In today’s fastest and busy world, people don’t have much time in spending hours on the website to find what they are looking for and to find the answer to the questions that are on-going in their minds while navigating a website or making online purchases or when visitors find it hard to find some details. Chat Bot is solving such issues of the online viewers and helping a lot while navigating a website or making an online purchase. Chatbots are providing a kind of rapid assistance directly to the users so that when a viewer wants to locate a specific material on the website, he/she does not have to spend hours and waste precious time. This has converted a work that used to take hours into a function of minutes.
What is a ChatBot?
Chat Bot can be defined in a variety of ways as follows:
Definition-1:
Chat Bot is a computer-based program that can simulate the conversation with users on the internet using voice instructions or text messaging or both.
Definition-2:
Chat Bot is a software tool used to act as a human agent.
Definition-3:
A chatbot is an artificial intelligence system that interacts with users via text or voice messaging.
Chat Bot can be seen as virtual assistance that interacts and communicates with users by using pop-up voice or text messaging thus helping users and satisfying their requirements and responses. It is specifically designed to provide customer support via responding to their queries and necessary guidelines. People have don’t much time to visit the website in-depth or calling customer support services to get the required information or clarification. Hence, the best way to help and guide users is to have ChatBot. Chat Bot appears at the bottom right corner of the website usually an automated FAQ responder via pop-up text messaging.
What is the significance of the ChatBot?
ChatBots are making the user more engaging and satisfied in a variety of ways. ChatBots bridging the gaps between company and user by making business most conveniently as far as possible which is quite beneficial both for the owner of the business.
In today’s competitive business world, many companies now designing and developing their Chat Bots either through their expert team or through professional explainer video production companies to suit according to their business activities and target audience.
Following are some of the major advantages that companies are getting using ChatBot:
- Overall high efficiency in the functioning of the company and increase in sales.
- Rapid response time and effective way of communication and interaction with a customer.
- Self-actualization of customer requests/demands thus time-saving.
- Chat Bot can originate proactive conversation to help the customer towards product and guide in the right direction.
- Managing customer queries and support services in an automated manner including multilingual support.
- Better engagement with customers while making Q&A responses.
- The lesser burden on the support services team to let them do other critical tasks.
- Availability on 24 hours a day ad 7 days a week (24/7 basis).
- Improves use of customer’s experience.
Today, Chat Bots are one of the best marketing tools and platforms on the websites that are providing live, dynamic real-time conversation to serve the purpose of the website most powerfully and engagingly to all kinds of customers across the globe.
Some successful examples of ChatBots in real-world businesses that companies are using for customer help, support, and resolving their issues are Marriott Hotel, L’Oréal, CNN, Adidas Women, Dominos, eBay, Levi’s, Bank of America, National Geographic, and many others.
The most common use of Chat Bots
Despite various use and benefits of ChatBots on a company website, it is observed that that the most use of ChatBots or you can say most common utilization of ChatBots are as under:
- Quick responses in emergencies for various questions
- Addressing & solving customer complaints and issues
- Delivering detailed information as required
From the above, one can say that the key role of using ChatBots is Customer’s Satisfaction through providing quick responses, solving their complaints, and giving detailed information when needed. However, there are several other activities which are being conducted and supporting the customers for the following:
- Making bookings & reservations (hotels and air ticketing)
- Purchasing an item (product or service)
- Paying invoices & bills
- Arranging & scheduling meeting and visits with business representatives
- Seeking in-depth information for nay upcoming event of the company
- Enrolling for receiving company emails and newsletters
Categories of Chat Bots
Generally, conversational Chat Bots processes the various data and information for all kinds of customer’s request & demands either through pre-defined or fixed rules-based chatbots or via Artificial Intelligence (AI) based chatbots.
Let’s discuss briefly the two main categories of ChatBots:
1. Pre-defined Rules-based Chat Bots
Pre-defined Rules-based Chat Bots mainly follows some predefined rules thus making Chat Bots easier to sue for normal and simple situations. Pre-defined Rules-based chat Bots are the best for answering some kind of common or repeated queries to customers like the status of delivery, business timings, tracking information. Therefore, pre-defined rules-based chatbots are highly beneficial for customer support. However, it is limited in conversation as functions only through a given set of guidelines which is limited.
2. Conversational or Machine Learning Chat Bots
This category of ChatBot is generally termed, virtual assistants or digital assistants. As compared to Rules-based Chat Bots, this type is much more user interactive and converse with the users similarly as humans like real-life scenarios.
Conversational Chat Bots normally perform through machine learning using artificial neural nodes like human brains. The ChatBot is more complex and programmed having artificial intelligence (AI) that can handle the number of inquiries and questions from customers as far as accurate thus give more confidence, user acceptance, and more personalized conversation.
The above-described types of ChatBots are major ones being used in the market. However, there is another type of ChatBot which is a mix of both Rules-based and Conversation NAMED as “Hybrid Chat Bot”.
Hybrid Chat Bot utilizes the best rules and artificial intelligence commands and instructions for providing a better live chat experience to customers.
Building & Customizing Chat Bots
Building and customizing the first ChatBot is certainly required some planning, background, technical & commercial expertise to provide virtual assistants to configure & plug-in your business roles like marketing, sales, and support services in the ChatBots. Building & customizing ChatBots can be achieved either through using the ChatBot platform with little effort or you can build and customize at your own from the scratch requiring more dedication and time and effort.
The above-stated two practices for building & customizing ChatBot will be discussed later in this article. However, let’s first discuss the six most essential points that will support building & customize your ChatBot according to your business environment and needs and target audience to deliver the right conversational support services to your customers.
1. Outline your Business Aim & Purpose
The first and foremost work to do is to outline what is the aim & purpose of your business. What objectives exactly you want to get from your business to design & develop your ChatBot accordingly. You need to be specific about what business functions need to be automated for conversational interaction with customers using your ChatBot. So, it is important to decide first what your ChatBot will do for your customers.
2. Decide on the Right Channel for Customer’s Engagement
The second most important aspect that needs to be considered while building & customizing your ChatBot is to select and decide the right channel or media to communicate and engage with your customers. You need to analyze the customer’s preferences for interaction and better engagement via using the most appropriate communication channel according to your business website as it could be WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Instagram, or any other messaging platform.
3. Ensuring ChatBot for the most Correct Responses
The third most important consideration, while you build & customize your ChatBot, is to ensure that ChatBot will give the best correct answer on a variety of questions during a Q&A session that best suits your business environment. You need to design, configure and train the ChatBot so that it must give the most relevant and accurate answers.
4. Enhance your Bot with Vocal sound & Character
You can enhance the ChatBot by providing it a specific name, vocal sound, and character or some kind of a human element with an image or picture to portray your brand more smoothly and pleasantly. This will help in attracting customers to know more in-depth information about your brand and ultimately the growth and success of your business.
5. Swift Switching from ChatBot to Human Agent
It is quite expected that a stage will come during a Q&A session with ChatBot where Chat Bot needs some kind of intervention to fully satisfy customer’s need for replying to a complex query or a responding a problem or complaints or customer seeking some detailed or technical & commercial information. In such cases, you need to define the moment where ChatBot can raise the level to a real human business agent or representative to support and satisfy the customer.
6. Launching, Testing, and Restatement of ChatBots
Once you have outlined and finalized the processes and flow patterns of the ChatBot then you need to add the ChatBot to your website to launch and test the Chat Bot’s performance according to the defined scenarios whether it is working correctly or not and to detect any irregularity. You need to make some kind of necessary adjustments in the ChatBot arising out of the day-to-day experience and customer feedback.
Ways to Build & Customize ChatBots
There are two common ways to build and customize your ChatBots. Anyone can choose either Chatbot platforms or building ChatBots from scratch.
1. Using ChatBots Builder Platforms
There are many powerful Chat Bot platforms available in the market to build and customize your ChatBot according to your business needs. Some of the most powerful ChatBot platforms are listed below with overall costs ranging from free to $100 per month.
- WotNot
- Intercom
- Drift Chatbot
- Landbot.io
- Live Person
- Bold 360
- Octane AI
- Flow XO
- Many Chat
- Botsify
- Chatfuel
- Pandorabots
Lets’ discuss the platform-based ChatBots. Chat Bot platforms permit you to build and customize your ChatBot by yourself using simple and easy drag & drop menus without much effort and time. These platforms are quite capable to build your Chat Bots according to your business needs at nominal pricing and policies. However, there are some advantages and disadvantages while using the platform for building and customizing the ChatBot.
Advantages of using Building Platforms for ChatBots
Building Chatbots using Platform have the following advantages:
- Simple, convenient, and flexible to design & develop Chat Bots even for complex business requirements.
- Easy integration with a renowned messaging platform such as Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, and others.
- Allowing integration of your ChatBot with your website or mobile application.
- Easy integration with third-party service providers like gateways for payments & billings.
- Cost-effective solution for the business.
Disadvantages of using Building Platforms for ChatBots
Building Chatbots using Platform have the following disadvantages:
- For more complex Chat Bots, you need to hire services from professional ChatBot developers or you can hire an explainer video production company.
- Chat Bot builder platform may not able to give you 100% desired results or outcome what you are looking for.
- It cannot be guaranteed that using the platform will perform 100% correct particularly if ChatBot is not designed & developed by a knowledgeable technical person.
2. Building & Customizing ChatBots from Scratch
If you need to build a very classy & customized ChatBot specific to your unique business needs with your artificial intelligence instructions and programming and with some custom logic, then you need to build the ChatBot from scratch. Businesses where requirements are very unique and of complex nature like healthcare assistant, online shopping assistant, hotel & air ticketing reservation & booking agents, etc. then in such cases, you need to build and customize the ChatBot for specific services and support to the users.
Building and customizing your ChatBot for specific business needs, you need to hire professional ChatBot developers. You need to hire a ChatBot development team for taking care of all requirements of programming, instructions, commands, and integration with third-parties. However, this will cost huge as compared to build Chat Bot using building platforms. The typical cost starts from $4000 or so.
Let’s discuss some key advantages and disadvantages of developing a custom ChatBot from scratch.
Advantages of Building Custom ChatBot from scratch
Followings are the major benefits while building a custom ChatBot from scratch:
- You can easily integrate the exclusive, multifaceted, and sophisticated business functionalities to your ChatBot.
- User experience can be great while using the expertise of professional ChatBot developers who can assist and provide solutions for even complex and technical business needs
- The chat developer team can ensure a bug-free Chat Bot after conducted repeated tests.
- Once the ChatBot is launched, the development team can provide technical support, maintenance, and solutions to improve the performance of ChatBots.
Disadvantages of Building Custom ChatBot from scratch
The major drawbacks or disadvantages of building Chat Bots from scratch are as under:
- Building a customized ChatBot needs more time and cost.
- More time is required by the ChatBot development team for creating service infrastructure and hosting.
From the above, you can opt for building and customizing your ChatBot according to the nature and complexity of the business needs and services to be delivered to your customers since both procedures have their advantages as well as disadvantages.
CONCLUSION
After reading the above-sated contents of his article, you can become quite familiar with the importance of ChatBots. ChatBots are now playing a vital role in seeking customer’s closer interaction, engagement & satisfaction, and ultimately the growth of your business. ChatBots have radically changed the user experience and behaviors towards a business. The help that ChatBots bring for the users increases the revenue generated by the website due to the nature of help, it is successful to provide and lay out.
ChatBots (hybrid type) is now the most strategic business tool for better customer engagement. However, it is a matter of complete understanding and balanced approach when and how to apply the ChatBot to deliver the best user experience. As single size cannot fit for all; the same is for the ChatBots and real human agents.
In a nutshell, Chat Bots varies according to the complexity and business needs. For an effective ChatBot, you must have the answers to the questions such as:
- What is the requirement or purpose of the chatbot?
- Where to apply it: your website, third-part messengers, or mobile app?
- How many business functionalities and you need in your ChatBot?
- Do you want to integrate it with third-party service providers like online billings and payment gateway?
Once you have the answers to the above-stated questions, you can have a clear understating of how to move forward for building your ChatBot, either using a custom ChatBot of your own from the scratch or using a Chatbot builder platform.
