Carli: AI-Powered Lead Qualification Chatbot

Cartelligent's sales advisors were spending significant time on initial discovery calls with prospects who often weren't qualified or ready to buy. The company needed a way to capture lead information, qualify prospects based on geography and vehicle preferences, and route high-intent buyers to advisors faster—all while providing a better experience than filling out a generic contact form. I built Carli, a conversational chatbot that guides users through a natural qualification flow. The bot collects essential information (name, location, vehicle preferences, timeline, budget range, trade-in details) while providing value along the way—like surfacing relevant vehicle suggestions based on their stated preferences. The conversation adapts based on responses: California residents follow the standard flow, while out-of-state users are offered a waitlist; users open to Certified Pre-Owned vehicles see different options than new-only buyers. The technical implementation uses React with a custom conversation engine, Supabase for lead storage, and a real-time sync to Salesforce via Edge Functions with database triggers. When a qualified lead completes the chatbot flow, they appear in Salesforce within seconds, complete with all conversation data, lead score, UTM attribution, and qualification status. PostHog tracking captures every step of the conversation funnel—from session start through email/phone capture to completion—enabling detailed analysis of where users drop off and which question sequences produce the highest-quality leads. The results challenged our assumptions. We expected chatbot "friction" (answering 10+ questions vs. filling a 5-field form) would hurt conversion. Instead, over 20% of visitors became a sales lead and converted to customers at 14.8% compared to 5.6% for form users from the same paid traffic. The early qualification path—where high-intent users can choose "Talk Now" and skip the full conversation—converted at 15.4%. The data suggests the qualification process actually filters for serious buyers rather than scaring them off, and provides advisors with richer context for more productive first calls.