Chatbots are a tool that is used in marketing to help enhance the customer experience as well as transform the way that brands interact with people who visit their website. They are a form of artificial intelligence with natural language processing that can be used to qualify leads without using forms.
The possible uses for chatbots are constantly growing and evolving so they can be a great addition to your marketing strategy.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF CHATBOTS
- Customer Service - This type of chatbot is designed to answer generic questions that the customer has and support them if they come across any problems. This makes support more accessible to the customer rather than having to navigate to the FAQs page on the website or call up the company.
- Marketing - These types of chatbots can be used to generate leads for the business, collect the customer’s data, consult on products or services and increase interaction with the customer. This makes it easier for customers to gain information about your companies products or services. It can also be easier to give their data to a chatbot rather than filling out a form.
- Sales - This type of chatbot can be used to determine which customers are more likely to make a purchase and encourage them to buy.
Benefits of Lead Generation Chatbots
There are many benefits to using chatbots on your website. One of the biggest benefits is the fact that they offer around the clock support. With traditional customer service, the customer may have to wait for hours if they make enquiries late at night or on the weekend. If the customer asks a question that the chatbot cannot answer the customer can be forwarded to a human employee. If no one is available to take the enquiry a message can be left that an employee can answer later.
Getting the right message and offer to customers at the correct moment is imperative to qualifying sales. A chatbot can do this by proactively offering the customer assistance to guide them through the website or shop. It can even advise customers on finding a suitable product and current offers.
Chatbots can be very useful in the sales process, but they can also help to start a dialogue with customers. They can respond to problems and questions individually to help guide the customer through. This allows the customer to feel like they are being spoken to on equal terms rather than being pushed down the sales path.
It can be hard to gauge customer behaviour due to each individual wanting different things. With chatbots, you can derive data from their conversations. This can be used to see if there are any regular queries or popular products. This will help to optimise your content strategy by analysing exactly what your customers want and what issues they are having. They can also optimise your product portfolio as you can place the popular products or services predominantly on your website.
What industries can use chatbots?
Chatbots are not a marketing tool that is limited to specific industries. Most companies can find a way to integrate them in a way that will be beneficial to both them and their customers. Some examples of this are:
- Tourism - A chatbot for this industry could be used for things such as answering questions about booking or availability.
- E-Commerce - Customers would be able to ask the chatbot about the store’s products and availability.
- Finance - This chatbot could be programmed to help people with their online banking. It could also help deal with issues such as card loss.
The Top Chatbot Platforms
If you are interested in creating your own chatbot there are plenty of platforms for you to choose from. It can be hard to decide what features are most important to you and your company. That is why we have shortlisted some of the top chatbot platforms for you to review.
Intercom is one of our choices for top chatbot platforms. This is due to the fact that the chatbots built on the platform have fantastic machine learning. They can connect to your behind the scenes workflows, therefore they can become extensions of your sales and support teams.
Drift is another highly reputable chatbot platform. This is due to its high-speed response times allowing you to qualify customers with interest promptly. It even has the capabilities to schedule a meeting with the relevant department to ensure that no one slips through the cracks.
LiveChat is one of our choices for top chatbot platforms as their chatbots have the ability to create tickets. This means that if the customer requires the help of a member of your team and none are available they will not be forgotten. The tickets will be created directly in the LiveChat window for a member of the team to pick up when they are available.
Tawk is our final pick for the top chatbot platforms. This is due to the fact that you can assign specific members of your team to each customer who needs extra support. This ensures that the customers are receiving help from the correct members of staff at the time they need it.
conclusion
Chatbots can be programmed in a wide variety of ways for different industries and purposes. This makes them a great addition to any website and will help to improve your marketing strategy and customer satisfaction. They can certainly be used in a way to improve lead generation for your company.
