Chatbots are trendy, and you may be tempted to launch your own AI-based messaging bot to interact differently with your customers on the web.
However, this isn't something you can improvise, and it's essential to be well informed before creating your chatbot. There are some best practices to know to build a quality chatbot. Let's discover them together.
1. Clearly define your chatbot's role
When you create a chatbot, it's important to know exactly where you're going in order toUse your bot wisely : it must not be a mere gadget without real value for you (and for your customers).
- Will your chatbot be a way to improve your customer service?
- A tool for lead nurturing ?
- A communication channel?
Clearly define your bot's role(s): it must offer a clear benefit to your customers, otherwise they will abandon it.
For example, SNCF launched a bot that provides real value to its users, since it helps them find a train journey in no time, and also to get information about taxis and hotels near stations.
2. Don't start too big
There's no point in integrating too many options into your chatbot from the start. You should first focus on a few simple points:
- The bot must communicate concisely and clearly to your customers.
- It must represent your brand and your products.
So start with a simple chatbot, with limited (but well-crafted) features.
Chatbot created by Lukáš Straňák
3. Continuously improve your chatbot
By starting small, you can only end up bigger. Continuously evaluate your chatbot (including by comparing it with those of your competitors) to optimize it step by step and add new features.
It's important to stay alert: bots are still a relatively new technology, so who knows what kind of uses you'll be able to find for them in the future?
4. Give your chatbot a unique name
While a chatbot store is preparing to integrate Facebook Messenger, bots are now more than ever a marketing concern for businesses: that's why it's essential that yours stands out from the others.
A unique, easy-to-remember name can help your chatbot stand out to internet users — although it doesn't replace its intrinsic qualities — and makes it easier for users to search for and find.
5. Use a good chatbot-building tool
To create a good chatbot, you need to rely on a solid creation tool.
There are some excellent chatbot creation platforms that require no development knowledge and can deliver very good results. Some of them are even free.
6. Or hire a professional developer
Ready-made creation tools are very useful, but to get a truly customized chatbot that closely matches your needs, it can be very beneficial to hire a developer.
You can, for example, find a freelance developer on Codeur.com.
7. Use your chatbot in the right situations
Chatbots are popular, and it's not just a fad. These small automated messaging tools offer real advantages for businesses and should not be overlooked.
Let's explore 5 relevant ways to use chatbots for your business.
Chatbot for responding to your customers
In the era of the web and new technologies, we are used to getting almost instantly what we want. The same applies to your customers when they want to contact you to ask a question or get details about your offering.
To be contacted by their customers, phone and email are the most used solutions but they have many drawbacks. No one likes calling a support line and being put on hold — sometimes for several minutes — to ask a simple question. As for email, it's uncertain: customers can't be sure you've received it, and it often takes time to get a response…
This is where chatbots come in: they can allow your customers to get lightning-fast answers to the most common questions and thereby greatly improve your service.
Chatbot created by Alexander Olssen
Chatbot for reaching out to your customers
If chatbots can answer your customers in the blink of an eye, it's possible to go further than just being “passive” and waiting for questions to come to you: many visitors who have a doubt or question won't naturally reach out to tell you.
Chatbot for your lead nurturing
Lead nurturing basically involves collecting information about a prospect in order to better understand them and offer highly personalized content.
And chatbots are precisely a very good opportunity to gather information. Users' interactions with chatbots reveal a lot about the questions they ask, the problems they face, and their concerns…
All that's left is to use this data in your lead nurturing strategy.
Chatbot for getting customer feedback
If there are different ways to get customer feedbackchatbots are very useful tools for collecting feedback.
For example, if you notice that a page on your site has a poor conversion rate or a high bounce rate, place a chatbot there inviting visitors to leave a review. You can even use a chatbot to invite your visitors to take a survey.
This will let you learn more about their browsing experience and the problems they encounter that you could fix.
Chatbot created by Virgil Pana
Chatbot for running personalized ads
Chatbots are useful for collecting data you can reuse in the future, but they can also be used directly as communication tools.
7 mistakes to avoid when creating your chatbot
Before you start creating your chatbot, it's important to know the mistakes to avoid. This will help you avoid errors that could reduce the effectiveness of your AI service.
Giving overly long answers
No one wants to read a message worthy of a novel. Even less so when it comes from a robot.
To provide a precise but digestible response, it's better to include breaks.
Using images is also a good option to shorten a message and provide an appropriate, expressive response.
Chatbot of Jam
Not creating a personality for your chatbot
A robot will have to deal with many different users. Some will even ask questions unrelated to the current conversation such as: "do you like carrots?", "are you in love?", etc.
Creating a backstory for your bot and preparing it for the different personality types it will encounter makes it possible to offer a tailored service to your customers.
Chatbot of Cdiscount
Ideally, a chatbot should be able to adapt its personality according to each type of customer. Giving an identity to your robot has another advantage: it prepares it for any eventuality.
Some offbeat questions can sometimes unsettle artificial intelligences. Armed with its personal history, your chatbot will have a ready reply and will allow the conversation to continue even if the topic shifts.
Forgetting the human element
Ideally, a chatbot should always work in collaboration with a real human team.
Your artificial intelligence must be able to determine when it is dealing with basic problems it can handle and when it is facing a situation that requires human intervention.
Humans are far better able to understand the complexity of feelings.
Not integrating the chatbot into the overall marketing strategy
When customers use your chatbot, they don't necessarily come with questions. They may also share feedback or express dissatisfaction, etc.
Moreover, the added value will be all the greater if your robot can access all the information you have on each customer, in order to provide a personalized experience to users.
Similarly, it is useful and recommended that it have access to company-related data so it can easily answer any questions, whether about employees or the organization.
Not anticipating multiple questions
As humans, we often don't wait for an answer before asking a new question. Multiplying requests can sometimes confuse chatbots and lead them to ask obvious questions.
To prevent your artificial intelligence from collapsing under the weight of too many requests, it's better to anticipate.
Chatbot ofOrange Bank
To prevent your chatbot from having a nervous breakdown:
- Build multiple-question handling in from the start
- Allow the chatbot to get an overview when there are multiple questions so it can ask a constructive question and solve the problem.
- Create different scenarios that will allow your bot to ask, for example, which solutions have already been tried, etc.
- Let your bot evolve by having it learn from these exchanges. Its vocabulary can thus grow and become increasingly aligned with your business and clientele.
Ignoring user feedback
What better way to know if your bot is fulfilling its role than user feedback? Depriving yourself of this information would be both a real loss and a strategic mistake.
Your customers' feedback can help you better understand their expectations and provide the most satisfying artificial intelligence service possible.
For collect your users' feedback, there's nothing like an on-the-spot survey at the end of an exchange with the chatbot.
Deploying your chatbot without testing
Elementary? A reminder never hurts.
This will prevent you from creating disappointment or frustration and from failing to achieve the expected return on investment. You are now ready to develop a high-performing, useful chatbot for your customers and your business.
Chatbot created by Johny Vino
Conclusion
Chatbots are an essential way to interact with your customers and, as it happens, there are tools to create chatbots without writing a single line of code.
These few tips can help you succeed with your bot and thus refresh your web marketing while improving your customer relationship.
However, you can also entrust the creation of your custom chatbot to an expert: find a freelance web developer on Codeur.com.
