How can I capture leads from WooCommerce chat even when my team is offline?

When your store’s live chat goes silent at night, Chatref’s website-widget keeps the conversation going. The widget embeds directly into your WooCommerce site. An AI agent, grounded in your own product data, greets every visitor and answers their questions immediately – no waiting for a human.

As the conversation progresses, the agent uses lead-capture to ask for a name, email, or phone number at the right moment. Those after-hours leads are stored alongside the full chat transcript, so your team never misses a warm opportunity. You wake up to a list of interested shoppers instead of a long queue of unanswered chats.

All of this happens automatically, with no manual configuration of when to trigger the capture. The AI reads the conversation’s intent and knows when a lead is worth collecting.

Capturing a contact is only the first step. Chatref’s ai-agents go further. You can design custom questions the chatbot will ask every lead – budget range, timeline, specific use case, or decision-maker status. The agent works through those questions naturally inside the chat, just like a sales rep would, and tags each lead with the responses.

This is automated customer qualification that runs while your sales team is offline. The outcomes are organised in your conversation inbox: high-intent leads are clearly marked, tire-kickers are filtered out, and every field you need is populated before a human even looks at it.

If you need deeper integration, custom-actions can score leads against your own criteria, send the data to a CRM, or trigger a Slack notification the moment a qualified lead appears. That way your team knows exactly which chats to prioritise when they come online.

An after-hours conversation doesn’t have to end with “We’ll get back to you tomorrow.” With custom-actions, your Chatref agent can access your calendar booking link and schedule a demo while the visitor is still engaged. The agent checks availability, proposes a time, and confirms the meeting – all without a human touching the process.

This turns chatbot lead generation into a closed loop. A visitor lands on your product page, asks a question about bulk pricing, the agent qualifies them, and books a call. The same flow works for booking consultations, trials, or simple callback requests. For WooCommerce merchants, that means WooCommerce sales automation that converts interest into a scheduled next step, even at 2 a.m.

No complex integrations required – just point the custom action at your scheduling tool (Calendly, Google Calendar, or your own endpoint) and let the agent handle the rest.

Do customers still ask for demos after hours?
Yes. Browse volume for many WooCommerce stores peaks outside of business hours. A chatbot that can discuss product details, answer pre-sales questions, and offer a demo right then converts that late-night traffic instead of losing it.

How do I qualify leads when my sales team is asleep?
Chatref’s AI agent asks the same qualifying questions your team would – budget, timeline, role, need – and tags the lead automatically. You can set up custom actions to score leads or push high-priority ones to your CRM so your team sees them the moment they start their day.

Can a chatbot book meetings for my WooCommerce store?
Absolutely. Using custom-actions, you can connect your calendar link to the agent. It will check your availability and let the visitor pick a time, confirm the booking, and send a calendar invite – all during the chat, no human needed.

What happens to chat leads when no one is online?
All captured lead data – contact info, chat transcript, qualification answers, and any scheduled meetings – is saved in your Chatref conversation inbox. When your team logs in, they see a clear list of leads to follow up on, already enriched and prioritised. Nothing gets lost.