Tweet “The Future of Chatbots” and watch the results. Chatbots are the future of every business. They are everywhere. Very regularly, there is a new technology offering a new solution that pushes chatbots to be more useful and powerful.

Most discussions on chatbots are focused on Artificial Intelligence, and although it is good to build a chatbot, the chatbot is much more than a text conversation.

Imagine yourself entering a mall. You look right and see the man collection. You look left and see the woman’s collection. Now, close your eyes. Can you navigate to the child collection? Although you are familiar with this mall, it is unlikely that you can find your way!

Walking in a mall with your eyes closed is similar to most of the conversation interfaces that are found today. Everything you need is available, but without the proper guidance, discovering information is difficult. Let’s think about what exactly a Chatbot is.

You will probably answer either of these two answers: it is a conversation robot, or it is a computer program designed to simulate conversations with human users. In reality, a chatbot is an e-mail application, sometimes called a chat interface, designed to simplify complex predefined tasks. Chatbots are very useful with regard to simple activities, such as ordering meals or booking a taxi.

Chatbots are becoming more and more sophisticated, and the biggest companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft to Disney, Taco Bell and CNN are using them.

Let’s find the right way to build an effective Chatbot.

1. Find an identity for your Bot

A good robot must be carefully thought out. You have to ask a few questions:

Why should you build this robot?
Who is your target audience?
What problems will the robot solve?
How do you present the robot: as a person or a robot?
These are things you need to define precisely before being absorbed into your bot’s development process. Define basic user cases and stick to them.

Your robot must know his identity and understand what is expected of him. When a user will ask questions such as “What is your name? “,” How can you help me? “,” What questions can I ask you? “, The robot must be able to respond.

2. Create your feed

A structured conversation flow is the core of building effective and engaging conversation interfaces.

Want to build a chatbot for a grocery store? Such a robot should allow users to order food products online and even automate their meal preparation planning. The core of the conversation should focus on buying food. Sometimes people leave conversations, so you should always include the possibility of short conversations. Your robot should trigger specific feelings specific to each user, then create hooks to take advantage of these feelings and make the customer experience better.

The conversation with chatbots is unlimited and your bot will probably not understand everything your users will ask. Plan these situations without breaking the flow of conversation. Even if your robot can no longer provide answers, you must make the experience as good as possible.

It is necessary that the flow breaks when the chatbots can not answer any more, but no matter how. For example, by triggering a message such as “Please excuse us, we have no answer to your question”. You must inform your users that your robot understands and that it is there to help them. Your bots should always drive the conversation forward. They should consider suggesting things to help users discover new features. It is then necessary to use phrases or suggest buttons that can be operated to redirect clients to a location that could solve their problem instead of leaving them with a white screen blank.

3. Attach importance to content

The basis of the chatbots is above all the content. Obviously, you want your robot to be as human as possible. Users need to have experiences with them again. You should use a friendly and inclusive language when you talk to your users to make them think they are chatting with someone familiar and not with a machine.

Is your robot able to correct its own mistakes? When your users are unhappy with the experience, will your robot recognize it and will it work to direct the conversation in a different direction or will it continue on the script like a robot without emotion?

Some chatbots have planned content instead of offering an emotionally appropriate response. Chatbots are there to save you time. Otherwise, they have no more interest than a site or application.When designing content for your chatbots, you must create limits to the conversation either by giving your user buttons commands that are selected and easy to use. Do not let the conversation open to interpretation. Without borders, your users can break their experience with your bot. Also be sure to repeat the information so that users feel more comfortable knowing that you understand them.

For example, if the user requests the robot to remind him of a meeting at 2:00 pm, the bot will send him a confirmation message stating “I will send you a reminder for your meeting today at 2:00 pm”. The chatbot must be able to provide all the necessary information in the messaging application, making it a pleasant experience for the user.

4. Select the correct channels

Once you have developed and coded your bot, you can then take the most exciting step, that is, selecting the desired channels! Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, WeChat .. You must select the platforms according to your target audience and the experience offered to the user. We are moving towards a time when robots have a strong impact on the customer experience. It’s time to create the future of chatbots

The 4 steps of creating a chatbot can seem long and tedious, but they are paramount.

Chatbots are computer programs capable of conversing via artificial intelligence and have long been used in different forms. They are most commonly used in automated customer services, such as faster response to customers and dramatically reducing their waiting time. Chatbots are increasingly sophisticated and use high-level artificial intelligence. Besides, artificial intelligence is so good that many Chatbots are indistinguishable from human beings when they hold a conversation.

Why are Chatbots so interesting?

The answer lies in their versatility. They can be used to perform a multitude of functions in the areas of customer service, customer interaction and many marketing functions. Chatbots have enjoyed a high popularity since Facebook has authorized branded Chatbots on its Messenger application. However, there are also Chatbots of information, the best known are Siri, Cortana or Echo of Amazon. These chatbots are designed to meet customer needs and provide them with information about their research and expectations.

Here is some information about Chatbots and how they boost your marketing strategy. Chatbots are useful for:

Client service

How many times have you ended up with Vivaldi in your ears for half an hour while waiting for a customer service representative to answer you on the phone? It must be admitted, companies very often have poor customer service and this is all the more alarming, because often the calls relate to simple complaints to solve and are solved in 5 minutes barely. It is from there precisely that Chatbots revolutionize customer services: a simple sending of chat makes it possible to obtain an instantaneous response. By integrating the bots into your customer service, you will greatly improve customer satisfaction.

Getting to Know Your Customers

Chatbots can play an important role by analyzing customer data and optimizing sales and marketing strategies. Some Chatbots can be formatted to monitor consumers’ purchasing behaviors and intentions so they can learn their preferences. This allows you to review your strategies and know the consumer’s favorite products.

Custom ads

Chatbots are also essential in terms of personalized announcements. Chatbots work as follows: When a client accesses your chat with a request from the customer service, the Chatbot hosts the client, gathers the information and then asks the client to wait. During this interval, the client name and other information can be used to generate custom advertisements. Custom ads are often useful in sales conversions.

The important point here is that if Chatbots can be of excellent help for employees especially as an alternative to the waiting call, they must look real. If the chatbot is of poor quality and the customer realizes that it is a robot with whom he converses, then this can harm the brand image.

Proactive interaction

Most brands use passive interaction with the customer, meaning that they only respond to customers who ask questions but do not bother to go to other customers. However it is very important for a brand to have feedback from its customers and therefore to take the initiative to contact them. Chatbots are very useful for this kind of interaction with customers. This support is necessary in order to check whether the customer needs assistance or not, the customer will be all the more satisfied as the brand takes care to question him about his experience. This will only reinforce the customer’s sense of closeness to the brand.

Optimize your media

Chatbots are perfect for communicating with customers and collecting opinions. This strategy is very useful, especially for the optimization of a website. Getting feedback from customers will help you improve your website and satisfy your customers. For example, if you have a page that receives a lot of organic traffic but nobody buys, you can ask your Chatbot to collect information about why people leave the page without buying.

Proximity to customers

By using the information Chatbots collect from customers, you will be able to create customized messages for each consumer, which will allow you to increase your conversion rates.

Be available 24 hours a day

Mobile messaging applications are the most widely used applications. On average, they have a retention rate twice as high as all other applications.By maintaining a presence on a messaging application via a Chatbot, you can save money while remaining available to your customers 24 hours a day.

The digital world of today prefers instant messaging to voice exchange. The appearance of chatbots and Artificial Intelligence is there to meet these needs but it is a challenge for companies and developers who must find the perfect tool to respond to these changes.

Identification of opportunity

As these technologies continue to evolve, it is important to discuss the major challenges developers face in creating chatbots and using AI for businesses.

Customer service, which is already a focus for many developers, is the most obvious opportunity for chatbots and artificial intelligence for businesses. The first step is to identify the major problem for most companies and, in this case, the opportunity is clear: to improve customer service in order to reduce the high cost associated with malfunctioning.According to some studies, poor customer service will encourage consumers to no longer buy on an e-commerce site while customers satisfied with customer service will remain loyal and will even recommend the site to their loved ones.

Customer service paradox

The high cost associated with poor customer service will attract the attention of businesses, but the use case becomes stronger when we stop a little to focus on the real challenges faced by different customer services and why this gives rise to uncovered expectations. In today’s globalized marketplace, customers expect 24/7 customer service, but they also want personalized service and clear, accurate answers.

The cost to provide this level of service to customers with live agents is prohibitive. This is why more and more companies are experimenting with chatbots to reduce their costs, but also to maintain a personal touch by automation and self-service.

Businesses know that they need chatbots and artificial intelligence for their customer service if they want to fully satisfy their customers.

The gap between experience and expected experience plays an important role in the extent to which client satisfaction ratings continue to be severe, particularly when existing systems are used. However, many customers still prefer to deal with agents online and are not receptive to automated solutions, creating a dilemma for some companies. The best is to integrate both and leave the choice to customers.

The major concern is that chatbots and the AI ​​have a long way to go before being widely adopted by companies. These tools will take a little time to be able to provide real added value to businesses and gain the trust of customers. For example, the accuracy of speech recognition reaches 90%, but is it good enough to assume perfect customer service?

The other problem raised by some companies is the fact that the chatbots replace the agents. However, customer services should be more likely to see chatbots as a complement to the work of agents on-line, enabling them to maximize their effectiveness.

 Which solution should be adopted by companies?

Businesses can not afford to wait for accurate 100% language recognition to integrate chatbots into their customer service. Client expectations are changing too fast to wait, and companies must be ready to try new support solutions to satisfy their customers. Especially since for many of them, improving their customer service is an emergency.

The key is therefore to accept certain risks until the refinement of these applications.