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CONVERSATION TRENDS REPORT

Drift customers talk a lot. Here’s what we learned about the B2B buyer by
analyzing the 30M+ conversations that happened in Drift this year.
   

KEY FINDINGS

B2B buyers are grateful for digital conversations
B2B buyers have high expectations about the online buying experience
B2B buyers come to your website with a purpose



   Download report

   

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WHAT A YEAR IT’S BEEN FOR CONVERSATIONS! 

In the past year, the commercialization of artificial intelligence (AI)
transformed the way site visitors interact with brands online. Simultaneously,
buyer expectations for personalization skyrocketed, and, when it came to
converting site visitors into buyers, the need for speed prevailed. Needless to
say, 2023 was the year for redefining what Conversational Marketing means to
buyers — and what it should look like for businesses in the future.

But we’re not here to tell you these things anecdotally. We’ve got the data to
prove it. To discover how B2B buyers interacted with businesses in 2023, we
looked into the over 30 million conversations that took place within all
instances of Drift — both our customers’ and our own — during the past year. And
what we found confirmed what many businesses have begun to suspect:

Today, B2B buyers expect individualized website experiences, and your company’s
ability to deliver on that expectation is what will make or break the sale.


WHAT BETTER WAY TO GET TO KNOW B2B BUYERS THAN BY TALKING TO THEM DIRECTLY?

While we didn’t personally hold 30 million conversations this year, we did run
our Conversational AI base model across every single Drift conversation. This
base model comes trained on two billion B2B conversations out of the box, which
helps it understand the most common topics users bring up in chat. By running
the base model across all the conversations, our AI was able to categorize each
conversation into one of the base model topics. From this data, our product team
was able to look at the most common topics brought up in conversations and
compare that to data from 2022.

We also tapped our business operations team to look at what types of playbooks
converted the best, what time of day was most popular for conversations, and
which pages saw the most chat activity during 2023.

 




B2B BUYERS ARE GRATEFUL FOR DIGITAL CONVERSATIONS

From 2022 to 2023, the number of times buyers expressed gratitude through chat
nearly doubled. This included things like site visitors saying “Thank you” and
“I appreciate it.”




AND THEY EXPRESSED THIS GRATITUDE ALL DAY LONG…

After analyzing all of the conversations within Drift’s East Coast customer
base, we found that, while the majority of conversations still take place
between 9 AM and 5 PM EST, an additional 39% of all conversations happened
outside of normal business hours.

Not to mention that, of these East Coast conversations, 41% of all meetings
booked through Drift happened outside of 9 to 5.

Stat Highlight


39%

of all conversations happened outside of normal business hours.


41%

of all meetings booked through Drift happened outside of 9 to 5.




ON ANY PAGE THEY WISHED...

Conversations took place on nearly every website page in 2023, and while site
visitors were most likely to convert on a high-intent page like the pricing page
or a demo page, still 59% of all sourced opportunities came from other URLs.




IN WHICHEVER LANGUAGE THEY PREFERRED.

Both the number of requests to change languages during a bot conversation and
attempts to speak to the bot in a different language doubled over the past year.

Stat Highlight


2X

Attempts to speak to the bot in a different language doubled over the past year.



Note: Drift’s bots currently support 29 different languages. See the full list
here.

 




B2B BUYERS HAVE HIGH EXPECTATIONS ABOUT THE ONLINE BUYING EXPERIENCE

In 2023, the amount of customer feedback submitted through Drift increased 2.5x.
But buyers won’t wait around to tell you their thoughts…

We found that live agents who responded within 2 minutes of a site visitor
engaging with a chatbot saw the highest chance of booking a meeting.

Agents who waited 5 minutes to respond increased the risk of site visitors
leaving by 10x.

Agents who waited 10 minutes to respond increased that risk by 100x.




AND THEY’LL USE THE COMMUNICATION METHOD THAT IS MOST CONVENIENT FOR THEM…

During a bot conversation, when given the option to click a pre-programmed
button response or type in their own response, site visitors were nearly split
down the middle. In conversations where both options were presented, 53% of site
visitors chose a button response while 47% chose the open-text option.

Stat Highlight


53%

of site visitors chose a button response


47%

chose the open-text option




THOUGH IDEALLY, THEY WANT TO TALK TO A HUMAN.

From 2022 to 2023, the number of requests to speak to a human increased 2.5x.

Stat Highlight


2.5X

increase in the number of requests to speak to a human from 2022 to 2023

 




B2B BUYERS COME TO YOUR WEBSITE WITH A PURPOSE...

In 2023, the number of people who “just tested bots” decreased by 4x when
compared to 2022. At the same time, the number of people who submitted support,
billing, meeting, demo, or pricing questions through the bot doubled across
every category.




AND THEY EXPECT YOU TO UNDERSTAND THEIR PURPOSE…

Site visitors who sent a high-intent message within their bot conversation
proved 5x more likely to convert into an opportunity than those who sent
low-intent messages.



2023 Top 3 High-Intent Messages

 * Demo request
 * Can you email me?
 * We’re currently using a competitor.

2023 Top 3 Low-Intent Messages

 * Support request (from an existing customer)
 * Just browsing.
 * General support request





And when Drift customers created playbooks that acknowledged this intent, the
conversions continued to increase. In 2023, high-intent playbooks booked 2x the
amount of meetings and sourced 3x more opportunities than all other playbooks.

Stat Highlight


5X

Site visitors who sent a high-intent message within their bot conversation
proved 5x more likely to convert.

Note: For the purpose of this research, a high-intent playbook refers to a
pricing page playbook, a second net playbook, or a skip the form playbook. You
can learn more about the different types of Drift playbooks in our
Conversational Marketing Blueprint.




AND MAKE IT EASY FOR THEM TO ACHIEVE IT.

Fastlane is a Drift feature built to streamline the booking meeting process.
When a site visitor fills out a form on a website, Fastlane pops up to allow
that site visitor to either chat immediately with a rep or book a time for
later.

When presented with Fastlane as an option, 26-41% of all form fillers chose to
interact with it.

Stat Highlight


26-41%

When presented with Fastlane as an option, 26-41% of all form fillers chose to
interact with it.




NOT ALL INTENT SIGNALS ARE CREATED EQUAL

So, cater your website experience accordingly.

B2B buyers come to your website with a specific goal in mind, and they expect
you to make it easy for them to achieve it. When you deliver on this
expectation, they’re more likely to spend more time with your brand.

The easiest way to understand your buyer’s intent is by leveraging AI-powered
intent tools like Drift Engage. Drift Engage scores your site visitors’ intent
in real time and uses it to automatically trigger the most relevant playbook —
even to those site visitors who are 100% anonymous. In doing so, Drift Engage
helps you make sure that you’re giving each site visitor the most relevant
experience, so they can get to their goals faster.

Watch our webinar to find out how Drift Engage can work for businesses just like
yours.


FINAL THOUGHTS

Not too long ago, companies were often left in the dark when it came to knowing
what their buyers expected from them. But, thanks to AI, there’s no longer a
need to guess.

After analyzing every Drift conversation from the past year, it’s clear that B2B
buyers crave digital buying experiences that get them what they need, when they
need it. Buyers also want to be heard, and they want to see their feedback
incorporated into the buying process.

These are some pretty high expectations — expectations that can only be met with
the help of AI. Because only by leveraging AI to listen to your buyers’ needs
and streamline your buying process will you be able to deliver the
individualized website experiences that your buyers expect, without burning out
your team.

The data is clear: The future of Conversational Marketing is inspired by humans
and powered by AI.



To help you dive into the future of Conversational Marketing, we went a step
further in our research by taking a look into the highest-performing Drift
playbooks of 2023 and finding out what made them tick. You can access those best
practices here.


WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER

Ready to deliver on your buyers’ expectations now and into the future? Learn how
Drift can help you stay at the top of your game.

Download report Get a Demo
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