We have all contacted a company through the chat function on its website. Maybe you had a question about the product you wanted to buy, or maybe you were not satisfied and had some questions for customer service. In both of these circumstances, these days, your first contact may well be with a robot: a chatbot. How do you ensure that your (potential) customers have a pleasant experience without actually speaking to you? In this blog, I will help you build a chatbot to love in 5 steps!
First, of course, there is the question: what exactly is a chatbot? The name chatbot is derived from the words chat and robot, meaning that you are literally talking to a robot. Chatbots are increasingly being used as an extra layer for a live chat. This means the robot can already qualify or even answer a question without a real person being involved. That's great for businesses, because it saves you a lot of time, and great for visitors because they don't have to wait unnecessarily long for an answer.
Chatbots can be set up for a variety of purposes. For example, you can use one to answer customer service questions by linking it to your knowledge base. You can also use chatbots to qualify leads or to enable people to schedule an appointment with your sales or service department.
In order to prevent a chatbot from only causing frustration among users, it is important to structure the chatbot process in the best possible manner. In HubSpot, you can build a smart chatbot step by step, using a workflow. You can use the same method to integrate other parts of HubSpot – such as the knowledge base or a meeting link – with your chatbot for an optimal experience.
So, how exactly do you build a chatbot? Follow these 5 steps to building a good, user-friendly chatbot!
The most important aspect regarding your chatbot is to think about what you want to use it for. As mentioned earlier, it is essential to carefully consider the purpose of your chatbot: that way, you ensure that it actually adds something to the process. Goals for your chatbot could include:
To prevent your chatbot from becoming cluttered or containing dead ends, it helps to draw your chat flow first. This ensures that all the different paths are clearly defined, and it becomes clear which action should be placed where. You can, of course, do this on a piece of paper, but there are also online tools that help you build up a workflow, such as Canva.
It is important here to think about the logic of your chatbot. For example, it is annoying if you have to go through all kinds of steps before you can indicate what your question is about. Therefore, make sure that the flow of the chatbot is structured logically for an optimal experience.
Once you’ve finished drawing, it’s time to build the flow in HubSpot. HubSpot’s chat-flow tool works quite intuitively, so you can build your chat-flow simply and quickly. Essential components in your flow are:
Once the flow is all filled in and ready, there is only one thing left to do.
Some things appear very logical on paper, but in practice, they turn out to be less obvious than you thought. That's why it's smart to personally try out your chatbot so that you can spot these annoying hiccups before your customer is faced with them. It can also help to have someone who has had nothing to do with the build go through the flow once to make sure it all works properly. When you're all ready to go, it's time to turn on the chatbot on your website!
To avoid getting stuck in the testing phase for too long, it is often a good idea to just turn on your bot and monitor closely what happens with it. For example, in HubSpot, you can see clear statistics for each question in your bot, which allows you to see where in the process people drop out. You will then be able to optimize in a targeted way, to make the experience as pleasant as possible for your customers.
The analytics of your chat flow also show the direction people take most often and how often the chat is started and fully completed. With this data, you can optimize your chatbot on the fly to make your customers happy and keep them happy!
So, now you have a clear roadmap for your chatbot! In HubSpot, you can find the chat flows in Conversations > Chat flows. Another little tip: don't forget to give your chatbot a fun name; this will make it more attractive for your target group to interact with it. The more distinctive, the better :)
Need help devising or setting up a chatbot? Schedule a session using the button below, and we will be happy to brainstorm with you!