While chatbots are a relatively new technology, they are gaining immense popularity in the digital world and among consumers as of late. With virtual assistants in more and more homes every day and with a wealth of information just a few taps away on our smartphones, we’ve grown accustomed to having instantaneous access to all the answers we’re looking for. That’s why it’s crucial for businesses to adapt. Chatbot can provide that instantaneous response users are looking for and still provide a memorable customer experience.

Even if you’re already aware of the growing presence and importance to know that your business would benefit from one, you may still be wondering how exactly it would fit into your marketing or support strategy or how to build one. Luckily, we’ve created this simple guide on creating a great customer experience using a chatbot in seven steps.

1. Identify Your Chatbot Goals

Having an ultimately successful chatbot depends on having a real issue it can solve. Don’t develop a chatbot simply because you see other sites doing it or read about them in a marketing blog. You should have realistic goals you want to meet with your chatbot.

So, what are these goals? When determining your chatbot goals, you should be thinking about the customer. Why would your customer engage with a bot? What would they be looking for? How do you anticipate they will interact with your chatbot and what steps do you want them to take afterward?

Your chatbot goals should largely reflect company goals that are short-term. What types of tasks would be best suited for a chatbot? Perhaps you want your chatbot to answer FAQs for your customers. Or maybe you want your chatbot to be proactive and focus on informing users of new services or products you offer. Whatever items you decide on, the ultimate mission is to create an easier, quicker, and more satisfying experience for your customers.

Once you’ve clearly identified the goals you want your chatbot to achieve, it’s time to start the design process.

2. Choose Custom-Made or Ready-to-Use?

There are two avenues you can take when deciding to create a chatbot. You can choose a ready-to-use bot-building platform or you can choose to custom-make your chatbot from scratch. Both have pros and cons that you should be aware of before making a decision.

Custom Chatbot: Pros and Cons

A custom bot is a great choice if you are looking for specific features and want plenty of flexibility to make adjustments along the way. Custom bots also give you the opportunity to create an in-depth conversation flow.

It’s also important to consider the cons of choosing a custom chatbot. If you don’t have the technical know-how, you’ll probably have to hire a developer to build your bot. Depending on the features you want and how complicated your bot is, the process may take more time and money to complete than you want to spend.

Ready-to-Use Chatbot: Pros and Cons

An out-of-the-box chatbot saves you from having to hire a developer or have the substantial technical know-how. There’s no coding required, the process is much faster, and the cost is much lower. If you don’t have a ton of resources at your disposal or you’re in a time crunch, a ready-to-use bot is a way to go.

On the other hand, a ready-to-use chatbot has its limitations. It’s already been built, so the types of features you can add or changes you can make will probably be severely limited. Depending on the bot building platform, you may find restrictions on which channels you can use your bot on.

3. Designing Your Chatbot

Now it’s time to decide on your chatbot design. There are several things you’ll need to consider. Do you want a text-based chatbot or a voice-based chatbot? A text-based messenger chatbot, works on one or more messaging platforms. Users will likely interact with this kind of chatbot on a screen, like their mobile device or computer. A voice-based chatbot works differently. Users interact with a voice-based chatbot by speaking to it in their natural language, usually screen-free.

Once you’ve decided which kind of chatbot you need, it’s time to design your conversation flow. There should be a balance of functionality and engagement. Here are a few things to consider:

Keep the conversation flow naturally.

Think about your customers and about the different things they might talk about with your bot. Think about how those conversations could start. For example, people usually begin a conversation with a greeting such as “hello” or “hi there”. Your bot will need to be able to recognize these phrases and respond with a “greeting message”. Also, keep in mind that your bot will more than likely receive unexpected responses, so ensure that they are accounted for when designing your conversation.

Offer quick reply options.

‘Yes’ or ‘No’ buttons or suggested topic or question buttons can create an easy and timely experience for your users. Quick reply options are also great for users that aren’t quite sure what they need or what topic their question falls into.

Don’t be afraid to give hints.

A great way to make sure your conversations stay focused is to give responses that are suggestive and not too open-ended. For example: “What type of vehicle are you interested in? Right now, we have sedans and full-size SUVs on sale.”

Make your answers vary.

One key to a successful chatbot is making sure it doesn’t sound like a, well, bot. Give your chatbot a variety of answers and change up how it begins and ends its sentences.

Make your chatbot likable.

Don’t be afraid to give your bot some personality. You don’t want to make it rude or over the top, but also don’t be afraid to throw in a few jokes here and there to keep the conversation light and the user engaged.

4. Be Available if Necessary

Chatbots are, well, bots. There are certain limitations to what they can do. Offering users the option to speak with a human if they want can be the difference between keeping them on your site and obtaining a lead and having them bounce. Not only should this be a frequently available option to users, it should also be obvious.

5. Choose the Appropriate Channels

Your chatbot doesn’t have to live exclusively on your website. In fact, chatbots can be used across multiple channels and can connect conversations. Think about where your target audience spends the most time. With a multitude of platforms available today, you can utilize their interfaces to link your bot to multiple channels, thereby reaching more of those target users.

Whichever platforms you decide on, make sure you give your chatbot a presence. Don’t let it simply hide in a corner. Get creative and look for opportunities to use your chatbot to convert.

6. Don’t Hesitate to Test Your Ideas

Even with the best designs, it’s incredibly important to test things out. This is especially important before making your chatbot live. Make sure it accurately answers questions, helps customers find solutions, is easy to use, and that there are no kinks to work out.

What you should be checking for:

1. Onboarding process

This is the first item you’ll want to check when testing your bot. Verifying the onboarding process means ensuring that your chatbot initiates engagement with a user a soon as they open the bot window.

2. Accurate, working links

Make that any link your bot provides a user works and goes to where it’s supposed to. Broken links or links that lead nowhere will hurt your user experience.

3. When your chatbot is confused

As previously mentioned, your bot will likely encounter some unusual or challenging responses from users. Make sure there’s an input in place for when your chatbot doesn’t understand a user’s response or what they want. It can be something as simple as, “I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you mean. Can you try rephrasing your question?”

7. Continue to Learn

The best companies are constantly evolving. Even once you’ve designed, tested, and resolved initial issues with your chatbot, that doesn’t mean the job is done. It’s critically important to continue to collect and analyze data regularly to determine what’s working and what’s not and to improve where you can. This will ensure that your customer experience is always in-touch with what users are looking for and meets their expectations.

Check out our voice chatbot page to see what we have to offer. Not sure what features are right for your business? Our experts can help! Reach out to the Beyond Voice team using our contact form to learn more.

The post Creating a Great Customer Experience Using a Chatbot in 7 Steps appeared first on Beyond Key.

With the power of Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning skills, conversational interfaces (chatbots) have become revolutionary. The conversational bot brought a substantial improvement in many business processes for various industry domains.

Our FAQ chatbot is an excellent voice bot that can help you streamline several of your day-to-day problems. Let’s check out some of its everyday use cases you’re sure to love.

One Conversational Bot for Industry Verticals

Chatbots in Banking

Banks have been early adopters of the newest technology that has seen widespread commercial success. A report by Juniper Research claims that for every query that a chatbot handles, banks save four minutes of an agent’s time translating per query. By 2022, this will amount to billions in yearly savings. Chatbots in the banking industry are helpful for information gathering internally amongst employees in different branches and with a vast consumer base.

Chatbots are helping banks enhance customer satisfaction by answering a host of their queries within seconds. Bots answer common questions regarding account balance, utility payments, balance transfer, ATM locations, and more in a seamless and time-bound manner. With predictive analytics, the bots pick up the customer’s intent and answer accordingly. Also, some banks have developed bots that help customers block their cards instantly in case of theft or misuse. They ask specific questions about the card and send an OTP to the registered mobile number. Once fed, the card gets blocked instantly. With uninterrupted support 24/7, chatbots are creating meaningful customer relationships.

Chatbots in e-commerce

Behind the scenes of every popular online shopping website is a complex network of activities such as customer service, payments, promotions, tech support, logistics, market research, and more. Chatbots have become the only solution to all these complex problems of online retailers and marketplaces. Customers have numerous questions about shipping and delivery, both before and after making their purchases.

Building chatbots for e-commerce websites allow online stores to provide their potential and existing customers with information and updates on shipping and delivery. Generic and frequently asked questions on shipping can be fed into the chat script and give instant answers to the customers who request them. In addition to this, the online chatbots can extract real-time tracking information on any order and update existing customers on the status of their shipment, answer basic queries and complaints, and upsell and cross-sell products. They can also quickly deal with issues like cart abandonment with regular follow-ups.

Chatbots in Healthcare

 These days, chatbots are being used by leading health systems to facilitate a fully conversational discovery of their services and enable seamless time scheduling for their patients. Chatbots also help by presenting a quick way of checking a patient’s existing coverage, filing claims, and tracking the status of their claims. There are Medicine Reminders chatbots that can be easily programmed to remind patients to take medication. For pathology labs, a conversational chatbot let users instantly check the status of their pending reports, find nearby centers, show test information and prices, and enable faster query resolution by guiding the user through every step.

Chatbots in Education

Learning Through Chatbots provides a personalized learning environment to the students by analyzing their responses and how they go through the learning content. The bot may repeatedly assess the student’s level of understanding and present the next part of the lecture accordingly.

Chatbot’s instant messaging system makes it easy for the students to find information about the admission processes, assignments, due dates, or other important events. The bots answer students’ queries about the course module, lesson plans, projects, and deadlines to monitor the students’ learning progress. The chatbots provide personalized feedback to the students. They can analyze the students learning needs and recommend the learning content to them accordingly.

Chatbots for Travel

Chatbots can be a game-changer for the travel industry as they benefit both travelers and companies; they help both parties simplify the travel agreements. Travel chatbots are also enhancing the customer travel experience by guiding customers through every aspect related to travel.

Not only can they be used to book flights, but you can also find hotels, get general travel advice, book a rental car, and more. If you have a set budget, you can ask the messenger chatbot to recommend options within a specific price range. It can also update you with real-time changes such as flight delays, check-in details, and more.

Travelers also expect customer support services irrespective of their time zone, especially during international travels. Chatbots provide 24/7 customer service support to users to fulfill their needs and improve customer service.

Chatbot for Customer Support

Gone are the days when customers would file a complaint or question and wait until a human agent replied. With the advent of chatbots, customer support has mandatorily become a need of “being present 24/7”. An AI conversational bot understands human language and respond accordingly. Corporations train them with prequalified questions and answers such as invoice management, order tracking, and account management. These are simple and repetitive tasks that do not require the added value that humans bring. By prequalifying requests, managing simple questions, and routing customers to the right services, bots also allow support agents to focus on more complex tasks, improving efficiency and simplifying processes.

Live chat apps offer a cheaper alternative to help you cut down on team numbers and provide excellent customer service by tracking customer contact histories and providing people with immediate, non-urgent support.

Chatbot for Sales

Chatbots are trained to take instant real-time online orders and even help your customers with the product they want.

You also don’t need to worry about these chatbots giving cold and impersonal responses. Studies show that 45 percent of consumers don’t care who they are talking to as long as they get correct, practical, and handled quickly.

The quick response times that automated messengers offer can also be valuable during regular business hours. If a salesperson has inquiries from multiple clients at a time, they can’t provide immediate responses to all of them. Chatbots, on the other hand, can.  The bot could remind the individual it’s time for subscription renewal or send them marketing or informational materials. Based on the person’s purchase history, the bot can also suggest other items that might interest them. They can help you turn leads into customers more efficiently and provide you with data to inform your marketing and sales efforts.

And that’s not all!

Apart from this, chatbots can help sort time-consuming internal communications in a company that HR typically handles. Bots can streamline the entire process of communication, leaving no room for mistakes. Chatbots can schedule appointments, respond to frequent employee queries in a blink, and even entertain them!

Need help with a Conversational Bot?

With so many capabilities, you may think that implementing a chatbot is an expensive project. But think again! Chatbots can be very cost-effective if you hire the best talent. Researchers say that investment in chatbot technology is highly value-driven. And the icing on the cake? You don’t have to know coding or any programming language!

Want to know how you can build your FAQ conversational bot for free? Click here right now- contact@beyondkey.com

The post It’s About One Conversational Bot…for All Industry Verticals appeared first on Beyond Key.