A chatbot is an automated chat feature that can interact with your target audience without human intervention.
There are several possibilities for deploying a chatbot, it can add value in marketing, sales and services. A chat function itself means that people can talk to you live and ask their questions, you can then answer them directly. When using a bot you set certain answers in advance and the bot will automatically supply the answer.
When to use a chat (bot)?
As mentioned above, a chatbot can be used in several stages of the customer journey. For marketing and sales, a chatbot can be useful to qualify leads or answer questions from prospects. For customer service, chatbots are one of the tools that can be used to answer customer questions and solve problems. Combined with a knowledge base, you can partially automate the conversation, which in turn saves a lot of time.
How do you build a chatbot?
Within HubSpot, it's very easy to build a chatbot. The code is readily integrated within your website and so it's just a matter of building and turning it on! It's useful to work out the flow of your chatbot, such as which questions to ask first, on a whiteboard. This allows you to quickly see if there are any ambiguities in your bot and if you need to make adjustments. Then it's just a matter of testing! Do people often drop out in the same place? Then some adjustment is probably needed.
Tips for building a chatbot
- Which questions can I answer directly? An open question is a lot harder to answer by a chatbot and should therefore be picked up more often live.
- Do I already have information on my site that I can refer to? Instead of having to do this over the phone or by email, the chatbot can point this out to your visitor.
- Try to make your chatbot as personalized as possible. This can be done through personalization, if you ask for someone's name in advance, for example.