Hi everyone!
This week I tried to book a demo with G2 for one of my clients. Should have been a 30-second job. Instead, I got a small masterclass in how an AI agent at the front of your funnel can drain a warm lead's motivation in under 20 minutes.
And the kicker — G2 is probably one of the most aware companies on the planet about how SaaS funnels work. So when they mess this up, it's worth paying attention. Maybe there’s an internal reason for this thing, but I find it hard to believe.
I'll walk you through what happened and what I think the actual lesson is. Because the obvious takeaway ("don't gate your demos") is wrong. The real one is more interesting.
The Find
Quick context: G2 is the big software review marketplace — Yelp for B2B SaaS. Their actual customers are vendors paying to be listed and reviewed. So a "demo" for them is a sales conversation about getting your product onto their platform.
I land on the demo page and see this 👇
Two CTAs side by side. A form on the right. A chat in the middle with "Kara, AI" already greeting me. I picked the chat because it felt faster and more proactive. Honestly, my first reaction was oh, cool — I can request a demo right inside the chat. So I clicked "Request a Demo" inside the conversation.
I'm in. I gave her my work email. Then this 👇
Wait, what?
I just gave her my email to set up the meeting. So I pushed back: "can I book it here and now?"
Right. So Kara cannot book the demo. The same Kara who, three messages ago, said she'd be delighted to set up the meeting. Damn, I feel heartbroken!
Twenty minutes later, an email arrives 👇
I almost missed it. The subject line was "Demo Request Received," which I read as a transactional confirmation (the kind of email I auto-archive). It's actually the next step. I have to go submit my product before they'll book the demo.
Now, let me be fair to G2. The gating itself is defensible. They sell to vendors with listed products. Filtering for that early saves their sales team from wasted calls. Same logic as a card-upfront trial: heavier friction, better conversion per lead. For their model, it works.
The gate isn't the issue. The AI front-end performing as someone about to remove the gate is the issue. It hands you back to the same multi-step flow you'd have gotten from a plain form, with three more steps tacked on that nobody mentioned until you were already past step three.
Be honest, does your AI chat live up to its promises?
Why these mistakes make users ghost
Richard Oliver formalized expectation-disconfirmation theory in 1980. People don't judge an experience by absolute quality, they judge it by the gap between what they expected and what they got. Miss the expectation, even slightly, and the negative feeling is much sharper than the equivalent positive would have been on the upside.
So the same multi-step flow can feel fine or feel insulting depending on what was promised at step one.
A plain form that says "we'll email you within 48 hours" sets a low expectation. When the email arrives in 20 minutes, you're pleasantly surprised.
Kara saying "I'd be delighted to help you book a demo" sets the expectation at "I'm about to get a calendar link." The same email then lands as a downgrade, proof nothing actually happened.
The AI persona makes the violation worse. Put a name, a photo, and a job title on a chat, Kara, and users transfer person-grade trust onto it. If Kara says she'll book a meeting, Kara will book a meeting. A plain form makes no such promise, so nothing breaks my heart.
Then let’s nerd about motivation. Motivation rises as a goal feels closer and falls fast when it recedes. G2's flow makes the demo feel imminent, then quietly moves it three steps further away. Each invisible step costs more motivation than the last, because each one is a fresh disconfirmation of what Kara promised at the top.
If I weren't doing this for a client, that's where the lead dies.
The Playbook
When to keep it in mind:
Anyone running an AI chat in front of a sales-led or hybrid funnel. The hotter the lead at the start of the chat, the bigger the cost of any promise the AI makes that the system can't keep.
How to use it:
1. Start with a promise audit
List every action verb your AI is allowed to use — "book," "set up," "schedule," "connect you with." For each one: can the system actually do this in the next 30 seconds? If not, the verb is wrong. "I'd be delighted to help you book a demo" fails the test when the bot can't book and won't even hand off until you submit a product. The honest version: "I can start your demo request — there are two steps before we book."
2. Then collapse the channels (if you can)
G2 split this flow across a chat and an email — combine them. Have Kara say it once: "Demos are reserved for vendors with a listed product. Want me to send you the submission link, then we'll book once your listing is live?" Take the email if you need the lead saved, but drop the next-step link inline, in the chat, while the user is still engaged. Again, unless you have a very solid internal reason to do otherwise.
3. If you have to send an email, make me notice it
"Demo Request Received" reads as a confirmation. If it's actually the next action, name it: "Submit your product to book your G2 demo" or even “Next step to launch on G2” would be better. Otherwise users archive it without opening, like I almost did.
Here are three high-level sketches of how the redesigned chat could look, depending on what G2's backend can support and what their product actually need👇
When it backfires:
If your AI front-end can't actually move the user closer to the goal, adding it doesn't save anyone time. It makes users walk the same journey twice: once in the chat, once in whatever flow they get routed to.
If you forget everything, remember this:
An AI agent only saves anyone time when it actually closes the gap, not when it just pretends.
🎉 Woow, you finished the issue, that’s awesome!
Hi, I’m Anastasia Kudrow, and I write Ghosted.
I am also a product growth consultant. I help SaaS teams apply psychology and PLG to build growth they can actually control. I run my own project, Growing Pains, and also work with one of the leading PLG consulting agencies, ProductLed, led by Wes Bush.
Feel free to follow me on LinkedIn:
Or check out my website, maybe we can work together: https://www.growingpains.consulting/
See you next week!