The AI sales chatbot that converts the traffic you already have
Your pricing page gets visitors with one unanswered question standing between them and a signup. HelpShelf answers it — with citations to your real docs — then captures the lead while the answer is still landing. Answers that sell, on the traffic you already paid for.
What is an AI sales chatbot?
An AI sales chatbot answers presale questions from visitors already on your website — pricing, integrations, comparisons — using your real product content, and captures a lead when the conversation shows buying intent. It converts existing traffic into pipeline; it does not prospect, cold-email, or book outbound meetings.
Not an SDR bot — this converts inbound
A quick disambiguation, because the market uses "AI sales agent" for a different product: tools that generate outbound — prospect lists, cold email sequences, meeting booking. If that is what you need, this page will not help you.
HelpShelf works the other side of the funnel: the visitors already on your site, who have questions and will leave without asking them anywhere you can see. Answering those questions well — verifiably well — is the cheapest pipeline you will ever add, because the traffic is already paid for.
AI SDR tools (outbound)
- Find prospects and write cold emails
- Book meetings from outbound sequences
- Work email lists, not your website
- Measured on meetings booked
HelpShelf (inbound)
- Answers visitors already on your site
- Engages proactively on pricing pages
- Offers follow-up after confident answers
- Measured on questions answered and leads from existing traffic
How it turns questions into pipeline
Four moves, in the order your visitor experiences them.
Answers the buying question, with proof
Does it integrate with X? What happens after the trial? How is this different from Y? The agent answers from your real docs with citations attached — and AI-drafted content is excluded from sales answers entirely, so a prospect never gets a generated guess about your pricing.
Optional proactive prompt
On pricing and other high-intent pages, a proactive teaser opens the door — a small, dismissable nudge, not a takeover. The agent pins sales mode on those pages, so it reads questions as buying questions and answers accordingly.
Offers follow-up after the answer
The ask comes after a confident, cited answer. The visitor reviews the follow-up and submits a valid email before HelpShelf records a lead with bounded context. No gate sits in front of the answer.
Reports what buyers actually ask
Sales Pulse shows visitor-submitted leads, buying questions (including the ones your site answers badly), and measured AI-surface activity from MCP and Ask-with-my-AI events.
Why citations close better than confidence
Buyers arrive skeptical of chatbots, and presale is precisely where a wrong answer costs the most — overpromise a feature and you have manufactured a churn-in-30-days customer, or a refund. That is why HelpShelf's guardrails are strictest in sales mode: answers come only from retrieved passages of your content, every confident answer shows its sources, and AI-drafted articles are excluded from sales answers entirely.
The result reads differently in the moment that matters. "Yes, it integrates with Stripe — here is the doc" lands as a claim the buyer can check before paying. Only after that value is delivered can HelpShelf offer follow-up; a lead is recorded if the visitor then submits a valid email, never merely because the agent inferred buying intent.
Your next lead might be an AI
A growing share of buying research never touches your site directly — prospects ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity to compare tools and shortlist options. If those assistants cannot read your product, they improvise from stale training data or skip you.
Every HelpShelf site ships the fix: an llms.txt map for AI crawlers and a per-site MCP server that lets assistants query your docs, get cited answers, and even hand a conversation to your team. Sales Pulse then shows you the AI-shopper traffic — so "are AI agents recommending us?" becomes a metric, not a mystery. More on that surface at /for/ai-agents.
Keep exploring
AI customer support agent
The same agent on support duty — the full guide to how it works.
AI knowledge base
Where sales answers come from: hybrid search, trust tiers, citations.
AI help desk
The support side: cited widget answers, clear stops, and visitor-confirmed Telegram handoff.
Sales features
Sales mode, the proactive teaser, lead capture, and Sales Pulse in detail.
Best AI agents compared
Nine vendors compared honestly across four pricing models.
Pricing
Free plan, then fixed monthly allowances for AI searches and AI chats.
Frequently asked questions
An AI sales chatbot answers presale questions from visitors already on your website using product content. HelpShelf can offer follow-up after a supported sales answer; a lead is recorded only after the visitor submits a valid email. It does not find prospects or send outbound email.
AI SDR tools are outbound: they prospect lists, write cold emails, and book meetings. HelpShelf is inbound: it works with visitors already on your website, gives supported answers with citations, and can offer an email follow-up the visitor chooses to submit. It does not automate cold outreach.
Sequencing. The visitor asks, the agent gives a supported answer with citations, and only then can offer follow-up. HelpShelf validates the email and records a lead only after the visitor submits the form; the answer is never gated by that form.
Sales mode verifies material claims against retrieved passages from published content; confident answers carry citations, and AI-drafted articles are excluded. If an answer is unsupported, HelpShelf says so. A widget handoff can be offered only when tested Telegram is reachable and is sent only after visitor confirmation.
Sales Pulse reports sales conversations, visitor-submitted leads with bounded context, buying questions, and measured AI-surface activity such as MCP or Ask-with-my-AI events. It does not claim to identify every outside assistant researching your product.
Yes. The agent classifies intent per conversation — a how-do-I question gets support mode, a what-does-it-cost question gets sales mode, and page rules pin sales mode on pricing and marketing pages. One widget, one knowledge base, both jobs; support answers carry citations just the same.
HelpShelf starts free with no credit card, including 500 AI searches and 100 AI chats each month. Pro is $49/month for 10,000 searches and 2,000 chats; Scale is $149/month for 100,000 searches and 20,000 chats. There is no per-seat pricing and no separate lead-capture meter.