March 2018 -

How Can Non-profits Benefit From a Chatbot

Chatbots are the current trending feature that companies and businesses are going gaga over! Ever since Facebook allowed companies to program Chatbots in their messenger, there has been a steady rise in AI technology on Facebook. Everybody wanted to join and be a part of the NEXT BIG THING. Chatbots would be able to answer questions immediately, and allow the people to concentrate on bigger things.

Bots have slowly creeped their way into different industries and businesses. And believe it or not, NGOs and Non-profits can actually benefit from bots.

Here’s how chatbots can be a great asset for your non-profit –

Answer basic queries on time everytime!

It is no surprise that a NGO page on FB will be getting loads of questions from the users like, “How can I volunteer”, “How can I donate money for this cause”, “When is your next event happening”. If only there was a system that could ask answer these monotonous questions so you didn’t have to. Chatbots can help do this for you. And these queries could be answered instantly regardless of what time they come in.

Gathering a community

A non-profit’s success is all about the donors, volunteers working towards a common cause. It is about bringing them together and forming a strong community. Chatbots can help make this happen. They can send out regular alerts to users based on previous communications. The alerts can be about new events, updates or anything that might help the non-profit to make their community stronger.

Fundraising

This is one of the core activities for any NGO. They need to actively raise funds to keep move their cause forward. Instead of directly asking users to donate some money, the bot can help share stories, experiences and related data that can motivate the user to actually do something for the cause. It reduces the manual effort but still gets the job done.

Moreover, bots can help gather data based on their interactions. It can provide useful insights regarding the audience and help funnel the non-profit’s to the right audience.

Do you have any other reasons as to how bots can help a non-profit? Let us know in the comments below!

3 Easy Tips to Improve your Chatbot UX

Building a chatbot has become considerably easy with the introduction of different softwares, app and chatbot development tools. But with the introduction of such softwares, businesses pay attention to just the development of the bot and forget to constantly improve it. That’s why most of the bots fail.

Building a bot is just the first step. The UX and UI of the bot is of utmost importance. The bot must be easy to talk to and interact with. If this is missing, then your bot is no longer useful to the user.

Ensure all buttons are functional

Any normal conversation with a bot involves the user clicking on different buttons to provide answers. So the buttons must be thoroughly tested to ensure that it is responsive at all points of the conversation. Sometimes, the user would come back to the conversation and try to employ the old buttons instead of starting a conversation from the scratch. If the buttons aren’t responsive, you are losing out on valuable customers.

Increase wait time to allow users to read the messages

This is a flaw that most of the chatbots suffer from. Most bots continually spam the user with multiple texts at a time. This does not give the user any time to read every message as the new messages will move the text that the user is already reading. This leads to poor user experience. Therefore, it is advised to have some wait time in the middle before the bot sends out another message.

Try to re-engage after end of conversation

The bots must be equipped to re-engage the user with some valuable information after the end of conversation to ensure future engagement. But there is a fine line between trying to engage with the user and spamming the user. ONLY message the user if you have something that the user would find useful. Otherwise, you might actually end up hindering the performance of your bot.

Building a successful chatbot is a constant journey. There is something new to learn everyday. Trying to incorporate new trends and learnings is the way to instill growth in your chatbot.

Don’t Let Your Chatbot Commit These 4 Mistakes

It has been a while since the rise of Chatbots and there is no doubt that these bots have proven to be incredibly helpful to both the brand and the user. It minimizes effort and maximises the benefit. It also serves as a great marketing tool for the brands.

But with the the rise of a new feature also comes a rise in the errors and mistakes made. The story doesn’t end after the development of a chatbot. Businesses make plenty of mistakes when it comes to revising the functionalities and conversational abilities of a bot.

Here are some common mistakes that your bot must definitely stay away from –

Lack of focus

Bots are developed as a solution to a problem. It is important to identify the principal problem and ensure that the bots are working towards that. Make sure that your bot is not trying to do a hundred tasks at once. It may lose focus and in the end, you will be unable to solve your primary problem.

Spamming an abandoned conversation

This is one of the biggest mistakes committed by the bots. Users constantly complain of getting spam messages from the bot even after the conversation has ended. It is worse if the bot continues to spam the user even after it was unable to effectively help with the user’s query. Alternatively, the bot can send a message or two after the conversation if it contains some valuable information that the user will appreciate.

Inability to answer the question

This is another good reason as to why your bots are not that successful. It simply does not add any value for the user. The main reason why bots where set up in the first place was because they could respond to the users’ queries instantly. If its unable to find an answer for the question, it must let the user know about it instead of repeatedly dodging the question or providing irrelevant answers. It only makes the user more annoyed. It could provide the user with an email ID or a helpline number incase the question is out of scope from the bot’s abilities.

Asking repeated questions

The bot must be developed in such a way that it is able to store information of previous engagements with the user. It becomes a mundane task for the user if they have to provide their contact information or account details every time they communicate with a bot. Therefore, it is important to integrate your chatbot with user information data to simplify the process for the user.

Why do Millennials love Chatbots?

It is 2018 and technology is at its peak! Well, technology and social media. And who is the biggest user of both of these? You guessed it right, it’s the millennials!

It is believed that, by 2020, almost 85% of consumer interactions with businesses will be with bots or through self-servicing. Research states that 60% of millennials have interacted with a chatbot and 70% of users have had a positive experience with a bot. And the users who haven’t tried are also excited to interact with a bot.

Companies have realised that chatbots are a goldmine with millennials and brands like Sephora, Dominos and Starbucks have already created their very own chatbot that are highly popular amongst millennials.

So, what is it about chatbots that makes them so irresistible to the millennials? Well, you’re about to find out.

Feeds into their need for instant gratification

If there’s one thing that all millennials hate, it is waiting. They want instantaneous replies and feedback. And this is one of the major reasons that they love chatbots. Their queries are attended to in a jiffy! Plus, with the improvement in chatbot technologies, bots are improving their conversational abilities to become more humanized and friendly. Millennials may not receive the same instant responses while interacting with a human. This is why, they are more prone to communicate with bots instead of other customer servicing channels.

Keeping up with the latest technology

Millennials love staying ahead of the curve. Be it fashion, technology or music. They all want to be a part of the next big thing. They loved drones and hover boards and they’ve also started to love chatbots. It is the newest addition to social media channels. They’re all happy to experiment with the latest technological revelation.

Convenience is everything

Millennials take their smartphone everywhere, they’re always connected to the different social media platforms. Brands need not take any effort to educate these millennials about these platforms. All they have to do is be present on the platforms that their TG frequent the most. The convenience of the chatbots is what makes millennials use them again and again.