Should you get a chatbot?
What is a chatbot?
Chatbots are the extended arm of customer service, with more and more people installing a chatbot to help customers as quickly as possible. Because that’s what a chatbot can do; talk to your visitors and help them with any questions, freeing up your time to spend on something else that benefits your business. A chatbot can also lower the contact barrier for customers, as they don’t have to enter their email, fill in a form, or anything else to make the initial contact. In this way, the chatbot is informal and easy to approach compared to other forms of contact.
How does a chatbot work?
With most chatbots, you choose whether you want a chatbot to automatically respond to your customers’ messages, or whether you want to respond to your customers’ messages yourself. Thus, it’s also an opportunity for you and your customers to chat together, so customers can contact you or a member of staff directly. The best chatbot for your business is individual. It depends on what you and your customers prefer as well as what industry you’re in. There’s no doubt that both provide extra customer service.
If you have an automated chatbot, what happens is that when a person addresses your chatbot, your chatbot analyses the query. Based on some rules that you have set up, your chatbot can understand what the customer is inquiring about. The chatbot then identifies the purpose – usually based on keywords. These keywords allow the chatbot to identify the customer’s intent. Based on the keywords, the chatbot generates a response for the customer.
With a chatbot, you can respond to the most common enquiries quickly, without requiring a person to be on the other side of the screen. Chatbots are messaging robots that you instruct to respond to specific things when visitors write to your business. If the bot can’t answer the query, it goes to a physical employee. There are many possibilities for a chatbot, and almost the only limit to what your robot can do is your time.
Your virtual assistant.
While your website may seem very intuitive, that may not be how all your visitors experience it. That’s why a chatbot is a good idea to assist your visitors when they need help. It can see what they’re looking at and guide them to the right place, so their visit isn’t in vain, or they head over to one of your competitors, because they can’t find what they came for.
What’s more, your customers’ expectations of your business are also growing all the time, and many customers want to be able to contact you 24/7. If you can meet that need, you’ll be well on your way to overtaking your competitors and getting hot leads.
It’s also a good idea for you as a business owner and employee to be concerned with reaching your customers where they are the most. That’s why you can also integrate chatbots with Facebook Messenger or Instagram, for example. With a chatbot, you make it easy for your customers to get help if they have questions. And if you’re able to engage your customers where they spend their time, you’ll make more sales.
A chatbot from Crisp.
Integrating a chatbot is neither expensive nor difficult, and you can integrate your chatbot with many different platforms. Most chatbots are very user-friendly and easy to set up, but it takes some time to get to know which provider to choose.
Here at design concern, we’ve chosen to use a chatbot from Crisp. We have done this because it provides an extra opportunity for our customers to get in touch with us when they visit our website. Crisp has the right features for us, they provide great service, and the platform is easy to work with.
With a chatbot from Crisp you can make your chatbot for your website, or you can integrate it with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Instagram, where you can reply to your customers from one unified system. Your customers can write directly to your chatbot, which you either reply to yourself or have automatic replies enabled on. All according to your and your customers’ needs. The chatbot can also shorten workflows by automatically redirecting the query to the right employee. At design concern, we’re happy to help you set up Crisp, which has a ton of different features.
In addition, Crisp is code-free, simple, and easy to get started with. You can integrate with many different apps, such as WordPress, Shopify, Mailchimp, Slack, and Trello. The chatbot builder from Crisp is accessible to everyone within your business, allowing you to automate workflows for every part of your business. You can tag colleagues, share notes with them, and give them guidelines to help them take over conversations with customers in the right way, as you’re free of explaining what you’ve already talked to a customer about.
Remember that your chatbot represents your business. In many cases, a chatbot can provide an even better response and help to your customers than what a pressured customer service would be able to deliver. It is therefore a good idea to think of the chatbot as an extension of your company brand.
The future of chatbots.
Chatbots are here to stay, they’re getting smarter and smarter, and they’re being improved on all the time. If you want to go the extra mile for your customers and allow them to get answers to their questions, even when you’re not present, consider implementing a chatbot. The implementation itself is easy and straightforward. The real work is in designing your chatbot to give your customers a great experience. However, there are solutions to this, as several chatbots can actually be deployed right away without you having to design your chatbot.
Not sure if you should get a chatbot? Give us a call to clarify your needs.
Advice on using chatbots.
- Response time on messages:
Your customers don’t like to wait, so it’s still a good idea to allow a few seconds for your chatbot to respond to the enquiry. Then your customers get the feeling that your chatbot’s response is being formulated and created from scratch. Moreover, it allows your customers to process the information your chatbot gives them. - Use A/B testing:
It can be hard to get it right the first time, so in many cases it’s a good idea to base your decisions on data. Using A/B tests in your chatbot will give you a foundation of data on what your customers respond to best. - Avoid too much information:
Your chatbot should, of course, provide the information your customers are asking for, but make sure it does so to the extent that a regular customer service agent would. Your chatbot should respond succinctly and within a few lines.