5 Chatbot Ideas: Business Can’t Afford to Miss in 2019
If you are looking to add chatbot to your website, you would have probably noticed that there are many things required to get a user-friendly chatbot.
As an IT sourcing analyst with ValueCoders (IT Sourcing Company), I used to face several challenges in developing “chatbots” during the stages of programming. Although, I find now quite easier to manage the development work, especially after knowing the ideas to develop a powerful chatbot solution for the business community. Sharing here my experience:
Although chatbots have been around in the business industry for decades, e-businesses have only learned now how to effectively use them for business purposes.
So, have you ever considered implementing chatbot to your business site?
If yes, then you are already aware of the potential of this technology for businesses. And, if you’re a first timer, then here are five ways for deploying the chatbots to your business site.
- Let’s Start with the Technical Needs
Chatbots are built with bot-engines such as ManyChat or Chatfuel, however for major business websites, a more skilled approach is required to create a custom app that will have all the upgrade features. So, whenever you think of adding a chatbot to your business site, you may also need to upgrade your internet service and need to purchase more server space.
Let’s say if your chatbot will converse with users through the different point of sale transactions, then the internet speed of 75 Mbps is recommended by the developers.
Creating a backend app is also a good idea as it can store and process information gathered from the users. Node.js and Udemy are the preferred frameworks for creating useful & interactive backend apps.
Also, decide whether your chatbot will use voice or only text-based display.
To check all your technical demands are met, you need a good analysis of the bot’s performance before releasing it to the public. Some more technical points to look for:
Functionality Standards — Implementing functions to your conversational bot is probably the most important part of the setup process that includes creating conversation flows, defining the use cases, and connecting to APIs. This process will involve your UX design team, marketing team, and the team of software development experts.
Testing Across all Channels- If you’re building chatbot from scratch or using some of the available technology, you will need to translate conversations into code across all channels and devices.
Analytics — Analysis of bot’s performance is important after the bot is available for publishing. The key metrics to track the bot’s performance are the number of user interactions received, failure rate, customers’ satisfaction rate, and ROI.
2. Get Natural Language Processing (NLP) to Your Chatbot
Adding NLP to your chatbot enhances your customer experience. How?
In layman’s terms, the basic function of NLP is to meaningfully interpret human technology inputs. The best example of NLP-based response system is Amazon’s Alexa that reacts to what you say and gives you results according to your voice command.
Chatbots mainly use scripts with “if-then” commands to give answers to customers frequently asked questions. However, today if/else statements are things of the past and can frustrate your customers by not giving the prompt response from the bot. To avoid if/else statements, we looked for a new & updated tool to fit your needs.
Rasa is an open-source framework for building chatbots that uses language processing tool (NLP) for interactive conversations.
Here’s how the chatbot works:
You ask the chatbot to book a flight to France.
The bot asks you to specify the date of booking.
Then, you simply mention the day & date.
Your flight is booked.
That’s the scenario you expect, but things are different and rarely work smoothly. Here is the actual scenario we all face:
You ask a chatbot to book a flight to France.
The bot asks you to specify the date of booking.
Then, you simply choose the day & date.
But, you also asked about the weather in France.
The chatbot doesn’t know how to respond…..
No response, it is because of the condition added by you, and you can further add more conditions. What’s the solution?
It’s Rasa that works on a totally different approach. Instead of conditions to manage, the Rasa program the chatbot for lots of stories with variables.
3. Test Your Chatbot Over and Over Again
Getting started with chatbot testing requires open source tools such as Selenium & TestMyBot both are popular tools for automated testing of chatbots. Depending on your business needs you might outsource the development and testing of your chatbot to a software development firm.
There are many ways you can use other tools to gauge your bot performance. Please have a look at the below-given references:
Botium makes chatbot testing 100x faster with its API level user interface.
Selenium is a tool for testing & automation process for websites & chatbots.
TestMyBot records the conversations that you can replay anytime to see any issue or difference with the transcript.
4. Identify your Clients’ Needs
Ask your customer about their conversation needs like business-to-business (B2B) clients will have a different approach than business-to-consumer (B2C) customers and vice versa.
In this situation, ask these questions to your clients.
Do they need chatbot for informational purposes?
Do they need any kind of assistance for sign-in or purchase processes?
So, if your target audience is B2B or B2C, make sure your chatbot ensure (C2H) conversations chatbot-to-human.
5. Always Think of your Business Objectives
No matter how smart is your chatbot, you don’t implement it on your business website just for fun. You should always have a good reason. So before deploying chatbot on your site, check your business objectives to know how chatbots can help meet your business objectives.
Chatbots today come for all businesses with varying levels of capabilities. While some business needs basic chatbots, some require more advanced chatbots.
How to determine the right chatbot for your business needs?
When deciding which chatbot is right for your business just place yourself in the shoes of your customers and think about the service they’re trying to receive from you. You need to decide whether the context of the conversation going to impact your service or not. Also, consider your target audience and their UX preferences. It is important to figure out because some users may prefer to have a chatbot with visual menu buttons rather than having an open-ended experience.
Here are some choices:
Chatbots with Menu/Button — These chatbots are good for answering the frequently asked questions. But they are not good to use in more advanced answering scenarios or conversations that have too many variables or too much information to predict.
Chatbots with Keyword Recognition — The keyword recognition-based chatbots pay attention to what users type and then try to respond accordingly. These chatbots use customizable keywords and artificial intelligence to serve the appropriate response to the user.
Contextual Chatbots — This is the most advanced form of chatbots in comparison to the two other bots discussed above. These chatbots run on machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to record and remember conversations with specific users.
The chatbot that best fits your business could also require advanced AI capabilities; however, in some instances, simple menu button bots may be the right solution.
Final Words
Chatbots today are able to supply needful of help, information, and positive experience of maintaining intimacy with customers. Eventually, chatbot brings a pleasant experience of all these qualities into the conversation, making the conversation experience richer and useful for businesses.
We hope these points will help you fuel your business need for chatbots. As you can see, chatbots for business sites provide with plenty of benefits. Whether you want to develop chatbot on your website, SMS chat, or messenger, you can quickly contact ValueCoders to contact and hire the best chatbot developers who are delivering excellent chatbot development solutions to all their clients.