Chatbot for your business

We have been hearing about chatbots for a few years now and we use them on the sites and social profiles of brands. They are presented as the future of digital marketing and the trend is not going to run out of steam, as the Google trends show between 2016 and December 2019.

But how do they work and how can they be created? Can Chatbots be integrated into an inbound marketing and marketing automation strategy?

What is a chatbot?

A chatbot is a real-time messaging solution that creates engagement by helping prospects and customers. These “chatting robots” provide basic information to site visitors.

A Software Advice study shows that 46% of respondents used live chats at least once to get an answer on a site and more than one third used it several times.

Top 4 Most Popular Bot Design Articles:

Why use a chatbot?

The use of chatbots, in addition to providing basic support immediately accessible by contact, also allows:

differentiate between customers and prospects;

Save the support team time by filtering spam and visitors who have arrived on the chat by mistake

collect qualification data;

route the leads to the right places;

schedule demos and discovery calls;

deliver quality content;

recommend products or services.

Can we integrate the chatbot into an inbound strategy?

With the inbound marketing method we attract contacts on our site thanks to our content. If the visitor completes a form on our site, he can become a prospect. He enters marketing automation pathways and receives a score according to his activity on the site. When he is mature enough he is referred to the sales team. This is called a traditional “funnel”.

With chatbots we can facilitate this work.We accelerate the process of qualification, the visitor thus passes faster from one stage to another funnel .. The chatbot appears when the visitor is on a particular page, for example that explains your pricing or the characteristics of your products and services. A process that normally can last days or weeks can be condensed in minutes.

The steps to create a chatbot correctly

1. Define your goals and your use cases

Before you start creating your chatbot, you need to have very clear ideas about the purpose of this implementation. While chatbots are very fashionable at the moment, but it is not a reason enough to integrate one to his site.

Each industry has specific needs and bots must be a response to needs identified by your teams. What are your use cases?

Your support teams are in great demand and could save a lot of time by letting a chatbot answer frequently asked questions.

You want to provide basic customer service outside office hours.

It lacks conversion points on your site (lead generation).

Your leads need to be better qualified before moving to the sales team.

For each use case, imagine a typical course and set a measurable goal. Example: the implementation of a chatbot should allow us to generate 10% more leads on our site, the chatbot must save 30% of time to our support team, etc.

2. Define the type of chatbot you want to use according to your needs and budget

Do you need a simple chatbot that offers standard conditional responses or more sophisticated software with machine learning or artificial intelligence?

This choice is closely related to your budget and the priority you want to give your bot.

You have several platform options:

A bot that you can code yourself on a standard platform (Facebook Messenger, Google Assistant, or even your own site). You have more control over the features and it is a cheaper option compared to others. On the other hand, it will be less intuitive to use and you will have to have the technical capacities to obtain the desired results.

A “visual-aided” platform that is more intuitive and less expensive than a chatbot agency, but over which you have less control.

A chatbot agency that can create a custom bot. You will not need technical knowledge and you will be able to achieve the desired results more easily. This option is however the most expensive.

3. Choose platforms on which to use chatbots

Chatbots can be used to engage your contacts via multiple channels:

Your website

Facebook

Twitter

It is important to think about your target personas when you decide that. Are they on social networks or do most of your contacts come directly to your site? The exchanges will probably not be the same on your Facebook page, on your blog or on your product pages.

Prioritize your communication channels by interviewing your sales, support and community management teams.

4. Work on your content strategy

Once you have collected the necessary information on the platforms most viewed by your audience, you will be able to define what type of content you will need to make available through these channels.

FAQs are a must for any chatbot. It is very common for visitors not to take the time to look for your tutorials or FAQ section on the site, so make this information available through your chatbot. Structure the content based on the experience of your teams and the most common problems that your contacts encounter.

Livechatinc explains how they created a list of 250 frequently asked questions that allowed them to create three versions of their chatbots and thus optimize their lead generation and customer service.

5. Specify a tone for your bot

Some brands prefer to adopt a fun and creative tone, targeted for a certain age group, others opt for a more pedagogical and sustained tone. You can even opt for emojis and gifs if the chosen chatbot platform allows you. Everything will depend on your industry, your personas and your online communication strategy.

6. Define the customer journey and the best possible answers

In order to use your chatbots at best, you will need to precisely define the path of your prospects according to their needs. Think about your main use cases and list all the possible sequence of questions, with conditions and redirects to human customer support in case of complex issues.

Customer Journey

7. Guide contact with visuals and Call-to-Actions

Your chatbot can be one of your most important automated tools to push for conversion. Remember to combine CTAs with each use case, to guide your contacts to the final destination you want to offer: a demo request, the display of a product sheet, an appointment.

8. Monitor, analyze and continue to test

In an ideal world, your chatbot works perfectly from the beginning and the results are waiting for you. But alas, in most cases things do not happen like that. It is important to monitor the performance of your bots and to measure their effectiveness continuously.

The first month of testing will already provide you with key information to help you adjust your use cases and response sequences. The important thing is to test different possibilities and to be in a logic of continuous improvement, in order to optimize the performance of your bots.

Analyzing the performance of your chatbots will also tell you if these tools work for your business. Livechatinc’s 90-day test showed them incredible results:

Their lead generation chatbot provided them with 535 test accounts;

More than 36,000 cases have been resolved without transferring visitors to humans, including 97% of filtered Facebook conversations because of spam type;

The bots have managed more than 5000 hours of online dialogue, which equates to 19 additional support agents.

Awesome, no? So start thinking about the ideal chatbot for your business and get started in its creation.

conclusions

To best prepare the implementation of a chatbot for your business, review these 8 points:

set a clear and measurable goal

choose the tools to create your bot

choose platforms on which to implement your bots

create a content strategy

specify a tone for your bot

define the customer journey of your contacts and the best answers

guide your visitors to precise CTAs

monitor, analyze and test continuously

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