The Ultimate Guide for Chatbots

What Are Chatbots?

Chatbots are artificial intelligence (AI) programs that can simulate a conversation (or a chat) with a user in natural language through messaging applications, websites, mobile applications, or phones.

For example, you are going on a trip to Singapore. And you would normally search for the best hotels in your price range, and then look for a room that fits your needs and comforts. All this could take hours of googling and researching on various booking platforms. But what if the whole process of looking for a hotel to booking one can be streamlined into a matter of minutes?

What if the platform had a messaging service that could get you exactly what you are looking for. All you have to do is provide the specifications, such as price range, size, check-in, and check-out dates, etc.

Chatbots are non-human virtual assistants that help customers get what they want in significantly less time.

The Need For Chatbots

A recent study by bold360 has revealed how much of a big problem customer experience(CX) is, and how chatbots are the solution to it.

82% of the customer have stopped doing business with a company following a bad customer experience. And to add to that, modern customers are lacking choices. So there’s always another company looking to take away your customers. So companies must work on every aspect of their business to stay on top of their game.

Key pain points for customers:

• less than half (49%) of customer inquiries are resolved during the first interaction. A possible reason for this is that 68% of Business respondents agree that their agents struggle with the volume of customer inquiries.
• 61% of Consumers feel that it takes too long for an inquiry to be resolved, and 23% believe that it takes about the right amount of time, but they would still like to be quicker. 89% of that group will take retaliatory measures against brands who do not improve in this area.
• 83% surveyed Consumers have experienced at least one issue when interacting with a brand, such as having to repeat themselves and trouble accessing an agent.

Consumers engage with brands for several reasons. But the most reported(over 29%) is for transactional needs such as purchasing and returning. 14% of the customers engage to leave positive feedback, But customers are also twice as likely to make a complaint (27%) than leave positive feedback.

Unfortunately, only 21% of the customers rate their consumer experience as excellent. While 44% rated the experience as good and 34% as average or not good. So why are one-third of the customer base dissatisfied with their business? And how to overturn this?

On the bright side, it is known that many businesses are actively looking to revamp their consumer experience. But most of the existing CRMs and contact centers are not up to the mark to provide a hassle-free experience for both companies and customers.

In addition to increased budget allocation for new and existing customer engagement systems, many organizations are also planning to invest (or are already investing) in advanced technologies to enhance the customer experience. Thirty-five percent of respondents are already investing in AI technologies while 53% are planning to invest.

So are chatbots the next big thing in customer service? Absolutely.

Nearly 74% of Consumers see the benefits of interacting with chatbots including the ability to get a quicker resolution (30%) or simply having greater accessibility to support (24%). Consumers also reported that issues took an average of 11 hours to be resolved, which is almost 3 times higher than the wait time that they cited as being acceptable to reach a solution (4 hours, on average). However, those who had a terrible experience waited for a much longer period (74 hours, on average).

So how do each channel stack up against each other about providing a solution? Email and telephone have an average time to resolution of 7–18 hours, while online chat with chatbots takes around 3 hours.

And how do companies feel about the customer experience they provide? Nearly 88% believe that they provide an excellent or very good experience and they are almost equally as confident (80%) that their customers would rate the experience in the same way. Also, 81% believe that their company provides a superior experience compared to others in their industry.

However, customers disagree. While 58% of customers believe that the travel and hospitality sectors provide excellent consumer experience, but 41% of consumers believe that companies in the telecoms industry provide a good experience.

With all the technological advancements and growth in the human population, you’d expect customer service or consumer experience to not be a problem. As you can see, consumer experience is still a problem that is nowhere close to being solved. And this is where chatbots play a crucial role.

• Over 70% of Consumers agree that brands should leverage technologies to reduce the amount of time that it takes to resolve a customer inquiry or issue.
• More than half (54%) of Consumers and just over three-quarters (76%) of Business respondents agree that AI is changing the customer experience for the better.
• Human agents should not fear being replaced by bots. 65% of Business respondents said that if their organization could reduce the number of inquiries to their customer service teams by using AI they would train their agents to handle different or additional tasks.

Advantages of Chatbots

1. 24-Hour Availability

According to studies, over 50% of customers expect a business to be available 24/7. If you are a company that has a global market, customer service must be available to help 24/7. Solving this problem with help of operators is impossible. That’s where chatbots come in. Maintaining a 24/7 response system brings continuous communication between the seller and the customer.

2. Increased Sales and Lead Generation

Chatbots qualify prospects whether they can be potential customers by asking a specific set of questions. For example asking the prospect why he or she is visiting your page, or whether they would like a free demo of your product or service. Then the Chatbot gathers information about the customer such as e-mail and social media handles so that a sales rep can follow up or lead the customer to the next step of buying your product/service. Business leaders claim that chatbots have increased sales by 67% on average.

3. Gain Customer Insights

Chatbots provide an opportunity for you to talk to your prospects and customers to gain insights. Chatbots can collect data from your customers and provide analytics as to which strategy is working or isn’t working. You can also integrate your chatbot with CRMs to make the whole process hassle-free. With the help of chatbots, you can solve your customer’s biggest pain points and improve your product/service.

4. Cost Savings

Juniper Research claimed that the cost savings from using chatbots in the Banking Industry is estimated at $209 M in 2019 and it will reach $7.3 B globally by 2023. Most chatbots can be integrated across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, e-mail, websites, etc. This feature will spare the costs of employees who are more inefficient and also more error-prone. With the implementation of chatbots, user acquisition is costs low. While the initial cost of developing and integrating chatbots is high, in the long term the only expense is going to be maintenance.

5. Better Customer Service

Many times, the customers are don’t know what exactly they are looking for. With the help of chatbots, you can ask the customer a set of qualifying questions that will direct the customer to the appropriate solution.

For example:

• What are your goals?
• What industry are you in?
• Where are you located?

One of the biggest pain points for customers is delayed response from customer service. Chatbots typically have a response time between 1–3 minutes (it’s usually less than a minute). This helps you accelerate the growth of your business since you can concentrate on more important tasks.

6. More Customer engagement

By providing timely tips and offers through chatbots, you can increase your customer engagement and also create more brand awareness. By providing more value to the customer, he or she becomes more reliant on your business in buying a similar product/service.

Another way of increasing customer engagement is by reaching prospects through popular messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. Not all customers like to reach through website chatbots, e-mail, or calls, especially millennials and gen-z, therefore integrating messaging apps to your chatbot could be game-changing.

Getting Started With Chatbots

We have listed some of the best chatbot services in the business down below. But before you start, you need to consider what you are precisely looking for in a chatbot.

Defining the goal and use case

The first step is to define the purpose of integrating a chatbot.

Are you looking to solve a customer service issue? Promote a new product? Generate quality leads? Increase customer engagement?

Spend a good of time defining your goal, as it will give you a lot more clarity and save a lot of time.

2. Choosing a Platform

Figure out which platform is most likely to bring or already has traffic. Because other than websites, chatbots can be used across platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and mobile apps.

If your business already has social media handles and websites, study the demographic of your followers to get a better understanding, and choose a chatbot service accordingly.

3. Has AI and machine learning capabilities

A chatbot does not always understand what a customer is saying and has to be repeated constantly. To overcome this obstacle, a good chatbot uses Artificial intelligence and machine learning. When a chatbot has learning capabilities it becomes smarter and also appears much more authentic and is more likely to be used again in the future, as it provides more relevant answers for users.

4. Has CRM Integrations

The best chatbots have CRM integrations which allow the chatbot to take an omni-channel approach. The customer can fetch or provide details to the chatbot across multiple platforms. Having a chatbot integrated into the CRM system also helps in providing customer insights.

5. Ease of Usage

Some chatbots are more difficult to build than others. But usually, the more complex ones also have more features and more flexibility. So figure what is more important to you, Simplicity or features?

If you are willing to spend a lot of time or hiring someone to build a chatbot, then you could go for chatbots which are more difficult to use. But if you’re short on time and manpower, you can do with the simpler chatbots.

Best Chatbots

1. MobileMonkey

MobileMonkey is one of the most complete chatbots present. It can be used in a variety of platforms and industries.

Domains Suited For:

• E-Commerce
• Customer Service
• Sales
• Live Chat
• Real estate
• Marketing

Channels Suited For:

• Websites
• Facebook Messenger
• SMS

Pros:

1. Extensive Chatbot Tools: MobileMonkey nails it when it comes to features and flexibility. You are in total control of the creation of the chatbot. You can create every Dialogue from scratch to give it that human touch.
2. Interface: Very neat, simple, and elegant. Also provides lots of helpful tutorials. Each tab is designed in such a way that you can never get lost or confused, and find everything you want.
3. Workflow: Provides a very organic chatbot-building experience. The best feature is the ability to test the chatbots immediately and make corrections if necessary.

Cons:

1. Freemium Feature Set: While the free version of MobileMonkey has some incredible features, the best ones are behind a paywall. The Pro version has features like API connection, contact leads, Zapier integration and also removes the MobileMonkey branding from the chatbot. The free version support only one bot at a time. If you’re a small business all this wouldn’t be a problem, but if you’re looking to go big on chatbots, then go for the Pro version.
2. Templates: If you’re not interested in creating chatbots from scratch, there many templates to get you started. These templates have pre-written dialogues and workflow, which can of course be changed according to your requirements.

Pricing:

2. WP Chatbot

WP Chatbot is a product of MobileMonkey. And MobileMonkey has hit this out of the park too. WP Chatbot is probably the best WordPress chatbot on the market.

Domains Suited For:

• Customer Service
• Live Chat
• Sales
• Marketing

Channels Suited For:

• WordPress
• Facebook Messenger

Pros:

1. One-click-install for WordPress
2. Add Messenger customer chat in web applications
3. Multiple languages supported
4. Complete chat history and contacts storage
5. Detailed positioning, customization, and branding
6. Team-friendly inbox for your marketing, sales, and support teams

Cons:

1. Requires Facebook Messenger

Pricing:

WP-Chatbot is free to get started. If you want the enhanced website chat widget for WordPress, pricing starts at $48/year total.

3. Zendesk Chat

Zendesk Chat’s main feature is live chat. Which means it will need a human operator. But Zendesk has other APIs and products to build a fully functioning chatbot.

Domains Suited For:

• Sales
• Marketing
• E-Commerce

Channels Suited For:

• Facebook Messenger
• SMS
• Live Chat

Pros:

1. Seamless Integration with Zendesk Products: The integration between Zendesk Chat and Zendesk Product Suite is effortless.
2. Highly Customizable Chat Window: Zendesk Chat provides an SDK that allows a lot of room for customization, especially if you are/have a developer.
3. Customer Insights: Zendesk Chat has a comprehensive analytics report delivered weekly to your email. It also allows you to create business goals to measure how often you complete your target.
4. Free Plan and Reasonable Pricing: If you are going to use all the products from Zendesk, the pricing may go up. But if you only need a product only for live chat, then Zendesk Chat provides you the most value for money.

Cons:

1. Outdated User Interface: Zendesk’s look and feel are clumsy and awkward. Without a developer, design customization is a real challenge.
2. Integrations: While Integrations within Zendesk products work seamlessly, it only has 10 integrations outside of Zendesk. Such as Jira, Salesforce, etc.
3. AI and ML: Integrating AI and Machine Learning into your chatbot is a challenge as you need to build it from scratch using Zendesk’s API.
4. Best features behind a paywall: While the live chat features are available at a very low price. But to build a proper chatbot with features like real-time monitoring and analytics, you will need to access the premium or higher plans.

Pricing:

4. Octane AI

Octane AI has a very specific set of use cases. It is certainly not a tool that all online businesses can use. Octane AI is specifically tailored for e-commerce, Facebook, and SMS marketing.

Domains Suited For:

• E-Commerce
• Sales
• Marketing

Channels Suited For:

• Facebook Messenger
• Live Chat
• SMS

Pros:

1. SMS and Facebook Messenger channels: Most Chatbot Builders that have Facebook Messenger tools don’t have SMS Marketing tools. Most companies that market on Facebook also use SMS for marketing.
2. Built for e-commerce: Octane AI has built-in workflows and templates that suit e-commerce platforms such as specific flows of any Messenger platform, including Abandon cart, browse abandonment, welcome series, win backs, post-purchase flows, and anything else you want to build.
3. Easy setup: With Octane AI, you can have your first Facebook Messenger chatbot up and running in under 10 minutes. It is recommended to take a bit more time before setting your Messenger bot free, but you could get started pretty quickly.
4. Analytics: Octane AI provides in-depth analytics for tracking revenue from Facebook Messenger and SMS marketing campaigns. And also provides customer insights through which you can improve your product/service.

Cons:

1. Pricing: Octane AI pricing is somewhat of a slippery slope. The basic cost of operation is affordable, but the initial costs don’t factor in the number of contacts you have or the number of SMS text messages sent per month, and you start playing with the pricing calculator, you’ll see that the actual monthly cost is hundreds of dollars higher. And for a tool that is only limited to Facebook Messenger and SMS, it is quite expensive.
2. Not suitable for a website or live chat: Octane AI’s chatbots for websites are awful. To make it worse, it uses a direct competitor’s product for website chatbots.
3. No iOS or Android app available: Octane AI does not have a mobile application to keep up with conversations and monitor performance while you’re on the go.
4. Only beneficial for Shopify users: Outside of Shopify, there are no success stories with Octane AI on other major e-commerce platforms, nor does Octane AI suggest using the product on other e-commerce platforms.
5. No API available: API integrations are a basic necessity in chatbots. However, Octane AI has none. This is a major disadvantage as it restricts you and your team from making a collaborative effort.

Pricing:

5. DialogFlow

Domains Suited For:

• E-Commerce
• Marketing
• Sales

Channels Suited For:

• Websites
• Mobile Apps
• SMS
• IoT

Pros:

1. Build conversational interfaces for multiple platforms: Dialogflow is extremely versatile, and you can create bots and apps for Google Assistant, Cortana, Alexa, Facebook Messenger, and other platforms. Additionally, you can engage with users through phones, wearables, cars, speakers, and other smart IoT devices.
2. Scalability: Since DialogFlow is a product of Google, its resources are massive. In case you are planning to scale up your business, you will have one less thing to worry about as you won’t have to change your chatbot. Additionally, Google Cloud offers a server-less way to run your conversational agent on the backend.
3. Integrations on major platforms: Dialogflow offers integration with a range of chat platforms like Google Assistant, Facebook Messenger, Line, Slack, Telegram, Skype, Viber, Twitter, Twilio, Cortana, Cisco Spark, and Amazon Alexa. Once your bot is developed on Dialogflow (with some modifications required) it can be integrated on multiple platforms.
4. Multilingual: This is a feature that is quite uncommon when it comes to chatbots. Dialogflow has 20+ supported languages including Spanish, French, and Japanese.
5. Supported programming languages: DialogFlow is a goldmine for developers as it provides client libraries and guides for C#, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

Cons:

1. Flexibility and developer experience: Although Dialogflow is fairly intuitive on the surface, you’ll find that it’s not as flexible a platform as you would have hoped for. This poses a problem because it results in a lot of tedious repetitions which are quite frankly a waste of time. This means there’s limited flexibility to change things you create in the future, which needless to say is a major issue.
2. Poor Customer Support: Google isn’t too big on live customer support, nor is Dialogflow a very notable customer support chatbot option. You can transfer the chat to a human operator, but that takes a bit of time and effort.
3. Lots of manual work, time, and training: The result of DialogFlow is undoubtedly one of the best in the game, the process of getting there can be pain-staking. This can get very annoying very quickly because you have to input many things manually, especially when you consider the need to train your bot over time.

Pricing:

6. ChatterOn

Domain Suited For:

• E-Commerce
• Marketing

Channels:

• Facebook Messenger
• Website

Pros:

1. Visual Editor: The visual flow editor is the most striking feature of ChatterOn, and it’s also useful. You can create new modules and connections and manually drag them into a configuration that works for you. This also makes longer, more complex bots easy to handle and navigate. This gives you a bird’s eye view of your entire chatbot. If you’re a visual person, this is a huge bonus.
2. Convenience: ChatterOn’s visually-driven interface and simple action panes make it extremely convenient. You barely have to switch sections while you’re working on one thing, so you don’t often lose focus or misplace something.
3. Depth: Just because ChatterOn’s features are simple to use, doesn’t mean it can’t create sophisticated chatbots. ChatterOn has a fair amount of depth to its features. You can just use it to create simple, responsive bots, but you can also get in-depth by grabbing API information or take a peek at your analytics. Regardless of whether you know how to code or not, you can use all of ChatterOn’s advanced features.

Cons:

1. No In-built Bot Testing: Typically, you’ll get a chatbot icon in the lower right-hand corner that allows you to test out your bot right from the software. You have to connect directly to Facebook, subscribe to your bot, and then test it from Messenger. For its convenience feature, this is a major inconvenience.
2. Limited Features: Even though ChatterOn technically does have a lot of features, the problem is that it’s missing a lot of features that its competitors have. For example, if you want to allow users to type in their responses, you’ll find that the process is pretty unintuitive. This can be a big part of building chatbots, so you’ll have to spend some time with ChatterOn if you want to get the most out of it.

Pricing:

7. Bold360

Domains Suited For:

• Customer Service
• Marketing

Channels:

• Live Chat
• Messaging Apps
• SMS
• Websites
• Twitter
• E-mail

Pros:

1. Transparency: Bold360’s chatbot doesn’t require a data scientist to analyze the input and it’s ready to use once it is activated. You can also see how AI technology is analyzing the input to arrive at a solution.
2. Omnichannel support and engagement: Bold360 offers multiple messaging channels, including SMS/text messaging, WeChat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Email, and Microsoft Teams.
3. Utilization of customer data: Bold360 accumulates customer data across various interactions with your site, then uses this data to provide insight to your customer support team. It also uses this data to direct users to the best resource for their needs, whether that’s a bot or a member of your live chat team.
4. Tightly integrated live agent and chatbot: Bot-to-agent routing with Bold360 is strong because transfers take place in the same chat window or across channels of engagement. Additionally, Bold360 claims their bots can assist in live agent training, and reduce training time and costs.

Cons:

1. Tedious Implementation Process: Implementation of Bold360 is long and tedious. Even on the Bold360 website, it says to expect at least 6 weeks to implement the solution. In addition to implementation time, if you expect to get a positive ROI on Bold360, you will need a dedicated systems administrator and developer to maintain and build out capabilities for your teams using the chatbot software.
2. Pricing: The AI implementation from Bold360 is undoubtedly great. But the vast majority of desired features are relegated to the premium plan. This includes their natural language processing tool, AI-powered self-service, chatbots, and smart routing.
3. Poor Customer support: Bold360 offers 24/7 live chat support, however, there are several reports of inadequate service due to their outsourced support team. Inadequate support for a product this expensive is not an acceptable or sustainable practice.
4. Outdated User interface: Bold360 UI/UX that feels outdated and hinders the productivity of the end-users. It’s just not as smooth or visually appealing as many of the new customer service chatbots on the market.
5. Limited amount of native integrations: Unlike many other live chat software solutions, Bold360 has a very limited number of native integrations. Unfortunately, you’ll need to use their API and SDKs to connect most of the other tools you use. Integrations and custom development on the platform are overly complex for 2021 and beyond.