6 tips for optimising your chatbot
Innovation has become everyone's business... according to new data from Juniper Research, the number of exchanges by chatbot users will reach 22 billion by 2023, compared with around 2.6 billion in 2019. More and more businesses will therefore be automating their interactions effectively , whether to attract new customers (leadbot), deal quickly with their customers' requests (customer service) or answer their employees' recurring questions (internal chatbot), whether on Facebook Messenger, which already has more than 1.3 billion active users, or on their websites. This craze for chatbots is akin to a revolution: soon, almost everyone will be using them.
The points of contact are multiplying, but consumers are still looking for ever greater simplicity. It is now up to companies and brands to adapt to this need by deploying a strategy of ubiquity.
A chatbot is a highly innovative tool that brilliantly eliminates the problem of response latency. It enables questions to be answered at any time. Interactions are greatly optimised, and a company's customer service department is freed up from a heavy workload. Sales and recruitment staff can devote their time to more advanced tasks. As a result, the company is able to provide answers with high added value. A chatbot therefore establishes a new channel for conversational commerce and the dissemination of information. It complements the first-level user service.
It is important to inject sufficient responsiveness and dynamism into your chatbot so that it adapts harmoniously to each user's environment. Mastering the integration of a chatbot will make a company's customer experience even more user-friendly. These tips will help you develop and maintain your chatbot. Welcome to the age of conversational marketing!
Tip 1: Specify the chatbot's area of expertise from the outset
It's vital that the user is informed of your chatbot's area of expertise right from the start of the conversation, so that he/she has an idea of what can be expected. In this context, users who venture outside the conversational agent's preferred topic shouldn't be surprised if the chatbot isn't able to answer them!
💡 O ur tip: The name of a chatbot can provide a good indication of the service it serves.
Tip 2: Deal with user errors in an educational way
Explain to users what they can do to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Gentle guidance will support your users throughout their journey. Plan responses to suit these situations.
💡 O ur advice: Format responses by inserting explanations. Avoid crude messages such as "Re-enter the date (dd/mm/yyyy)", preferring instead more comprehensible formulas, such as "I can only understand a date in the following format: dd/mm/yyyy".
Tip 3: Make your chatbot come alive
Your chatbot also needs to be alive, so it can dynamically transmit or feed itself data from a Google Sheets document, data from your CRM (Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoho, Piedrive etc...) , an FAQ or any other external API via Webhooks calls or connector services (Zapier, Integromat...).
💡 O ur advice: As with any other service, remember to regularly check the freshness of the data. The best way is not to connect the chatbot to frozen data. Don't hesitate to link it, for example, to RSS feeds broadcasting your latest news.
Tip 4: Use emojis
Most users are familiar with emojis and use them frequently. Your chatbot should incorporate this practice. Emojis should be an integral part of the language level used by the chatbot.
💡 O ur advice: Use natural language analysis algorithms that include emojis, as we have implemented at BOTNATION. These can even be used as keywords to trigger a response.
Tip 5: Get good quality media (photos, videos, etc.)
Your chatbot should include a range of attractive images, quality videos and buttons that are pleasant to look at. It's important to work on the aesthetic side of your chatbot, given that it represents the image of your company or organisation. Make sure the appropriate media is of sufficient size to ensure a quality user experience.
💡 O ur tip: All this data travels over the mobile network. Therefore, optimise the weight of each file by striking the right balance between weight, size and quality.
Tip 6: Optimise the use of notifications
Facebook Messenger notifications are a fantastic marketing tool that you can use to target your users in an almost surgical way. From the wide range of notifications available, you can activate the ones that are best suited to each situation:
- one-off notification (on such and such a day or at such and such a time),
- periodic notification (at such and such a time on certain days),
- reminder notification (activated after a given period of inactivity).
Boost your chances of being read by making clever use of the data you collect about your users. This will provide you with information that will enable you to formulate the most personalised messages for them.
💡 O ur tip: Here's a concrete application of data optimisation in the context of notifications: an e-commerce chatbot sends out a follow-up notification, such as "basket abandoned", after a user has added a product to basket, but this has not led to the conversation being completed to its climax (no purchase has been made).
Conclusion
If you still have questions about integrating a chatbot, now is the time for development and innovation! At a time when the conversational customer experience is a real pillar, it's important to open up new opportunities to enhance your chatbot and transform it into the most modern form of user support.
Don't hesitate to call on the services of a professional platform like BOTNATION to help you develop and manage your chatbot. As well as making consumers happy, chatbots also have great cost-cutting potential, with deployments enabling businesses to make annual savings of $439 million worldwide by 2023.
So chatbots are no longer a luxury, they are essential.
Sources:
https://thefintechtimes.com/chatbot-interactions-retail/
https://www.juniperresearch.com/press/press-releases/ai-spending-by-retailers-reach-12-billion-2023
Sponsored article. The expert contributors are authors independent of the appvizer editorial team. Their comments and positions are their own.
Article translated from French