starts to look like a phone menu, and phone menus have a well-earned reputation.
Answer before you ask
The single biggest conversion factor in a chat is the order of exchange. If the first thing your widget does is request an email address, you have built a form that types slowly.
Give first. Answer the question, or answer part of it, and then ask. "Most jobs like that land between X and Y depending on access. Want me to get someone to give you an exact figure? I just need a number to call." That works because the ask arrives attached to a benefit, and the benefit was already demonstrated.
This is the same reciprocity argument that runs through chatbot vs contact form. A form asks before it gives. A conversation can do it the right way round.
Write the capture ask like a person
Compare these:
"Please provide your contact information to proceed."
"What is the best number to get you on? I will have someone call this afternoon."
The second names the benefit, sets a time, and asks for one thing. The first sounds like a terms and conditions page. Every capture prompt should pass three tests: it asks for one item, it says what happens next, and you would not be embarrassed to say it out loud.
Clerkzo lets you capture leads conversationally like this, or switch to an in-chat form with your own custom fields when the visitor has clearly decided and just wants to hand details over. Both land in the same leads inbox with the same pipeline behind them.
Set the tone deliberately
The tone of your prompts should match the rest of your business. A funeral director and a trampoline park should not share a greeting. Some practical guidance:
- Drop the exclamation marks. One is fine. Three make the widget sound anxious.
- No emoji unless your brand already uses them everywhere.
- Contractions, always. "We will" reads stiffly next to "we'll".
- Short sentences. Chat is read fast and often on a phone.
- Never apologise for existing. "Sorry to bother you" invites dismissal.
Write the failure messages too
Most people write the greeting and stop. The messages that matter more are the ones that appear when things go wrong, because that is where visitors give up.
When the assistant does not know something, it should say so plainly and offer the next step, rather than producing a confident guess. Clerkzo's guardrails are built around declining rather than improvising, with a human handoff path when the visitor needs a person. Write that handoff line yourself: "I do not want to guess at that. Want me to have someone call you back?" is a far better outcome than a plausible wrong answer.
Also write the after-hours line. Honesty converts: "Nobody is in until eight tomorrow, but leave me a number and you will be first on the list." Visitors forgive closed. They do not forgive being misled about it.
Iterate on real transcripts
You will not write the right prompts first time. Nobody does. The improvement loop is simple: read actual conversations weekly, find the point where visitors drop out, and rewrite that specific message.
Clerkzo has a playground for testing changes before they go live, and a corrections loop so when the assistant gets something wrong you can fix the underlying answer rather than patching the wording. Between those two, editing prompts stops being a guessing game.
Look for three patterns in transcripts. Questions the assistant could not answer, which are content gaps. Points where visitors stop replying, which are wording problems. And questions asked repeatedly, which probably belong on the page itself.
Frequently asked questions
Should the widget open automatically?
A short proactive prompt after real dwell time is reasonable, particularly on pricing pages. Opening instantly on arrival annoys people and reads as a popup.
How long should the greeting be?
One or two lines. If it needs a scroll, it is a landing page, not a greeting.
Do quick replies limit the conversation?
No, as long as free text still works. They are a starting point, not a cage.
How often should I revise prompts?
Monthly at first, then quarterly. Revise when transcripts show a pattern, not when you get bored of the wording. More context in how to capture more leads from your website.