Chatbots are the super-cool new technology that lots of people are talking about.
We’ve been using them on some of our client campaigns and have seen amazing results.
One of our clients even told us they’d totally revolutionised their client prospecting and on-boarding process!
So why are Chatbots so important? Well if your website is your online sales brochure, your chatbot is your online sales person (and/or support person too) Think about it like this. How do most people communicate right now? What is their go-to method? Chat! Whether that’s good old SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook messenger or any other chat app, people spend a lot of time sending small messages to each other. It’s even starting to replace email in many situations.
So when someone comes onto your website or landing page, how do you think they want to interact with you? Phone call? Fill in a long contact form? A more natural option for most people is to chat.
By adding a chat option you give people a light-touch way to communicate with you where they don’t have to give you all their details straight away. It’s a great way to increase conversions and improve customer experience.
The hardest part is deciding which Chatbot to use and you may need some help figuring out which approach is right for you.
The whole space is quite new, it’s fast moving and pricing can be vastly different. Some platforms such as Wix offer their own built in Chat tools. If you have an existing Facebook page and Facebook is part of your strategy you might want to add their free Messenger plugin.
These Chatbots will give you the ability to have direct conversations with your prospects or clients. This is great for customer experience, but what if it becomes overwhelming?
That’s when automation comes into play. More advanced Chatbots such as Drift or ManyChat (for Facebook) allow you to build out entire playbooks of automated conversations. Some claim to use Artificial Intelligence. Even though your clients may realise it’s an automated conversation, there are lots of little tricks you can do to humanise the experience and build your brand into the messaging. For example adding short pauses whilst the Chatbot is “typing”!
Automation also allows you to remove labour intensive tasks altogether. For example we use chatbots with our clients to screen prospects and then sign them up. Historically this was handled by call centres, but now it’s fully automated. Another example would be arranging and booking meetings or calls. Chatbots are here to stay and will become more intelligent and advanced over time.
Email me if you’d like to discuss more about how we’ve used them and how you could benefit from them too.
Michael Edge