The Ultimate Guide to Chatbots for Business | Engagely.ai
Amid so many exciting developments in the world of technology, chatbots have greatly transformed the way businesses function online. It’s the most powerful and convenient customer engagement tool for businesses to automate real-time customer experience. While the benefits of chatbots abound, there is a need to understand exactly how you can align them with your business needs.
Here’s a 101 guide about chatbots for businesses.
How do chatbots work?
Most people have come across a chatbot on the internet at least a few times by now. But, have you wondered how do chatbots work? If yes, then here’s a detailed answer. A chatbot is programmed with certain algorithms to provide specific answers based on the text they receive. They are loaded with conversational user interfaces (CUIs), APIs, and databases to work efficiently. The best chatbots are AI-powered chatbots which are characterized by the following features:
- Multilingual
- Omnichannel
- No-code platform to build the chatbot
- Contextual conversations
- Pre-trained NLP
- Secured
Types of Chatbots:
The two most popular types of chatbots in present times:
1. Rules-Based Chatbots
Ideal for building an interactive FAQ section, these chatbots provide predefined answers to a few specified questions.
2. AI-powered Chatbots
Made with a combination of NLP and ML, these are intellectually advanced chatbots capable of answering more contextual problems. They can make any conversation feel almost like interacting with a human.
What goes into chatbot implementation?
Before you start developing your own chatbot, you must get a better insight into implementing a chatbot. Here is a detailed step-by-step process that will help you avail of the benefit of chatbots for conversational marketing:
Define the purpose and outcomes:
At the outset, you need to chalk out your bot’s objective, be it customer support, lead generation, utility, or more. Besides, you have to decide its personality as well, whether it’s funny or formal.
Create sample conversations:
A great way to proceed is to involve your entire team in building multiple use cases with the chatbot. This will help greatly in developing an efficient bot while motivating the team to understand chatbot advantages simultaneously.
Develop a knowledge base:
At the end of the day, all chatbots contain a repository of information they present to the end-user. Therefore, this is the most crucial aspect of the implementation process wherein you feed the bot all the necessary data about your desired purpose.
Test, Analyze, Iterate:
Building a chatbot isn’t enough. You have to constantly test it for bugs and iterate to make it seamless.
How have chatbots helped businesses?
Many modern businesses have embraced chatbots, from e-commerce and human resource to travel and real estate. The innovative use of these exciting tech assistants has transformed the very definition of customer experience. From an AI-powered nutritionist that offers you the most potent dietary advice free of cost to a bot suggesting to make travel planning as convenient as ever, chatbots have found a place in almost all industries.
Several similar case studies on Conversational AI highlight the varied ways businesses are capitalizing on the chatbot’s advantages. However, industries like education, hospitality, insurance, and more are yet to catch up with this amazing technology.
Final Thoughts
Chatbots are already on their way to revolutionize the way businesses engage with and service their customers online. With so many potential features and benefits, adding a bot on your website does not sound like a bad idea after all. If you are wondering how to make the most proficient and helpful chatbot, then Engagely.ai is your one-click guide. Find the most relevant and unique information on the subject to build a chatbot worth the efforts.
Originally published at https://www.engagely.ai on October 23, 2020.
