What is a chatbot and how can it help your business?

The constant development of artificial intelligence in recent years is something that is increasingly involved in our lives. One of these elements that is booming are chatbots. In this article we are going to explain what they are and how they can help your business.

Video 🎥: What is a chatbot and how can it help your business?

What is a bot?

First of all, understand what a bot is. The bot is an artificial intelligence software that has the characteristic of being able to perform tasks on its own. Some examples of bots can be:

Informative bots: They help manage information.
Chatbots: Which we will talk about in this article.
Crawlers: Bots designed to browse other websites.
Gamebots: Bots against which you can play video games, for example.
scraper bots: Bots that are used to collect information from other websites.

Here we must acknowledge Alan Turing, the father of artificial intelligence. If you want to know more about who he was he,

What is a chatbot?

A is a computer application that allows us to simulate a conversation. That is, it is a type of artificial intelligence that is applied to chat tasks. They can have many applications but are mainly used for customer service tasks. These represent a saving of time and resources when it comes to automating tasks that require interaction with the client.

Depending on how the chatbot has been programmed, it can perform simple conversational tasks: For example, greet the user and ask some questions or more complex ones, such as answering customer questions, managing a reservation or explaining a restaurant menu. Let’s remember that the chatbot will always depend on artificial intelligence, so it is something that can always be improved.

Why is a chatbot important for your business?

That your business has a chatbot can have many advantages that can represent great savings of time or money. We present some of the benefits of having a chat system operated with artificial intelligence:

It allows you to support your users 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: Unlike other chat systems operated manually by a person, if the person is not there, there is no chat. This can be frustrating for users who have a question or concern and cannot resolve it when they are visiting the website.
They allow a wide variety of functions to be carried out: As we have indicated before, depending on the needs of your business, you can program them to perform certain tasks. Imagine that your travel agency has calls from users who want to request information about the destinations you offer. This type of query is repeated many times, well, by programming a chatbot with artificial intelligence you could resolve the most frequently asked questions. All simulating a natural conversation in a chat window.
They are relatively cheap: Although the cost or time of programming it may seem high at first, think that in the long run it will always be cheaper than having someone hired.
There are very competitive chatbot solutions: There are already some companies offering chatbots that you can set up quickly and easily. Without any programming knowledge.
Create a good user experience.

What are the trends saying about chatbots?

The predictions speak for themselves:

Chatbots are predicted to account for up to 85% of customer support by 2020.
63% of users prefer to interact online through chat over other models such as a phone call or contact form.
It is estimated that by 2022, chatbots will help businesses save $8 billion annually.

Where can you put a chatbot?

On your website: The clearest example where you can have a chatbot is on your own website. For example, when you have entered our website, you will be able to see a chatbot in the upper right corner that is greeting you and asking if it can do something for you.

Facebook: It is one of the pioneers in chatbot topics. Many companies do not have the resources of their own to be able to develop a chatbot and in this case Facebook gives them API tools to be able to do so. In this way, it allows them to generate a chatbot that works within Facebook Messenger.

In the example of this capture we have gone to the Facebook page of Original Coast Clothing where through different questions they have suggested a clothing collection. All this done through interaction with an artificial intelligence. Interesting, right?

Slack: The messaging system also allows the use of chatbots.

Final conclusions on the use of chatbot

As an online marketing agency, we believe that any commitment to artificial intelligence systems not only represents an advantage, but also becomes a necessary step for any business that wants to grow. In today’s article we have talked about chatbots, but think of all the repetitive tasks that happen in your company every day that could perhaps be efficiently replaced by artificial intelligence.

Often any marketing specialist finds himself in the frustrating situation that despite making many efforts to bring traffic to a client’s website, he does not get conversions. That is, you work on SEO, Google Ads, Facebook campaigns and you see that the traffic increases. However, this does not translate into an increase in purchases or requests for information by users. And finally the client can get tired of not seeing tangible results.

There are many elements within a website that can be barriers when it comes to reaching that conversion, however implementing a chatbot on your website is a bridge to overcome these barriers. It’s a way of bringing the user closer to the final action you want them to take. If we mix this with automation and artificial intelligence, it should definitely be one of the bets of your business.

I hope you have enjoyed this article. What do you think of chatbots? Would you use them on your website? And as a user, what feeling do they transmit to you? Leave your comment and share your experience with us.