What do you think of when you think of a chatbot? Maybe you think of Erica, Bank of America’s virtual financial assistant who is always ready to help you make bank.
Or you picture Dom, Domino’s chatbot, who always ensures your pizza is hot and ready. Or perhaps you’ve gotten your insurance through Lemonade’s Maya.
Chatbots are everywhere — on websites, WhatsApp, and every social media you can think of. Chatbots create highly personalized interactions (something today’s shoppers want and expect) using the latest technology, like artificial intelligence and real-time information.
What is the benefit to you? Getting your time back, saving yourself from answering the same question a million times, selling in your sleep, and approximately a bajillion other things.
Chatbot automation is here to stay, so let’s discuss how to make them work for you.
What’s a Chatbot?
A chatbot is a software application that simulates human conversation. Chatbots work to understand what the person they’re communicating with needs and adapts responses to provide the best solution. It does this using natural language processing and artificial intelligence (AI).
Chatbot automation is like hiring a virtual assistant (minus the hourly pay). It allows you to engage with your customers throughout their shopping journey without manually engaging each person individually.
How Do Chatbots Work?
There are three types of chatbots on the market, and which one you use will vary based on your needs. Let’s chat(bot) about how these chatbots work.
1. Rule-based chatbots
A rule-based chatbot is the most common type, built using a chat marketing platform. It uses a graphic interface guided by rules you have determined. When someone engages with the chatbot, they select responses based on their needs, and the chatbot steers them toward the best solution.
2. Live chat
Customer support and sales teams use live chat to engage with customers directly. Rather than preset scripts, these teams use the chatbot to craft responses to customer questions.
3. AI chatbots
AI chatbots learn as they interact with customers. A developer builds them, and as they talk to customers, they become more intelligent and craft responses tailored to the customer.
However, both live chat and rule-based chatbots can also use AI without necessarily being an AI chatbot. For instance, Manychat is a rule-based chatbot. However, the introduction of Manychat AI means that you get help from AI while creating your rules, from getting automated flow suggestions to receiving AI assistance in crafting the perfect copy in your brand voice.
Why Should You Use Chatbot Automation?
We’re feeling chatty, so let’s discuss what makes chatbot automation worthwhile while looking at some success stories.
Automate your FAQ
No one likes having to hunt down answers to their questions online — and no one working in customer experience likes to have to answer the same question repeatedly. Chatbot automation saves both of you the headache.
When gym chain B-IT Fitness ran Facebook Lead Ads to reach new potential members, they got flooded with questions from leads. That’s the good news. The bad news? They had to answer them all manually. My fingers hurt just thinking about all that typing.
The next time, they ran JSON ads that led users to an FAQ bot that answered questions and qualified their leads. The result was a 50% decrease in cost per lead, a 40% increase in lead conversion rates, and a 20X return on ad spend. Not too bad for one bot. 🤖
Boost engagement.
Now, here’s a chatbot that’s genius. To promote its new show Genius, National Geographic created a conversation bot that spoke just like Einstein would. The Einstein bot spoke with users to have fun, engaging, brand voice-y conversations while also dropping in information about the show and other interesting facts.
Conversations typically lasted between six and eight minutes with a 50% user re-engagement. Using a chatbot helps put your brand in the spotlight and enables potential customers to engage with your brand one-on-one. Chatbots can answer questions, but creating fun experiences for your followers in the process makes for a much better marketing strategy.
Improve lead targeting.
Car maker KIA turned its Facebook Messenger into a lean, mean (actually, it’s very nice) lead-generating machine. KIA’s chatbot, “Kian,” talks to 115,000 users weekly and has 3X more interactions than KIA’s corporate site. On the customer side, they get Kian’s help with everything from roadside assistance to payment questions.
However, on KIA’s side, Kian captures customer details and collects information on their needs — a huge help with re-targeting efforts. It’s no wonder that Kian boasts a 21% conversion rate.
Solve pain points.
The best lead generation tactics help your buyers overcome a struggle — using your product. That’s why Madison Reed created Madi, a bot “obsessed with finding your most flattering shade.” While the hair color bot is text-based, it also allows users to submit a selfie, which helps Madi even more with choosing the right shade.
Madi is essentially Madison Reed’s audience’s personal colorist, who is right there on their phone. It asks engaging questions and responds in a friendly tone that fits the company’s brand voice. By using Madi, Madison Reed improved engagement by 400% and garnered a 21% click-through rate (CTR).
Direct traffic to your website or products.
Whole Foods uses a Facebook Messenger bot that instantly helps shoppers find recipes and cooking inspiration. Rather than letting its audience search for recipes online, which can lead to them shopping at (bleh) competitors, Whole Foods lets its audience ask it directly for recipe recommendations.
In turn, the chatbot shares recipes built from Whole Foods products and directs Facebook users back to the company’s website. The result is a tremendous boost in web traffic, mixed with a dash of brand awareness and a sprinkle of lead generation. Now, that’s a recipe for success.
Generate more revenue.
Chatbots can build a better customer experience, which boosts customer loyalty and helps improve revenue overall. Acquiring a new customer can cost 5X more than retaining an existing one. Plus, returning customers spend 67% more on average.
Amtrak launched Julie, its virtual assistant chatbot, to make the travel planning process a breeze. It answers 5 million questions per year. All that interaction led to a 30% increase in revenue per booking and an 8X return on investment (ROI).
Engage at the right time.
Using a chatbot on your social media messaging sites or with SMS creates a direct line of communication with your fans. Consider what Bud Light did with its Bud Bot. The Bud Bot allows Bud Light to connect with its fans right when they most likely need their beer — on game days.
The Bud Bot reminds subscribers to stock up on game day, sends special team cans to let fans toast their teams, and even delivers beer in under an hour on game days. During the 2017 campaign using Bud Bot, the bot saw an 83% engagement rate.
How to Choose Your Chatbot Automation Tool
Now that we’ve gotten into the “why” of chatbot automation let’s discuss “how”. As in, “How can you choose a chatbot automation tool that fits your needs?”
When to Use Rule-Based Chatbots
Rule-based chatbots are ideal choices when you’re looking to provide structure to your chatbot automation. With rule-based chatbots, you can set up multiple conversation flows, which direct your fans to different topics.
You can use rule-based chatbots for customer communication, building branching flows that go through your frequently asked questions. You can also use them for sales and build flows that direct users to where they can set up a call or make a purchase. You can use them for marketing and direct fans to ways to engage with your company.
The point is that rule-based chatbots are built on rules (duh). Those rules have to be set before that chatbot is ready to go live. However, just because AI chatbots and rule-based chatbots are technically different doesn’t mean that AI doesn’t factor into rule-based chatbots. Some chatbot automation tools may make you manually input your rules. Other chatbot automation platforms (*cough* Manychat *cough*) make the rule-setting process easier with AI tools that help you build your flows much faster.
When to Use AI Chatbots
AI chatbots need a source of information to learn from, but they’re ideal for situations where you may need a little more flexibility than having set rules.
These chatbots can be helpful for customer support since they can use your FAQ and other company information instead of having your team input tons of different branching flows for tons of different questions.
AI chatbots can also be an incredible engagement tool. Consider if you were to build a conversation bot, like Nat Geo’s Einstein bot. You’re not likely to guess what every person will say to that bot. (People are weird, after all.) So, building rules for this bot would be a challenge. Using an AI chatbot can make those answers much more flexible and fun.
When to Use Live Chat
Look, chatbots have a time and place. But you’ll get frustrated when you’ve been chatting with a bot for 15 minutes trying to answer your complicated, not-programmed-in question. Customer support can use other types of chatbot automation, but sometimes, a person needs another person.
Sales can also benefit from live chat, as well. Today’s savvy digital buyers expect self-service buying tools. But sometimes, you just need a real person to close the deal.
The Future of Chatbot Automation
What’s up next for the world of chatbot automation? Let’s look at some growing trends for chatbots.
Greater Implementation
Nearly 60% of B2B companies are already using a chatbot, but as chatbot automation opportunities grow, this number will also increase. The longer chatbots have been around, the more people have found more ways to use them. We’ve seen chatbots used to help patients make doctor’s appointments, plan their travel, and find their ideal hair color. There’s no telling what type of chatbot will come next.
More Time (and Money) Saved
Chatbots are expected to save businesses up to 2.5 billion hours of work. Chatbots reduce your employees’ manual workload. And, while chatbots can’t fully replace human interaction, they can reduce your need for as many virtual assistants and customer support representatives. The ones you have will be operating at peak efficiency with a chatbot to help them.
24-Hour Self Service
More than 60% of consumers say the best part about chatbots is their 24/7 availability. That 24-hour service is good for you and good for your buyers. If your buyers are in another time zone and have a question, they don’t have to wait for the next day when your business hours start again. They can just ask the chatbot.
And that 24-hour service also means that you’re not trying to work around the clock yourself, worried about missing sales and engagement. If you get a DM at midnight, you don’t have to drag yourself out of bed and rush to your computer. Your chatbot will engage your fans and direct them where they need to go.
Personalization
More than 75% of consumers get frustrated when they don’t find the personalized sales experiences they want, which means the potential for more lost sales if you’re not focusing on personalization. Chatbots help you build customized interactions without trying to cater to the personal needs of every interested customer. To you, personalizing all these interactions would be a near-impossible task. Chatbots can do it in their sleep. (You know, if they slept.)
Start Engaging Your Fans in Your Sleep
Chat automation is a win-win — for you and those who want to buy from you. Your buyers get the self-service they want and the personalized interactions they expect.
And you? You get back tons of time, save money, and build better relationships with your fans. There aren’t many tools that let you connect with your fans in your sleep, but chat automation does just that.
Start connecting with your fans, even when you’re getting some shuteye.
