Chatbots Best Practices
Bot Burger
Bot Burger is a French food delivery service. It’s easy to see that they cook and deliver burgers. It’s the first bot company that has no website and a mobile app. The only way to make an order is to visit a Facebook page and contact its chatbot. Facebook Ad is the only way of getting new customers. “We deliver burgers in 20 minutes” – that what this ad offers potential customers. The cost of customer acquisition is crucial for a business like this. The company has an extremely low cost and 20% of customers make orders once again in the next two weeks.
Complex
An American media publisher has boosted its traffic with the help of a Facebook chatbot. As soon as visitors start a chat, Complex gets their names, surnames, gender, locations. It’s easier for a media resource to retain a visitor having this data. It’s extremely beneficial for the publishing business, as these companies don’t need to buy an enormous amount of advertising to increase traffic like other businesses.
Golden state warriors
An American basketball club created a chat for its fans. According to statistics, up to 73% of people who watch TV use a smartphone as a second screen. The club decided to win more fans through this second screen. The club created a chat that sends game scores, video highlights, and other forms of content. Users are sharing these pieces of content with their friends and increase brand awareness. Before the start of the game, every spectator can use a huge QR code from one of the arena’s screens to start a chatbot conversion. Users can also buy tickets and get discounts through this bot. In the first two months, chatbot had more than 40,000 users.
The transition to chatting with bots is almost invisible for average online users. The generation that grew up on web forums and various voice assistants like Apple Siri quickly and intuitively learned how to shopping online, order certain services, find solutions to complex technical problems and etc.
We decided to figure out why it’s essential to use chatbots in eCommerce.
Where Did the Chatbots Come From?
The first inanimate interlocutor was created by the American scientist Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966. His Eliza was acting as a psychotherapist and was simply paraphrasing the words of users into questions, forcing patients to pronounce them.
Eliza was picking up keywords and, in fact, answering a question with a question. The technology wasn’t solving people’s problems but was creating an illusion of communication.
Why Did They Become Popular?
The main reason for the chatbot development is the growing popularity of various instant messengers and the total text communication of users.
According to Mobile Marketing Watch, about 77% of US consumers more positively perceive a company that offers text communication.
Are All Chatbots The Same?
Long story short, no. Chatbots are extremely diverse in their functionality. Some of them collect personal data, understand the context of users’ requests, and give accurate answers. These chatbots use linguistic analysis technologies and machine learning to manage tasks like these.
More simple chatbots use the so-called scripts which contain a set of words and expressions that you just need to click on and get an immediate answer.
When You Don’t Need Chatbots
It must be clear that even the most advanced chatbot can’t solve all the tasks that a person can do. Don’t replace full-fledged support service with a chatbot when a client can talk to a real person. Chatbots can take on several functions that were previously assigned to people and other systems. Nevertheless, it’s not a panacea, but just a tool for your business development and simplifying customer service.
The Best Chatbots For Business
Many experts are sure that, at least in 2020, chatbots won’t still be able to fully communicate with users. That’s why scripted chatbots will remain the simplest and the most profitable solution.
Don’t create the illusion of natural communication between clients and bots. Even Apple’s Siri often fails the process and irritates users. The development of chatbots that require linguistic analysis technologies is extremely expensive. If you developed a chatbot like this and it fails communication regularly, it definitely won’t pay off. On the contrary, you can lose clients.
Chatbot Functions
Modern chatbots have gone far from the banal imitation of a companion. Now they are tools that help people buy transport tickets, track the results of a favorite sports team, find good restaurants in a foreign city or, for example, create cryptocurrency rate statistics for the last week.
Personalization of Customer Experience
With the help of simple tools like surveys and customer data, you can simplify the process of choosing a product as much as possible. That is especially important for those visitors who entered the online store for the first time. They may be confused with navigation, not find the right product and leave a website frustrated. In this case, you need an advisor bot that will help customers with navigation.
This chatbot also collects and uses customer data who already made a purchase: their location, purchase history and other statistics. That helps to simplify the repeat sale, make a personal offer, provide a discount and etc. It increases brand loyalty and makes shoppers feel care.
Improving Customer Experience
When customers see that you use a chatbot, they think that you care about customers as all the customers will get answers to their questions. Customers think that it’s done for their convenience. Therefore, these efforts will be certainly appreciated.
Moreover, chatbots receive customers’ feedback. It helps merchants to resolve issues and correct deficiencies quickly. That’s important as you may not even know anything about existing problems.
Providing Customers With the Relevant Information
Chatbots provide customers with relevant information that helps them to make a purchasing decision. With the help of customer data, you can develop personalized promotional offers and campaigns, discounts on certain product categories and etc.
Users are tired of piles of information that fall on them on websites. Nevertheless, they’ll be happy if you save them from the numerous “profitable offers” that attack them out of blue.
How To Develop A Bot
You should focus on two main things – user experience and endowing a chatbot with temper.
User experience is not only about the design but also about better user interaction. It’s necessary to constantly monitor, develop, and improve communication scenarios. It’s essential for chatbots as they learn how to behave with a particular audience in a certain communicative context.
David Rose, an American software engineer, was examining chatbots’ “revitalization”. All the results he recorded in his book “The Future of Things”. According to Rose, even the most useful and powerful technology must be simplified and endowed with human features. Even though we are aware of a fake, it’s more interesting to communicate with a bot that has its name, voice, image, and, ideally, corporate features.
It’s important to remember the obtrusiveness of chatbots since sending numerous messages can annoy users.
Chatbot Channels
- Facebook Messenger is a chatbot platform with an audience of more than 1.2 billion active users per month and more than 100 thousand active bots worldwide. It’s the leading USA messenger. Moreover, it’s the most advanced one from a technological point of view. It has a wide range of interaction elements (product list templates, extensions, checks, check-in templates for flights), authentication, payment acceptance, sending service messages by phone number and so on.
- Viber. Last year Viber introduced its public business accounts. Companies can set up a dialogue with their subscribers – through a bot or CRM. Glamor magazine, App in The Air, Aviasales are already using Viber chatbots.
- Telegram is one of the first open-space platforms for creating bots in the messenger. According to Forbes, there are more than 100 thousand chatbots in Telegram.
- WhatsApp also offers opportunities to launch chatbots.
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