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Learn about chatbots, a tool that will help us in our company, website or blog.
Today, instant messages and chatbots are without a doubt the fastest growing trends and one of the most powerful tools for those of us working in the world of digital marketing.
At Facebook’s F8 conference in April 2017, the social network announced that .
It also announced that the platform had doubled messaging between businesses and individuals to two trillion messages a month.
Chatbots have become much more than a buzzword or trend. As a business owner or entrepreneur, it’s critical that you recognize that chatbots are no longer something you can ignore.
In this article we are going to talk about what are chatbots, what are their benefits and how to create one to get leads.
What is a Chatbot?
As consumers are bombarded with more and more advertising online and in the real world, the challenge of attracting potential customers is one that businesses, both large and small, face.
This is where chatbots come in to play. In simple terms, chatbots are robots at the service of the user..
The goal of chatbots is to manage to have a conversation with human users through an application or online service, answering the questions posed by the user and responding in the best way so that they can simulate a real conversation.
Chatbots have the power to automate the entire customer communication process. They can be customized to greet with the person’s name, to answer questions, and to provide specific information to the customer.
Currently, the most popular uses for chatbots are through messaging apps and services, allowing customers to speak directly with a business, or vice versa. What are the advantages of using chatbots in your digital strategy?
Little by little, companies have realized the countless benefits that this type of virtual assistant can bring to their businesses. Below you can find some of the advantages of having a chatbot:
- User support 24/7: this is one of the biggest and most well-known benefits. Chatbots have the power to break barriers in response and assistance time, since they can provide care 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
- Greater engagement: Chatbots can have simultaneous conversations with multiple people. No matter what time of day or how many people contact your business, each one of them will receive an instant response. Companies like Domino’s are already using chatbots to organize their deliveries.
- Best customer service: It’s obvious, but the fact that chatbots don’t have feelings and don’t get carried away by their “emotions” is a plus when it comes to customer service. Chatbots are programmed to follow a set of rules and always treat a customer in the kindest way.
- Automation of repetitive work: Let’s be honest, no one likes to do the same job over and over again. In the case of humans, such tasks are prone to errors. Chatbots help automate tasks that need to be done frequently and at the right time.
- Lead capture: Referring to this article, through data collection, chatbots communicate with your potential customers via instant messaging and help you start the buyer’s journey.
Whether answering questions, collecting data, providing insights, or even suggesting products, chatbots ensure that the flow is in the right direction for a higher conversion rate.
How are chatbots being used?
Now more than ever, customers turn to social media to communicate with a brand about any questions, concerns, and/or complaints. A chatbot allows you to provide automated responses to your customers on the most frequently asked questions.
The most popular chatbots are on Facebook Messenger, since several companies use it to reach their potential customers through this instant messaging platform. They use it as another customer service channel, to send push notifications or discounts to customers who might be interested.
According to a BI Intelligence study, in 2017, instant messaging services such as Messenger and Whatsapp surpassed social networks in terms of the number of active users.
Advances in the world of technology such as artificial intelligence and automation play an important role in this movement. Chatbots on instant messaging platforms allow you to collect vast amounts of data about potential and current customers, which would take an ordinary human being too much time to analyze.
Best chatbot examples
Chatbots are still a new topic and on many occasions companies do not know how to use them in their digital strategy. Below you can see some best chatbot examples so you can get inspired.
What should I do to create my chatbot?
1. Choose the tool to create your chatbot
There are many tools to create chatbots (free and paid) without having to be an expert web developer, just follow some steps and perform tests to have your own chatbot.
It is very important that you make a comparison of each one to find the one that best suits your needs.
These are some of the tools to create a chatbot:
- manychat: specializes in creating bots for Facebook Messenger without the need for code. Manychat guarantees the increase in subscribers, the use of messenger as a communication channel, automation of marketing actions and total personalization in messages.
- chatfuel: you can with this free tool. Its interface is very intuitive and simple, in addition, you do not need to apply any type of code or language. They also show you examples of different bots so you can visualize how it works.
- Motion.ai: this tool has given a lot to talk about, since HubSpot recently bought it. On this platform you can create chatbots for two messaging applications, Facebook Messenger and Slack, you can also create bots for browsers, email and SMS.
2. Design the sequence and messages
Before creating your chatbot, it is important that you design the funnel that your bot will have. To do so, you can use one of these two tools: Real Time Board or Lucidchart.
Sitting down and designing the message flow is crucial to avoiding confusion and headaches later when you implement your bot.
With so many question and answer options, you have to define your goal and identify the steps your prospects need to take to get there.
Tip: Avoid making the process too complicated or long for your potential customers. The simpler and clearer the sequence, the better for you and your customers.
For example: you can see that in the following image there is a flow of messages with a clear objective and without so many detours. The idea is that you customize your process according to your needs, it does not have to be discounts, it can be registrations for a webinar, course or simply a free e-book.
How can I capture leads with a chatbot?
There are several ways to capture leads with chatbots; it’s a mix of being creative, logical and having a lot of patience for trial and error. On this occasion, I am going to give you an example of how to capture leads with a Facebook chatbot.
facebook chatbot
As a success story, we are going to take the example of the course where he explains the funnel he designed to capture leads with his Facebook bot.
- 1. Publication on Facebook with a free gift (without asking for contact information).
- 2. Gift delivery through Facebook Messenger.
- 3. Automatic response if they wrote the word bot or BOT
- 4. Traffic to the website to capture leads.
conclusion
As you can see, chatbots are a powerful tool to capture qualified leads, increase your income, automate processes, and improve engagement with your customers.
Apart from having a clear objective, accompanied by an organized and well-structured flow of messages, the biggest challenge in creating your chatbot is to give your bot a certain “personality” so that it can simulate a conversation with your users.
Hopefully after reading this article you have a better idea of what chatbots are and how you can create one to implement it in your digital strategy.
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Social communicator and journalist. Believer of the phrase, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it.”
When she’s not learning about the digital world, she’s discovering new cooking recipes, practicing modern calligraphy, or playing with her dog, Lucas.
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