Chatbot applications can be used for various cases, so the definition of these conversational systems can vary. Generally, chatbots are AI platforms with natural language processing that live online on websites and social media platforms (such as facebook) to perform automated tasks like answering questions, directing visitors online to other resources or links, aid in onboarding customers and employees, and completing workflows.
It's like an online agent who never takes a day off from work and can learn from continuous conversations with humans through a messenger on any channel, such as facebook, or any website. And they can ultimately help businesses run better with customer support, which can lead to conversions.
There are two main types of chatbots, but they each have the ability to sound natural in conversation and have the same basic application.
Table of Contents
How Can You Best Use and Edit Chatbots for Your Business?
What are Some Features to Look for in Chatbot Apps?
How Do You Edit Chatbots in Application Platforms?
Are Chatbots Easy to Edit for Blogs?
What are the Misconceptions of Using an AI for Customer Support?
Scripted Chatbots
Scripted Chatbots follow predetermined paths that most chatbot apps allow you to create for visitors of your site. This may be the easiest of all chatbots to work on because its response is based on one of a few options it retrieved from the person interacting with it. Users can respond to the AI via voice, touch button, or text, depending on how the application is set up.
For example, a user may have a question about cars, but the chatbot will first need them to click either the "cars for sale" button or "sell a car" button to know where to direct the user next. This is called free form input.
Intelligent Chatbots
Intelligent Chatbots are pretty close to what we humans think of when we think of an AI. This type of chatbot can accept a lot of input from users as they type nearly any word or phrase into its messenger. The more these chatbots are used, the more intelligent they become as they learn keywords and phrases.
However, they are limited in a way because they may not be able to remember the conversation topics earlier, leading users to possibly repeating themselves. Nonetheless, the development of this type of chatbot is best for natural language as it learns how to sound more like a human agent.
Who are Chatbot Apps for?
The health of businesses can heavily rely on chatbots, whether it is for sales, customer support, advertising, or for the development of an onboarding program for employees.
This means anyone can use a chatbot to build up the attributes of businesses, including blogs, facebook pages, or other social media outlets. Some benefits of implementing chatbots into businesses include:
- Chatbots save you time and money on a human agent to respond to retrieved questions, comments, or concerns of customers.
- They offer extra information to users, giving you an edge that goes beyond just posting on facebook or creating a facebook group.
- Speaking of which, you can implement a chatbot directly on your facebook group for more user interactions.
- Chatbots can do more for customers, such as order food or other products, sign them up for marketing material, and save customer (and employee) information on the cloud.
- Embed forms for customers to fill out through the chatbot as the chatbot guides them on how to complete and submit it.
- Chatbots can even make payment easier, allowing users to directly pay for a product or service through the messenger.
Here are a few business and website examples that have used chatbot apps for sales, customer support, and other agent related help via a messenger:
- https://panaceahouston.com/
- https://www.empirepharmacyconsultants.com/
- https://www.ozo2usa.com/
- https://1mileup.com/product-panel-planner/
Think chatbots can help improve how you run businesses? Whether you have a SaaS company or just starting out with offering users a product or service, you can view our chatbot app below to see how easy it is to use.
How Do Chatbots Work?
According to smallbizgenius.net, nearly 80% of entrepreneurs use some sort of AI application. Whether it is on their company website, blog, or via their facebook page. Now, how do they even work?
It's not complicated to explain how chatbots work since it all depends on the depth of the conversations you want your chatbots to have with the potential customer.
We now understand that a chatbot is just a conversational system that uses natural language in a messenger to replicate a human. This is ultimately to help your team run as if it is twice its actual size!
The health of your company can rely on the health of these chatbots. They are unlike other platforms because chatbots have two main tasks.
User Request Analysis
This is the first task a chatbot performs based on the information it retrieved from a human to determine the user's intent.
For example, let's say the chatbot extracted relevant keywords or phrases it retrieved from the user regarding dog door prices. Perhaps the user typed in the messenger, "What are the cheapest prices of dog doors?"
The chatbot would then process the many different responses it has in its back pocket related to this topic based on phrases it retrieved. This means it would narrow down its responses to a few possibilities on dog door prices.
Returning Responses
The next step is to show the user its conversational abilities by outputting a response to the original information it retrieved.
After narrowing down the top possible responses for "cheap dog door prices", it will send the user a solution or request more information. Chatbots generally give the customer an apology if it cannot find anything based on what it retrieved. This will occur if the health and stability of the chatbot is lackluster, meaning its programming isn't up to par.
Chatbots commonly ask a customer to confirm if the following request is indeed what they want. According to our example, the chatbot could respond with: "Do you want to look at the following prices for dog doors?" followed by a button to confirm or deny the request.
There often will be a link to a page on the company site related to the customer question as well, which can be embedded in messenger boxes. This link can be connected to social media channels, like the company facebook page as well.
How Can You Best Use and Edit Chatbots for Your Business?
Before we dive into how chatbots can best be used for your business and users, it's probably best to take a step back and evaluate the goals and needs of each customer who visits your website.
Do you have to eliminate some agents and need a replacement customer service software? Do you have traffic on your site and need an AI to help gather customer information for your business's data? Whether or not you've figured out how a natural language chatbot can help any human who visits your website, continue reading.
You don't have to be an expert to entice users with an AI. Now that you know how many different AI chatbots are used, you can determine which type is best for your business with some tips below.
- Find a chatbot that features everything you need from natural language processing to directing a human to a link via the messenger.
- Determine if you need a budget for chatbot applications. Many applications offer an all-in-one suite to help with marketing and website management.
- If you want your business to onboard customers automatically, an AI is one of the best ways through a messenger that can guide a customer.
- You can even onboard employees with an AI, which can direct new employees to forms to complete or answers to common questions. This makes hiring new employees much smoother with less confusion, raising the chances of keeping a loyal employee.
- See if you have enough options for design in the messenger app. Can you change the border color to match your business, for example? Or do you care more about how many different responses chatbots can crank out for a customer based on the keywords it received?
- Do you need to gather customer information, such as email and phone number, safely and securely?
- Would you like a human to feel comfortable paying through the messenger on your business website?
- Want to use a lot of hyperlinks to direct customers to other pages on the site, which can easily address concerns? This is a simpler way of answering questions than programming and writing responses for the chatbot yourself.
- If you want to gather useful data that can be used later, you may want to have the ability to embed polls or surveys through chatbots that can directly connect to most other digital platforms. Polls are great for marketing purposes, such as advertising promotions and asking visitors if they want to hear more from a blog for a chance to win a product, for example.
We cannot tell you if free apps are more useful than paid messenger apps, but we hope this guide can showcase some key points to explore when figuring out how chatbots can be used for businesses and how you can create it to service your company goals.
What are Some Features to Look for in Chatbot Apps?
Chatbots usually have great builders and tools to add anything you may want in the messenger, such as the suggestions in the section above. The following are some things to look for in chatbots as you decide which can be implemented for you.
- These AI systems can be built by multiple team members to save time and productivity for your business.
- The chatbots should give helpful tools to create natural language processing in the conversational elements of the application.
- Besides a guide for writing conversational chatbots, they should always have a clear tutorial or lessons on how to navigate the chatbot builder that you can reference back to.
- More and more builders are offering a builder used specifically for mobile bot creation as well.
Now, we'll list the main features you may want for the chatbot messenger.
- Speaking of mobile use, there should be an option in the builder tool for mobile previewing to see how your chatbot will look via phone or tablet.
- Chatbots should have a builder that allows for multiple chatbots to be created for A/B testing to determine which chatbot users respond to better for your business goals.
- Most importantly, chatbots should give the creator, whether they are an expert and have used digital apps before, an easy drag 'n drop system to navigate and create the chatbots with any widget possible, such as:
- Text - to type conversational elements
- Buttons - based on the information received, chatbots can offer buttons to help direct them to an answer
- Hyperlinks - to direct the user to another page, such as the business facebook or twitter page
- Polls - multiple choice tool to add and edit into the messenger for product or website data
- Surveys - fillable sections in the messenger of chatbots to gather human responses for marketing or product data
- Forms - a fillable, digital paper that can be opened, saved, and submitted through the chatbot. Ideally this form can be opened and saved to a user's desktop as a pdf, doc., etc.
How Do You Edit Chatbots in Application Platforms?
You can create chatbots in many ways, whether it's through your mobile phone as you are on the go or on your computer at home or in the office. The following are examples of how to edit them in both mobile and desktop mode.
Many chatbot builders, including Oracle, have a tutorial button that you can always reference in case you forget how to do something. Similarly, there should be a help toolbar or search toolbar to type in a feature you want to use but cannot find in the chatbot builder.
Each piece of conversation the chatbot has with a human can be mapped out entirely by dragging a response box to the next response it should follow up with once the user responds. Based on the information received, you can drag the response (box) anywhere on the map that makes sense, according to the conversation the human has with the AI.
You can also open up the conversational box usually by double-clicking. Once open, you can type a welcoming message for visitors of your site or add some one of the other features mentioned before, such as a link to the site FAQ page or embed a form or survey.
Through these examples, we hope you can better understand exactly how to create an AI even if you are just a human who doesn't know coding. Keep in mind that most builders, luckily, have drag 'n drop capabilities. If you can point your cursor somewhere and click the mouse, you can build and plan a conversational AI system easily!
Using a Chatbot on the Cloud
It's possible to make a cloud-based chatbot and to make it secure. This is an extra step when you edit it if one of the apps you chose for your business is cloud-based.
You can allow access to your bot in numerous ways, such as giving your customer the option to sign in through google or facebook (or your own system) to start a conversational dialogue. Based on the information the AI retrieved, the customer is now using a cloud-based chatbot and can rest assured their information is secure.
This is just an example of a feature seen in cloud-based chatbots. Did you know that you can also create chatbots using cloud-based tools? However, this may require more coding on your part to build it from scratch. But it's possible and used by entrepreneurs all over the world.
Are Chatbots Easy to Edit for Blogs?
Yes! Chatbots can be used for blogs are especially helpful when it comes to marketing. Since blogs often offer a newsletter or advertise products they sell, chatbots can have even greater impact on revenue increase if that is the blog's goal.
Some blogs that can benefit greatly from chatbots include:
- Recipe blogs
- Lifestyle blogs
- Fashion or beauty blogs
- Home repair blogs
- Service blogs, such as software as a service or career-boosting businesses
- Entertainment and hobby blogs, such as video game strategy blogs or writing blogs
- Blogs that focus on social media, such as facebook or twitter accounts and groups
What are the Misconceptions of Using an AI for Customer Support?
There are a few misconceptions around using an AI for user support, and a few of these misconceptions can be applied to using chatbots in general.
- It's hard to use. It's actually simple to create with the right builder
- They can only communicate through voice or text: Chatbots can communicate through graphics (as seen in WeChat and Facebook Messenger) along with traditional voice commands and texting.
The jury is still out on whether or not chatbots will be able to replace humans entirely since they are not actual robots, but they are AI. And we all know the future is progressing. With these myths debunked, we hope you can see the uses for a natural language processing bot can be endless.
Conclusion
Now you know what chatbots are, and you may realize it is best for your business to save time and money on personal agents when you can utilize an AI for customer support, advertisement, and onboarding.
There are no coding skills needed to create chatbots because, after all, we are only human. Just like any human, though, the health of the body reflects how well you treat it, and the health of a business does the same. Treat it well by considering chatbots a solution or tool to increase the financial and manageable health of your business.
You're welcome to explore our chatbot tools for free without signing up. Just play around to see how it works!
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