Chatbot: another IT fashion thing or an efficient business instrument?

Whether you have a huge enterprise or a startup, there are definitely some tasks which can be automated. Instead of hiring secretaries or call-center operators, today we have chatbots, which can deal with the lion’s share of the routine processes: talk to your prospects, pay bills, deal with delivery, find and book tickets for the upcoming trip, etc. But still, many people are not familiar with bots and their capabilities or just don’t take them seriously. Continue reading to find out more about bots and how they can take your business to another level!

Why use chatbot for personal needs?

We are all mobile today, but we no longer talk a lot. Everybody is chatting in messengers. It’s more convenient, less distracting and now messengers give a lot more possibilities than just talking to others. And here bots come to help individuals to do shopping, find out about sales, specials, book tickets and check the weather forecast. All these is a B2C sphere and a bot can contribute a lot here. It’s just up to your creativity, how engaging your bot can be!

How can bots help you benefit in business?

To keep pace with the technical progress means that your business can stay afloat and continue growing in this rapidly changing world. Bots can shorten your expenses, fasten numerous processes, reach a much larger clients audience… and they don’t need a lunch or holidays! So let’s study how chatbots can contribute to your business in a greater detail.

Personal service improvement

If your bot helps to find and buy tickets, it can not only find the cheapest yet fast way to travel, it can also propose to book a hotel in the destination city, order a taxi and inform you where are the closest places to have dinner! You see, you can not only gain on selling tickets but involve all possible services which a person may need during a trip. And the bot is always ready to help 24/7, which is pleasing for your loyal clients and can assist in lead generation greatly.

Quicker and easier shopping process

Bots can perform like professional shopping assistants: they can tell you if the right colour and size is available, recommend similar garments, tell you about sales and help you to make the order within few clicks. Moreover, bots study clients’ preferences which make the further shopping process even more pleasant, which boosts both, sales rates and loyalty to the company.

Higher personalization

As it was mentioned above, a bot can study the essential information about clients, so there will be no unnecessary questions and filling in the same data during the next shopping. The bot will provide your clients with the info which they personally need, propose them goods and services which they may be interested according to their shopping history.

Costs-saving

To study clients’ demands, which of your products are the most popular or what is the blind spot in your services, a lot of time and people are needed. Or…you just need a chatbot which will study the data and find the answers much faster and efficiently! So, if you still don’t invest in big data and IT technologies in your business, we strongly recommend you to, because it’s an investment into your business’ future! As you see, bots can be fast, multitasking and effective assistance for your business. The cost to create an app or a bot can be similar or even lower, but with a bot, your prospects will not have to familiarize themselves with another app, they will not have to launch it every time they need it. A bot is much easier and faster to use! Although, instead of pushing buttons and choosing among numerous options, a bot can provide your clients with a human-like communication which is a time-saving and a more pleasant process! While people need to be taught, a bot just needs to process data, it can study continuously and is ready to help 24/7!

What are the top chatbots technologies?

We have just analyzed where and how bots can be helpful. Now let’s see what you need to create a bot. As mentioned above, to get a smart bot you need relevant information from the sphere where you want the bot to operate. You also have to choose tools to develop it, a social platform for it and of course, a server to keep the data. There are different types of classification of bots and you may find that there 4, 7 or any other number of bots types. But let’s make it simple. There are two types of chatbots according to how they function:

• Bots, which perform predefined commands only
• Bots, which are developed on the basis of AI, and can improve themselves using machine learning algorithms.

Depending on the chatbot type, you will need different tools for its development. Now let’s analyze them briefly.

Bots, which perform predefined commands

What these bots are able to do:

• They can answer predefined questions only, which they have in their database. Untypical question, which is not familiar to the bot, will remain without an answer.
• They can perform a limited list of commands only.

How they operate:

• Search for the predefined template
• Recognize the type of purpose ( e.g. book a table, order a taxi)

After having processed the request, this type of a bot chooses an answer from predefined templates or creates a dynamic one, but again, if only it has an appropriate database. These bots use a tree-like structure for communication with people. To make the bot more flexible, you will have to use deep learning algorithms. Considering that Facebook is the most popular social platform for today, we advise choosing Chatfuel JSON API, a platform for chatbot development, which will help you to create bots for Facebook Messenger without programming. To be able to implement third-party APIs, use Gomix plugin.

Bots on the basis of machine learning algorithms

These type of bots is created on the basis of AI so it will not percept commands and requests literally and is able to study and improve itself over time. Despite being “smart”, such a bot can make grammar mistakes, but having an access to the needed data, it will become grammatically literate pretty fast. The great advantages of such bots are that they are really able to communicate in a human-like manner, if you teach them, of course. To create bots which can use natural language processing and analyze the data, provided by the users, we advise using open chatbot platform Wit.ai/Api.ai/QnAMaker and Microsoft web-based service QnAMaker.ai. Or to use professional developers’ services, regarding that AI and machine learning development requires superior skills and experience.

How much it costs to develop a bot for your business

Finally, one of the most thrilling questions! But there is no single answer ) As you may know, the same job may cost really different depending on the country. For instance, in Ukraine to develop a chatbot may cost around $50,000, while in the countries with higher rates it can be $100 000 - $150 000. To calculate the price you should also consider such things as:

• The platform where you will place the bot
• Whether the bot will perform predefined commands only or it will be an AI-based bot
• The data volume which you want it to process, and many others.

The chatbot may also cost you nothing if you are going to make it on the basis of Facebook Messenger, Telegram or Sender.

Things to consider to create a qualitative chatbot

As any other service, a chatbot should be clear and pleasant to use. Here are some features which will improve the user experience with your future bot. Let’s go!

1. The first impression - it’s a must that the bot says hello and calls the user’s name. Provide the users with a demonstrative guidance about the bot’s functionality. Not only an advanced user but even your grandmother should be able to deal with your chatbot
2. Well thought-out menu - include the main features such as FAQs, Get Help, About and Feedback into the list. Everything should be in the open, without extra moves. People use bots to save their time, so make the menu as concise and clear as possible.
3. Information quality - avoid direct links, low-quality pictures and, of course, grammar mistakes - this is a poor showing. There are plenty of libraries with all kinds of sources for an outstanding quality content. There are thousands of bots in the market today, so to be competitive quality really matters!
4. Store basic information - your bot shouldn’t ask for the same data many times! It should store it! Everybody understands that chatbot is a robot, but it’s not a parrot, isn’t it? A bot is created for your customers’ comfort, so make the interaction between it and your clients really comfortable and useful!

Now we hope that you have deepened your understanding of what is a bot, what makes a good bot and what you should consider making a bot for your business. Before making any product, including a bot, we would advise you first to begin with an MVP version. Such an approach can let you check whether this is what your customers and you really need, and it will be much easier to improve it according to the testing results and the users’ feedbacks. If you have already decided, that a chatbot is a great solution for your business, our managers are ready to help you!