Chatbots for Businesses: Metrics and Use Cases

The last decade (2000’s) was all about search engine optimization and marketing for businesses. Early 2010 saw businesses flocking to social media to actively engage with the users, and the past five odd years have been mostly about mobile marketing and the rise of apps. But as app business plateaus with more and more users preferring to not download apps – we see a new platform for businesses to engage with the users on – messaging platforms.

The rise of messaging platforms has been unparalleled, with the top four messaging apps combined boasting of more users than the top four social platforms. New age businesses are engaging with users on the user’s choice of platform, and not the other way around. Newer platform, less fatigue, less competition, there’s no reason for a business to not jump on the messaging platform bandwagon.

But how do you scale the process to be able to ‘chat’ with every user simultaneously? This is where chatbots come into picture – rapid developments in the field of NLP and AI have democratized chatbot technology, driving down development and implementation costs. If you’re thinking whether a chatbot fits your business need, these metrics will help you decide:

Boost In Engagement Rates

Traditional marketing content – videos, images, text based content – are all one way. There’s virtually no real engagement from the user’s side, except that they read/watch what you’re created. With chatbots, the users are more hands-on and are actually ‘engaged’. If your bot is decently versed in communication, and is put in front of the right audience, you’ll see a boost in your audience engagement rate.

Case in point – Disney recently launched a Facebook Messenger campaign where they created a chatbot for a popular character from their movie Zootopia, called Officer Judy Hopps. Users were able to engage with Officer Judy Hopps via the Messenger platform where they’d together embark on various detective cases.

This campaign enjoyed enormous success with people talking with the bot for over 10 minutes on an average and many sharing their achievements with their friends via a simple share option within the chat itself.

Segmented Targeting

In chatbot analytics, there’s a metric called conversation steps. A conversation step is defined as one round of back and forth between the user and chatbot. So if the user messages a ‘Hi’ and gets a reply ‘Hi’ from the chatbot, it’s counted as one conversation step.

Longer conversations between a user and a chatbot may or may not be a good thing. Considering a scenario where a user is trying to order a cab using a chatbot, the conversation should be as small as possible with the end goal – book a cab – achieved.

This metric can also be used to segment users and define separate flows for each, to maximise conversion. This is what PennyCat, a discount hunting app did using a Facebook bot. They created a game with discount coupons as rewards. People who had more than 40 conversational steps were tagged as ‘Game Lovers’ and people who stopped playing as soon as they won a discount were tagged as ‘Discount Lovers’. Once they identified the ‘Game Lovers’, they were able to target them with specific discounts to convert them into users. This segmented targeting led to a 70% increase in coupon use.

Personalization

Ads and other marketing paraphernalia can only be personalised to cater to group of audience, but not users. Chatbots on the other hand can be highly personalized as per the user. Connecting the bot with the business CRM, the bot will be able to address the user with their names, and can even pull out the user’s previous activities for a more meaningful conversation.

Take for example, the French cosmetic store chain Sephora. They recently launched a chatbot on Kik that shares tips and tutorials on makeup, after learning what the user wants. The bot also suggests cosmetics and beauty products that users can purchase.

The travel company, Hipmunk, recently launched an AI powered travel planning assistant across multiple platforms. An email bot, chatbot that lives on Slack, Skype and Messenger and a Calendar bot that keeps an eye on your calendar and suggests bookings accordingly. This is the closest we’ve gotten to a virtual assistant that can completely take care of all your travel requirements.

Closing thoughts, we believe chatbots can be a boon to your business. How you apply and use them to boost marketing, customer service or sales is only limited by your creativity!

If you own a business and are not sure whether chatbots are right for you, drop us a message and we’ll schedule a call with you to help you with your decision. If you’re convinced that chatbot is essential to your business, drop us a line and we’ll help build it for you!