Customer service and marketing are two of the most important aspects to running a successful online business. When you have one without the other, your customers will not be completely satisfied. But with an efficient chatbot in place, customer service can happen 24/7 without your employees having to be on call, round the clock and because bots are non-human mind fields, they can often answer simple questions more accurately than any human customer service representative!
Chatbots have evolved in recent years and are no longer just gimmicky chat windows on your website. They have become powerful marketing tools - like a cross between concierge services and keyword search engines. Customers had to get in touch with a customer service representative, often after a considerable waiting period, to find information, but now you can simply type a few key words or phrases into your computer and the conversation will lead you to the required information.
How do chatbots work?
A chatbot works in a couple of simple steps: You engage the digital assistant (AI-powered) by either chatting with it directly or sending it a message. It responds, then collects information needed to help solve the question or fulfill what you are asking. It processes that information and sends it back to you in the form of an answer or action. Having a chatbot is like having an IT support team that knows how to handle any computer problem that you may encounter but can also help you out with much more.
Why do businesses need a chatbot?
Everyone has questions that need quick answers and if they could just ask a chatbot, that would be great. Therefore, chatbots can be useful for the following reasons:
1) Customer support and answering simple questions such as location, hours, cash back, or even to make reservations (if you know which chatbot service that runs your restaurants reservation API ). Online chatbots listen for keywords inside the messages. This allows them to perform complex tasks such as: understanding the contents of tickets, purchase history and loyalty , and product information.
2) Getting feedback based on buying habits. Allowing for users to either chat with a bot or Facebook Messenger and other sites that have a pre- built chat interface, users will be able to score businesses on things such as customer service.
3) The metrics that count is the number of chats and how long each contact takes to capture through chat. You can only gain from these metrics if you track them anyway. Chatbots can empower customer relations giving your business a competitive advantage .
4) People like chatbots better than calls from customer care and the return on customer relation investment using chatbots can be higher than call centers.
5) 24/7 availability of a chatbot is beneficial for a brand. In some instances, it might not always be possible or necessary but a business that is open to the public will have a hidden strength in them - especially if you're trying to develop an online community.
6) Chatbots, artificial intelligence can capture data points that would normally be missed for some businesses who are focusing on developing apps.
For example, when a person on your chatbot asks certain questions or comments on a certain item, those insights can help you learn from your customers real time and improve your product accordingly. Also consider that a customer may ask something that may help your business to think of a new feature, and if it's feasible based on customer interest - you can immediately ship it out without waiting for formal surveys etc.
7) Chatbots are a great channel for customer interaction which will be critical in this new era of AI. Since chatbots are improving their ability to understand human language, they will capture data that most people don't provide , associate every conversation with actions on that account, and show correlations in behaviors. For example, if a person asks for help at a certain hour on a particular day and makes a purchase that day - you know it's probably not just chance. This data will improve your product usage.
8) Looking to address queries related to customer experience? How can I provide a great experience? Since, the majority of chatbot conversations are initiated by product and service-related questions, you will inevitably end up with a huge amount of information about users. This can be taken further by getting anonymous feedback from your customers and responding to their emotions or instances of bad service. Doing this you will not only get accurate feedback, but also learn how to improve your brand image. You can use chatbot to do the following:
- Notify users about brand updates
- Create a direct line of communication with customers for solving troubleshooting problems.
- Understand customers better through their language and interaction behavior
- Obtain direct feedback from your audience to improve service-providing processes and marketing campaigns.
Other benefits include saving costs on one-on-one calls for help desk customer queries, gathering insights for marketing campaign idea generation, adding some fun to your customer relationship management (CRM) software, saving time on replying and correcting spelling mistakes from many emails, etc. We bet you will add more items to this list when your chatbot is delivering happiness to your website visitors. This will also lead to more repeat visits or further transactions on your website. All of this will help you in achieving several key metrics identified by the marketing department of your organization.
Is it easy to create a chatbot?
With Chatlayer, yes, it is!
A chat bot is a computer program that runs automated tasks by interacting with a person or machine in the same way as an intelligent human. In different words, we can understand chatbots as the machine learning process that enables one machine to have a conversation with another. Chatbots were seen as advanced AI, but with the recent advances with in-depth and large data we might have computers which can intelligently hold a conversation.
You may be wondering if you want to make a chatting bot, one important thing to consider in choosing the right model for chatbot and writing the code for the architecture that enables appropriate conversation. That’s where Chatlayer comes in. You do not have to have any coding skills to build a bot with Chatlayer.
Best practices for building chatbots
Chatbots have become a rage in the customer service and marketing industries over the last decade or so. When accurately developed and designed, chatbots can be a great asset to your business. You can simply use a renowned Chatbot Platform to develop and deploy an AI enabled bot that makes it easier for your business to provide fast and tailored services to the customers. To build a chatbot that can competently cater to the concerns of your customers, you should however keep the following best practices in mind:
Define the objectives
Before starting to build the bot, you need to clearly define your objectives in regard to its role. Will your chatbot be designed primarily for client support or lead generation? Shall the customers use it to find and purchase products? A chatbot can have multiple roles, and therefore it is up to a business to define the specific objectives they want the bot to fulfil.
Endow the bot with a personality
You need to think about your target demographic when building an AI Chatbot for Business. Defining your audience and adjusting the bot speech accordingly is imperative to make it an effective tool. Your bot must additionally reflect the values of your brand, as it might be the first point of interaction customers have with your business. It is recommended to not make the bot language too formal as doing so might create a gap between your business and the customers. On the other hand, too informal a tone that makes the customers feel that they are not being taken seriously should be avoided.
Pay attention to the first messages
The first few messages sent by the bot to the customers will act as an invitation to strike up a conversation and ask questions. Hence, it is vital to concisely present the role of the bot in the welcome message itself.
Being mindful of the above-mentioned practices in the creation of an AI bot is crucial for businesses of all types.
Chatbots and customer engagement
Obtaining enough visitors is one thing but getting them to engage on your website is the real challenge. The engagement process needs a trigger, which can be automatically provided by a chatbot. If customers engage with your chatbot, then it is a safe guess that they will want to engage with your website also. It should be realized that chatbots are not back-office apps and therefore easy to reach. A question will arise if every web visitor is waiting to be spoken to. This is where web visitor analytics sites track the visitor and decide if they would like to be spoken to or not.
The age-old concept of design is to formulate an engaging color scheme and to provide a likeable character such as a graphic. Making chatbots 'likeable' is not a simple task even for the most advanced machine learning algorithms. If you are limited to boring chatbots, then add personality through text fonts. This is where you can use the multiple templates that Chatlayer offers and customize it as per your industry’s need.
Also Read: WhatsApp Chatbot for Business: What’s in it for your business?
For more information on Chatlayer, write to us at [email protected] and we’ll be happy to help!