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Get Started with Knock Chat: Turn Buyer Intent Into Continues Conversations

Get Started with Knock Chat: Turn Buyer Intent Into Continues Conversations

Get Started with Knock Chat: Turn Buyer Intent Into Continues Conversations

Most buyers do not build relationships with companies through forms and follow-up emails anymore. They discover you on LinkedIn, ChatGPT, Claude, events, communities, your website, product experiences, and other digital touchpoints. When they are interested, they expect to be able to talk to you immediately.

Knock Chat turns any of those moments of intent into a direct, ongoing relationship. Your company can become accessible from anywhere, let buyers message you through their preferred messaging app, and use Knock Intent Agents to handle conversations at scale, bringing in a human when the relationship requires one.

A buyer can start a conversation through the messaging app they already use, while your team responds from its Slack workspace. Knock identifies and enriches the buyer, understands their intent, qualifies them, applies your routing rules, and keeps the relationship moving without forcing them through a traditional lead capture flow.

The model behind Knock Chat is simple: start the relationship first, then use AI, data, and routing to determine how much human attention it needs.

Why use Knock Chat?

Traditional inbound flows usually add steps between buyer intent and a real conversation:

Intent → Form → Lead → Enrichment → Routing → Follow-up → Qualification → Conversation

Every additional step creates another opportunity for the buyer to leave, ignore the follow-up, or lose momentum.

Knock AI changes the flow:

Intent → Conversation → Qualification → Right experience

The conversation starts immediately. Knock can identify the buyer, add contact enrichment and company enrichment, understand what they need, qualify them before or during the conversation, and determine whether an AI agent or human rep should handle the next step.

Those decisions can use your advanced Chat Routing configuration, first-party intent signals, CRM information, buyer attributes, attribution, and existing relationship context.

If an existing lead or account already has an owner in your CRM, you can also route the chat to the CRM Owner to preserve relationship continuity.

This means you can make your company accessible to more buyers without sending every conversation directly to Sales.

Where can you use Knock Chat?

A Knock Link is a shareable URL that starts a conversation with your company from any touchpoint. You can create different Knock Links for different campaigns, pages, audiences, and buyer journeys.

Use Knock Chat anywhere a buyer may show interest, including:

  • Website: Replace or complement forms and Contact Sales buttons with a direct conversation.
  • Pricing and high-intent pages: Let buyers ask questions while their intent is active.
  • Paid campaigns: Turn an ad click into a conversation instead of another landing page and form.
  • LinkedIn: Give people a way to start the conversation with you instead of waiting for a connection request or outbound message.
  • Content: Add Knock Links to reports, guides, webinars, newsletters, and other content.
  • Events: Use links or QR codes to let attendees immediately connect with your team.
  • Product: Give customers and prospects a direct path from relevant in-product moments.
  • Partner and review sites: Let buyers move directly from third-party discovery into a conversation.
  • Email and rep signatures: Give recipients a conversational way to reach your team instead of starting another email thread.

Each Knock Link can use the routing rules and buyer experience that fit that specific entry point. Read Create and Add a Knock Link to learn how to configure and publish them.

Knock also captures attribution data so you can connect conversations back to the channels, sources, campaigns, and touchpoints that generated them.

Which messaging apps can buyers use?

You can let buyers choose the messaging app that fits how they already communicate.

Knock currently supports:

The buyer stays in their preferred messaging app. Your reps continue working from your company's Slack workspace.

This means a LinkedIn buyer can continue on LinkedIn, a WhatsApp buyer can continue on WhatsApp, and your team does not need to manage conversations across multiple messaging tools.

What happens after a buyer starts a conversation?

Knock manages what happens between the first message and the right next step.

Depending on your configuration, Knock can:

  1. Identify the buyer. Knock connects available identity, contact, company, CRM, and behavioral context. Learn more about Contact Enrichment and Company Enrichment.
  2. Understand their intent. Knock uses the conversation and available intent signals to understand why the person is reaching out.
  3. Qualify the relationship. Use enrichment data, CRM information, intent signals, and questions asked during the conversation. Learn how to qualify leads before the chat starts.
  4. Apply your routing rules. Configure advanced Chat Routing based on segments, enrichment, CRM data, intent, attribution, and other buyer information.
  5. Use existing CRM ownership when relevant. Route chats to the CRM Owner when an existing contact or account should continue with the rep who already owns the relationship.
  6. Let an Intent Agent engage first. Configure Knock Intent Agents to answer questions, engage buyers, qualify conversations, and determine when a human should join.
  7. Control what your AI agents can answer. Use approved AI Agent sources to define what agents can answer, override specific answers, and send questions to humans when required.
  8. Bring in the right rep. Knock can route conversations to AI Agents or human reps based on the conversation and your routing configuration.
  9. Notify your team in Slack. Use a Monitoring Slack Channel to follow conversations in real time, organize visibility by intent or use case, and let team members join when needed.
  10. Keep the buyer in their preferred messaging app. The buyer continues through Slack, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, or Telegram while your reps work from Slack.
  11. Preserve the conversation context. When a human joins, they enter the existing conversation instead of asking the buyer to restart the process.
  12. Move qualified buyers to a meeting when needed. Knock Scheduling can identify the buyer, apply meeting routing, show the relevant rep's availability, create the meeting, notify the rep, and sync meeting data to your CRM.

The buyer gets one continuous conversation. Your team gets qualification, routing, context, and control behind it.

Connect Knock Chat to your CRM

Connecting your CRM gives Knock additional context for qualification, routing, ownership, and reporting.

Use the relevant integration guide to connect your CRM:

Knock uses conservative CRM sync defaults. You control which leads are created and which Knock data is written back to your CRM.

Use CRM Field Mapping to choose which enrichment, attribution, intent, chat, meeting, and Knock impact fields should sync to your CRM.

You can also use Knock data in your CRM workflows to power reporting, segmentation, lead prioritization, and downstream automation.

What will you set up in this guide?

By the end of this onboarding guide, you will have:

Once these foundations are in place, start with a few high-intent touchpoints and expand Knock Chat across the rest of your buyer journey.

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