Chatbots are taking the world by storm. It seems like every other day, there is a new chatbot on Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Kik, or Google Allo to take your social media interactions to the next level. Chatbots are letting businesses engage with their customers in a more personal way than ever before. Think of how many times you’ve entered information into a form online only to have to repeat it again and again for various fields or filters. With chatbots, businesses can provide users with an automated response to any question they may have about their products or services. Even large companies are looking into using chatbots as a way to streamline customer support processes and create personalized FAQs that address common questions people may have about their business.
Define Your Chatbot Goals Before Building It
Before you begin coding your chatbot, you need to think about what you want your bot to do. What problem are you trying to solve? What are you hoping to achieve with your bot? These are just a few of the questions you should ask yourself before diving into creating your interactive chatbot. Now that you’ve got a better idea of what you want your bot to do, you’re ready to take the next step and build your bot!
Build A Landing Page For Your Bot
As mentioned above, you’ll want to have a landing page for your bot. This will allow you to collect the information you need to build your chatbot. Things like what questions your bot can answer, the bot’s key features, any FAQs, and any other content you want your users to see before interacting with your bot. Let your users know about your bot. If you have a blog, post an article about your bot and include a link to your landing page. If you don’t have a blog, consider creating a landing page on your site or using a landing page builder like ConvertKit’s.
Add An Explanation Bot Or Ask A Question bot
For example, if you’re selling coffee, people are going to want to know if their favorite coffee shop is selling coffee — and they’re probably going to ask you “Is [restaurant name] selling coffee?” over and over in their head until they get the chance to ask you in real life. To address these types of questions and many others, you can add an “explanation bot”. An explanation bot lets your users ask questions and get answers to FAQs. All you have to do is add a question to your bot and an explanation bot will answer it.
Add An FAQ bot
FAQ bots can be used for a wide variety of questions, including those about your products or services, shipping information, policies and costs, and refund information. You can also use FAQ bots to create FAQs for your events. For example, you can create a bot that answers questions like, “What is the address of the event?” or “How do I attend the event?” Other questions you can address with FAQ bots include: What are the fees associated with our event? What is the discount code that grants a discount on our event?
Add An Event Bot
Event bots can be used to create reminders, event check-in reminders, event check-out reminders, and even event attendance reminders. These types of bots can be especially helpful for companies that run events and want to remind people to come to them. Perhaps you host events like workshops or conferences, or maybe you run meetups for your industry. For all of these types of events, event bots can help remind people to show up.
Integrate With Google Calendar Or Outlook
If you’re building a bot for businesses, you’ll most likely want to integrate with a CRM or CRMs like Google Calendar or Outlook. Each of these will help your bot have certain information stored in them that can be used to create branded messages for your customers. For example, you can use CRMs to build a bot that reminds customers that their next payment is due. Or, you can use CRMs to create a bot that reminds customers to pick up their orders from the post office.
Wrapping Up
With the rise of chatbots and their ease of implementation, businesses can provide a digital assistant to their customers that can help them solve their most common problems. And, with the increasing number of chatbot platforms available, it’s easier than ever to create a chatbot that provides assistance that fits your needs and customer base. There are several things to consider when building your chatbot. Some important factors to keep in mind include defining your chatbot goals, building a landing page for your bot, adding an explanation bot or ask a question bot, and adding FAQs, an event bot, and integration with a CRM or CRM.