A day in the life of Chatbots

Back in the day, artificial intelligence was only a part of science-fiction movies, but today it is fairly a common piece of technology – think of any voice assistant on your phone or even in your living room. And days pass by, AI is going to become a go-to for just about any industry under the sun including digital marketing. There are plenty of applications for AI in the digital marketing space and chatbots are definitely one of the most exciting as they offer the best of both worlds as they intend to automate a huge part of the customer communication process without sacrificing customer support & service. These AI-powered chat machines are about to be everywhere and if you want to stay competitive, it’s important to wrap your head around how they work and incorporate them into your strategy.

Chatbots are AI-powered software programs that you can facilitate to have conversations with your customers. So, it automates conversations with your prospective customer when they visit your app/page while browsing for the services they are in need of. They can be programmed with different responses based on what the customer chooses or requests. For example, a chatbot can ask a user which of the business's services they want to learn more about and provide a response or lead the user to better information based on the user's choice. Advanced bots are powered by AI, but most chatbots are programmed keeping specific responses in mind and are based on conversation tress. A conversation tree covers every possible customer response and tells the chatbot what to say based on that response.

A strategy that involves using chatbots for conversation can factor in different customer requests that may otherwise go unanswered and may even help with lead-generation & sales. As it is established that chatbots automate conversations with customers it is easier for your marketing team to handle a large pool of conversations and therefore close a greater number of deals. Statistically, chatbots provide a higher degree of personalization in your approach towards customer communication. Oracle has predicted that 80% of businesses want chatbots integrated into their strategies by the end of 2021. Analysts have forecasted that 85% of customer services will be powered by chatbots by the end of 2021. As per market research reports, chatbots are beneficial for businesses (with an accuracy of) 24-hour services (64%), instant responses to inquiries (55%) and answers to simple questions (55%).

There can be a huge disconnect between sales and marketing in any firm, as there is a possibility of information asymmetry since both verticals are unaware of each other’s strategies, the marketing team may not be aware of the requirements of the sales team or the sales team might be unaware of the funnel set up by the marketing team or where the prospects are in the sales cycle when they hit the marketing team’s desk for promotion. So, in a way, chatbots are a great way to bridge this gap between marketing and sales.

There are many ways chatbots can be incorporated into your digital marketing strategy, they can be used initially to gather information from the prospective customers that are of high priority like their name, contact details or to identify the areas in which the customers need support in a more intuitive & time-efficient way as opposed to just asking the customers to fill out contact forms. Once the information is gathered, a chatbot can schedule a sales call or a customer service call or an onboarding session with a customer instead of making a sales representative go back and forth. Also, no matter what kind of business you are in, there are always those particular set of questions that you get asked every day. So instead of wasting time & energy into answering those FAQs, you can let the chatbot take care of them. It is a win-win for your customers as they get what they asked for and for you as you don’t have to answer the same five questions 10,000 times a day.

Once you’re ready to add a chatbot to your page, you don’t have to start from scratch. There are lots of great chatbot platforms that allow you to build your own chatbot and integrate it on your website. Depending on the usability and look of your page, you can personalize the look and design of the chatbot to make the experience as personal & on-brand as possible for your visitors. Clearly, it is an important tool that can be used to take your business and digital marketing to the next level, so there a few good practices that you should keep in mind before investing in the strategy.

Always try and keep it simple while implementing the chatbot program, the more complicated you develop the more difficult it gets for the opportunities to come your way. The simpler it is, the better you can execute it to your advantage and even be successful at it. Think in terms of “if/then” when programming your chatbots, you need to think like a developer. Train your chatbots using if/then triggers to let them know how to respond, “if a customer asks X question, send Y response” or “if a customer asks a question outside of this programming, send an email to X”. No one wants to feel as if they are having a conversation with a robot, so if you want to ripe results from your chatbots, make them as conversational as possible. Make sure to infuse your chatbot’s programming with warmth and personality. Having said this, chatbots can only manage simple conversations, so you never want to use them as a replacement for a real person. It is a supplement, not a replacement for your human representative. Lastly, chatbots are a recent development in terms of technology and like any technology for that matter, it’s probably going to take some trial and error before it gets it right. So, even if you fail at using it first, don’t give up. Try and come up with newer chatbot strategies and overcome hurdles that come your way. Remember the more flexible and adaptable your program is, the more successful you will be implementing chatbots.

Chatbot marketing is a popular and high-converting digital marketing strategy. It definitely takes a bit of setup, especially when creating conversation trees and using a third-party software to program your chatbot, but the initial time and cost-investment will be well worth it if you use this strategy correctly. With the ever-increasing growth of the digital field, the combination of AI and digital marketing has led to the use of chatbots. These automated-conversational-bots have made the future of Marketing much brighter providing a seamless user experience. Therefore, we can conclude that Chatbots are here to stay and has potential growth in the future of Digital Marketing.