What is a chatbot?

As the name suggests, chatbots are computer programs built to simulate human conversations— whether on a website, a messaging app, or a virtual assistant. With today’s customers expecting immediacy and personalization in their interactions with brands, the addition of chatbots as a communication channel has become critical to business growth.

In its simplest form, chatbots can be programmed to answer specific, frequently asked questions, offering an easy way to engage with visitors. On the other hand, Artificial Intelligence (AI) - powered chatbots can learn from user behavior and previous agent interactions to predict visitor behavior and offer relevant information. Chatbots can help automate interactions and offer instant accessibility across sales, marketing, and customer service functions. 

How do chatbots work?

The purpose of a chatbot is to improve the productivity of customer-facing teams and reduce the workload caused by live chat. This can be achieved through training an AI-enabled chatbot to spot patterns, language intent and identify the most appropriate response without human involvement. 


If this sounds technical, let’s take a step back and see how a chatbot processes a conversation.

Step 1: Train for relevant topics

When the chatbot is being set up, you can teach it topics you think your customers will ask about. For example, if a common customer query is, “On what days is the clinic open?”, you can program the chatbot to understand this question and similar rephrased questions like: “Will the clinic be open on the weekends?” or “When is the clinic closed?”. This helps the bot address the same concern, in whichever phrasing is used by the customer, and offer the relevant information.

Step 2: Learn from Multi-channels

The chatbot learns from emails, chats and your knowledge base to understand intent every time a visitor asks a question. From the example above, if the visitor asks, “Is the clinic open on Sundays?” the chatbot will recognize the intent, based on the information available in its database, and provide the appropriate response. 

Step 3: Predict the next step

Once the chatbot knows what the customer’s goal is, it’ll prompt them into taking the next step. In the above case, it can then ask them, “Do you wish to book an appointment on Sunday?”. This way, it nudges the visitor to take action. By offering a CTA, the chatbot not only personalizes the attention given to the visitor, it will also collect the necessary details needed to book an appointment without any agent intervening.

Why chatbots can be game-changing for your business?

Chatbots are a one-time investment that can offer instant self-service, deflect a significant number of inquiries, and can quickly scale as your requirements grow.  So if you are evaluating the implementation of chatbots for your customer service, here are a couple of reasons to get started. 

Chatbots can increase customer satisfaction through frictionless support. It can offer precise answers to questions and point customers in the right direction. Moreover, smart chatbots can offer contextual advice and escalate conversations to a live agent when necessary.

Save Responding Time

Common questions like “What’s your refund policy?” shouldn’t need a support agent to intervene. Chatbots can understand the intent of the questions and give a direct answer. It can also help customers with troubleshooting workflows to solve their queries themselves.

Available Anytime and Anywhere

The most important benefit of implementing a chatbot is that it can offer round-the-clock support. Also, chatbots are a low-friction solution as they are available on every screen and in messenger apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Apple Business Chat. 

Improve customer engagement

Your business should be able to engage with your customers at every step of their journey. Chatbots can help personalize conversations, nurture your leads better, and improve engagement across your funnel by urging customers to participate in discussions that can help them build a connection with your business. 

Personalize conversations everytime

Chatbots allow you to share updates and notifications to build brand loyalty quickly. At scale, it’s difficult for your business to engage with clients at a personal level. However, chatbots can understand your customer’s intent, order history and personalize outreach to improve engagement quality.

Nudge towards actions

Chatbots close the loop with your customers. They can trigger actions and flows like booking appointments, making payments, or collecting feedback. So the visitor won’t have to leave without taking a step towards a purchase.

Can chatbots help you solve for the customer?

Just like how chatbots are beneficial to business, they are also helpful to customers. As the end-users of chatbots, the success of this tool remains entirely in the hands of visitors. Customers want easy and quick solutions to their problems, and chatbots can be that tool. 

Quicker Resolutions

Unlike email or traditional live chat, chatbots can give answers within seconds. Customers will be able to move forward once they get answers to what they are looking for. This also means that the customer will be able to purchase without leaving the webpage.

More accessible

The main reason users embrace chatbot as a tool is that it is easily accessible to them. No matter which web page, platform, or app they are on, having a chatbot there makes it easier for them to interact with your business. 

Comfortable communication

Messaging tools are being used more than social media because your customer spends most of their time on mobile and is used to chatting with friends and family. By offering them a familiar communication channel, the customer has complete control of the conversation and is more likely to engage. Customers can use chatbots to get answers 24/7 from messaging platforms of their choice.

The features you should be looking for in a chatbot.

The very first chatbot, ELIZA, made in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum, was built as a therapy robot, to offer scripted responses to therapy-related questions. It was linear and structured and didn’t understand intent.  Chatbots have come a long way since then. 

Today, there are several chatbot software available in the marketplace, built for many reasons. When deciding to buy a chatbot, look for the features that boost your workflows, including :

#1. Omni-channel

Having a chatbot on your website is not enough. People are engaging more on messaging apps than on social media, and this means your business needs to engage with your audience where they prefer to communicate. Check whether the chatbot integrates with messaging services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

#2. No code 

Chatbots can seem complex and technical, but the reality is, you don’t need an army of developers to create chatbots or write code. Find a chatbot provider who can help with managing chat conversations across platforms and has a customizable chat widget. This way, all you have to do is integrate it with your website and train it to answer your most common questions. 

#3. Affordable 

Chatbots themselves are cost-saving channels for businesses, so they shouldn’t be expensive to implement either. Look for a chatbot that covers the basic features that your business will require. If all you need is a rule-based chatbot, you don’t need to invest in purchasing or building an AI chatbot.

#4. Teachable 

Your AI chatbots will also need to be trained before they can interact with customers, so you need to find one that allows you to do this with ease. Unless you require it to perform highly complicated functions, find a chatbot that doesn’t require too much technical expertise. The more complicated the functionality, the more time you will need to spend writing code to train your chatbot. 

#5. Artificial intelligence 

Not all chatbots are AI-enabled, but those with AI are more likely to give precise answers. They can understand the intention of the customer and learn to have better conversational flows to customer queries. Not only can they trigger actions, they also know when to hand over the chat to a team member. Both these features offer uninterrupted communication flows between the business and the customer.

#6. Sentiment analysis 

Find a chatbot that can analyze human intention. Chatbots should know when to interact with the customers and whether their intent is positive, negative or neutral. Customers prefer quick conversations with bots but, at times, will want to talk to an agent. Your chatbot must be able to detect nuances and proceed.

 Chatbots aren't killer robots!

 

What are the myths and misconceptions around chatbots?

Myth 1
Chatbots are just for marketing teams

Depending on the journeys you create, chatbots can lend a strong hand to your marketing team, sales agents, product teams and customer support.

Myth 2
Chatbots are only for websites

Although we are most familiar with chatbots on web pages, they also integrate with messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and other business messaging apps.

Myth 3
Chatbots will replace humans

They are pre-programmed by a set of queries, so while the tone and feel maybe as a person they cannot have complex conversations on topics they don't know.

 

Myth 4
Chatbots are complicated to set-up

Contrary to popular belief, chatbots are fairly easy to deploy. You don’t need to have the technical knowledge or coding experience.

Myth 5
Chatbots are only meant to deflect

Chatbots are not just reactive in nature, they are a great way for all customer-facing teams to proactively engage with visitors.

Top 10 chatbot platforms in 2022 

#1. Freshchat 

Freshchat offers AI-driven, omnichannel chatbots for customer service. It's a great addition to your support strategy and enables your team to provide a delightful support experience every time. Here’s what you get with Freshchat bots. 

Pricing plans: 21 days free trial and billed based on monthly bot sessions. 

#2. Drift chatbot 

The Drift chatbot is primarily focused on lead generation and is more suitable for sales teams. 

Features include

Pricing plans: There is no free trial, and the pricing is available upon request. 

#3. Intercom 

Intercom offers chatbots for sales, support, and marketing. 

Their features include

Pricing plans: No free trial and pricing is calculated based on the volume of conversations. 

#4. Chatfuel 

Chatfuel is a chatbot platform that is specifically designed for websites, Facebook and Instagram. 

Features include 

Pricing plans: Free 50 conversations and three different plans priced on the volume of conversations. 

#5. Landbot.io 

Landbot is a chatbot platform best suited for independent and small businesses. 

Features include 

Pricing plans: Free trial and three different plans billed on the number of chats. 

#6. Mobile Monkey 

Mobile Monkey is a mobile messaging platform that focuses on Facebook Messenger support. 

Features include 

Pricing plans: Free trial and three other pricing plans depending on the use case. 

#7. Pandorabots 

Pandorabots is one of the oldest and largest chatbot service providers. 

Features include

Pricing plans: Free trial and three different plans based on the volume of messages. 

#8. Tidio 

Tidio offers chatbots that aim to improve customer experience. 

Features include 

Pricing plans: Free trial and two different pricing plans based on the volume of conversations. 

#9. Aivo

Aivo is a chatbot platform that offers both text and voice messaging for customer interactions. 

Features include 

Pricing plans: Free trial and four different plans billed per conversation 

#10. ManyChat 

ManyChat is a popular chatbot platform more suited for social media support. 

Features include 

Pricing plans: Free trial and two other pricing plans.

Why choose Freshchat chatbots?

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Why choose Freshchat chatbots?

Delight, not just deflect

Build bots that can detect intent, define its conversations using the powerful no-code builder. Setup flows to guide your customers through a step-by-step troubleshooting process to fully resolve their concerns.

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All your apps, in the mix

Set up APIs for your bot to trigger while in-conversation with customers. Your bot can fetch and push data to any of your 3rd party applications and internal systems to improve resolution rates.

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Make your bot polyglot

Upload scripts of your bot conversations in any language so your bot can speak in your customers’ preferred language!

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Retain your brand's identity

Own the look and feel of your chatbot widget so it reflects your brand values. Customize the shape, color, size, and everything about your widget with our simple CSS editor.

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Measure and optimize

Measure your bot’s performance and optimize its flows for higher efficiency. Create reports with attributes and visualizations of your choice to suit your business requirements.

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Here's how you can get the best out of chatbots

Don't expect too much from a chatbot

Chatbots are only as smart as their programming. It’s important to know what your chatbot can do and what it cannot. You can train it to learn simple dialogues that are often repetitive with your users before moving on to complex topics. A good way to do this is by looking at common questions your customers usually ask and starting out with those.

 

Ease the fear of talking to a robot

Even with research showing that the majority of customers are willing to talk to chatbots, there will be some fear surrounding technology. Let your customers know that even though they are interacting with a robot, they can always request for a live agent. Give the chatbot an identity that humanizes the conversation and makes the visitors engage with the bot.

 

Create a personality for your bot

Giving your chatbot an identity can seem daunting. Chatbots that don’t have an identity can feel less natural in interactions, and visitors will not get the sense of your brand identity. Think of who your ideal customer is and build your chatbot’s identity to cater to their comfort. When programming conversation, think of the tone your team would use and duplicate the same for your chatbot. It’s best to find a balance between humor and sensitivity.

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