Everything You Need To Know About Chat-bots Boosting Businesses Online
The idea of a machine learning system in the 1950s was considered as a myth. But due to radical technological revolution and digital transformation, we are now assisted by Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our daily routine. Businesses are using AI to market their products and services. With chat-bots installed, businesses are experimenting with new ways of marketing their services online.
Though the chat-bots are rapidly gaining popularity among-st businesses in recent times, the concept was originated decades ago in 1966. It was first termed as Eliza in the USA.
What are chat-bots?
The chat bot is a computer program working on the lines of deep learning and natural learning program. It is used to interact with customers and provide basic answers or increase sales, or drive traffic. When it comes to marketing, automation is a powerful tool that allows you to get more in less time. Chat bots run on the basic idea of understanding cue words in a query and answering accordingly with a Pre-decided answer to that cue word. Digital Marketing comprises of SEO, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, PPC, Adwords, Search Engine Marketing. These are extremely effective and inexpensive way of driving business online and have taken over the business market. One of the latest developments is integrating digital marketing with chat bots. According to International Data Corporation, Artificial Intelligence will take over customer interactions by 85% before 2020. This is because of the accuracy and deep learning methods that the chat bots follow. Chat bots tend to become better after every conversation they undergo with the end user. According to a Forbes Article regarding chat bots, Christie Pitts, Manager of Verizon Ventures says: “Chat bots represent a new trend in how people access information, make decisions, and communicate. We think that chat bots are the beginning of a new form of digital access, which centers on messaging. Messaging has become a huge component of how we interact with our devices, and how we stay connected with the people, businesses and the day-to-day activities of life. Chat bots bring commerce into this part of our lives, and will open up new opportunities.” It is crucial for websites to hold their customers. A simple website with quick information will engage a customer more than a complex website, as, in this busy schedule, people tend to get information in a short time. Hence companies need to upgrade their communications channel and integrate chat bots in the websites and social media platforms. It is an inexpensive and trustworthy way of conversing with the customers and convert it into leads. Let’s hear what Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google has to say: “When I look at where computing is heading, I see how machine learning and artificial intelligence are unlocking capabilities that were unthinkable only a few years ago.”3 Reasons to deploy a chat bot!
“53% people are more likely to shop with a business they can message” and “56% people prefer messaging over calling customer service”, from Facebook. After companies started gaining response through digital marketing, it became hard for them to manage queries and answer them. Apart from that Facebook started telling visitors about a company’s response rate which reflects it’s quality and punctuality of work. Hence it became inevitable for companies to integrate chat bots to reply to customers’ queries at any time of the day and ease the load on their employees. Plus chat-bots can reply all throughout the day and at least solve queries from the peripheries which does not require much time. . People also found the chat bots helpful and friendly over the annoying “please hold” tape while calling to customer service centers.1) Increase SMM traffic:
Chat bots help in increasing traffic on your social media marketing by directing customers and providing them with links meant for a particular conversation. A chat bot can provide information about an address of your company or product information or a path to a blog. Your chat bot can help you increase sales by directing a consumer to an exact location of the website, thereby making it a user-friendly website. Facebook messenger, which is the 2nd most used messaging app has more than 34,000 chat bots deployed by various businesses. A messenger bot can be personified by giving it an avatar, a human name. The best example of messenger bot used for marketing and sales is of a beauty brand named Sephora whose bot not only allows you to book an appointment but also choose the beauty procedure you want to undergo and you can even select the artist. Isn’t that simply incredible? Moreover, next time you open the app to book an appointment, the bot helps you by making the procedure easy via recalling the past preferences.2) Handle multiple customer queries at the same time:
Chat bots nowadays make it simpler for the businesses by taking care of the large sum of queries at the same time whilst a human responder can handle average 3 queries at a time. Also with developing technology and AI, smart chat bots like SIRI, Cortana and Ok Google, provide a 2D feedback to the customers by reading out the information to the consumers or interacting with them.3) Cost-efficient:
Installing chat bots is a one-time investment and help to reduce your staff expenses. Smart chat bots help you reply to the emails, make calls, play songs for you and also schedule a ride or a doctor’s appointment if needed. They are complex and require technology to develop. Chatbots are like Hootsuite which help you schedule and post articles, pictures and links on your different social media platforms when you are busy. They also analyze and create data for you regarding your posts and help you with trending posts and mentions of your company. There are different tasks that chatbots are divided into. A bot can help you with lead generation, team development, online research, personalized user experience, sales, and customer conversation.How do chat bots learn?brain which keeps on learning through insights, chat bots also follow the same method.
On every new conversation they have with an end user, the chat bot remembers the answers and uses the same for another similar query. But a chat bot needs to know initial answers in the first place. For this, previously recorded responses are analyzed and processed then added to the codes of chat bot to make it easier for them to learn. Once live, chat bots figure out the best answer for a particular query or response based on their insights.
But a chat bot needs to be corrected when it goes wrong because if not corrected, it’ ll keep that piece of information as the right one and will answer to the end users. Apart from this, a chat bot keeps learning new things through its journey. Unfortunately, a chatbot only knows what you have taught, hence it cannot answer complex questions which requires human intervention.
A chatbot won’t unlearn an answer and will not forget too. It will remember an answer even if the query was asked before a long period of time.
What minimum features a chat bot should have?
The answer here is everything that you can try adjusting in your code. While making/updating a chat bot, try to fit these things to make it most efficient and top rated.- User-friendly: It should be easy to understand by the user.
- Visual appeal: Let your chat bots make use of GIFs/emojis in answering queries which attract more attention of the user.
- Natural Language Processing: Make your bot smart by having NLP which will make it more like a human responding.
- Flexible: Let your chat bots be flexible to its users and not stay rigid in answering queries.
- Make it count: Not literally. By this we mean, let your chat bot be good at analytics and be able to make basic calculations.