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Artificial intelligence is transforming the way businesses operate at a rapid pace. They assist us in automating repetitive tasks, eliminating human error, and generating ideas and leads that help a company become lean and profitable.

When looking at how artificial intelligence can improve your business, one of the most readily available applications is chatbots. Chatbots are intuitively designed digital systems meant to simulate a human conversation through a chat service on a social media channel, website, or any other digital platform. There is no question that chatbots provide various benefits to your business.

It helps you streamline customer service, helping your staff save countless hours while also minimizing staff costs in support by doing most of the work that customer support representatives can do.

It generates leads, and those leads turn into sales. Lead generation is one of the biggest priorities for businesses using online technology today, and chatbots help in that front.

It provides value to your customers. Studies show that over 1.4 billion people are willing to talk to a chatbot instead of a live human being, making it easier to implement a chatbot experience.

It increases the website conversion rate – Marketers put in a lot of effort to drive traffic to their website, only to have that traffic convert at a rate ranging from 0.25 percent to 1.0 percent.

Helps to increase the number of qualifying leads - It would be ideal if we could speak with each lead and determine whether or not they are a good fit before scheduling a meeting. In actuality, most organizations are unable to do so on a large scale.

 

Maybe you’re reading this and saying that you already have plans to start a chatbot or have one but want to learn how to improve your chatbot experience. Here are a few tips that will help you craft a successful chatbot.

 

                                             “You can teach your bots to give better responses”

 

A pro tip: If you haven't already, consider implementing targeted messaging and product tours. You can reduce your support volume and improve your customers' experiences by proactively educating and anticipating their questions, regardless of the size of your company.

Exhaustively plan your chatbot flow

Before you start selecting and comparing the appropriate live chat software, first determine what the flow of your chat might look like on paper. That may seem like an additional step that will extend the process, but taking that step can save you a lot of time and effort. When their chat business flows, they often have to go back and forth in many parts of the flow, wasting time and energy.

Some chatbot services allow you to set the flow visually before launching it to give you a glimpse of what that information might look like to customers by bird view. Tiredly write down all the questions, questions and situations you can change with the chatbot and come up with solutions and answers.

Determine your goals

There are different types of chatbots that serve different kinds of purposes.

1. Lead generation chatbots help create potential business for companies by delivering value-add content like e-books or cheat sheets, engage with your customers, answer sales queries, and many other sales-oriented activities.

2. Support desk chatbots help existing customers who need help with an issue or query or walk people through troubleshooting processes. 

3. Appointment setting chatbots make it easier for clients and customers to set appointments with representatives, consultants, or agents. This kind of chatbot comes in handy for professionals and businesses in the service space, primarily doctors, business consultants, life coaches, and so on.

Determining what goal or objective your chatbot might want to achieve helps paint a better picture of what your chatbot might include in the process.

Humanize your bot

Over 40% of millennials engage with bots daily. In a large chunk of those cases, people say that chatting with a bot greatly likens the experience of speaking with an actual live person. 

One of the benefits of chatbots in customer service is that it lessens the need for human touch, but that doesn’t mean we have to remove the human experience. When creating a chatbot, find ways to humanize it by making your responses conversational and adding emotions to it. Using phrases like “Wow! Thanks for reaching out” or “I’m so sorry that you feel that way” can help make the bot feel more human.

Use context instead of bare words

Using chatbots in customer experience is becoming more common amongst businesses today, and most marketing departments, staff, and IT professionals understand them pretty well. A feature that isn’t new to them is the keywords feature, but not many have maximized it yet. 

Some professionals still use context-absent for auto-responses, but that isn’t always the best practice. Say, for instance, a client sends a message, saying “I got the wrong t-shirt size,” and your bot with the keywords “t-shirt size” has a lead generation answer along the lines of “Hi! Here are the available sizes for our shirts.” In this scenario, your bot just failed to answer a customer’s issue and cause more frustration than relief. Instead of using words, it’s better always to study the context. In the previous example, using the phrase “wrong t-shirt size” might have been more successful.

“This in-depth understanding of each customer and their journey can provide you with some ideas for ways to improve your chatbot's responses.”

Integrate your bot on a website

Building a great chatbot is one thing. Getting it on the right channels is another story. The most common place a chatbot goes is on a social media account, most likely on Facebook, but a chatbot on a website benefits customers very well too. 42% of B2C websites have an available chatbot on the front end. Services like TeeDee integrate well on website builders like Shopify, WordPress or WooCommerce.

Not Just Technology, but Application

Do chatbots improve customer experience? We have all the reasons to believe that it does, but that’s only if the technology is applied to the business right. It’s not enough to have the software alone. You need to find the right software and use it the right way. So take the time to follow these steps to build a chatbot that meets your customer’s support and information needs.

About TeeDee

TeeDee helps to build affordable AI-enabled chatbots so that small businesses and start-ups can leverage the power of AI. TeeDee offers a holistic customer journey using a chatbot in your website to help sales, marketing and customer care teams.

Our services include - Feedback, Lead Generation, Support, FAQs, Surveys, Appointment Booking, Live Chat, Custom make along with a variety of integrations and plugins like Email, Slack, Webhooks, WordPress, Drupal, Shopify, Wix, etc.