9 что такое чатбот

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What is a chatbot?

A chatbot is a computer program that simulates human conversation with an end user. Though not all chatbots are equipped with artificial intelligence (AI), modern chatbots increasingly use conversational AI techniques like natural language processing (NLP) to understand the user’s questions and automate responses to them.

Market research Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms, 2023

IBM named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms.

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How to build a chatbot

Chatbots vs. AI chatbots vs. virtual agents

The terms chatbot, AI chatbot and virtual agent are often used interchangeably, which can cause confusion. While the technologies these terms refer to are closely related, subtle distinctions yield important differences in their respective capabilities.

Chatbot is the most inclusive, catch-all term. Any software simulating human conversation, whether powered by traditional, rigid decision tree-style menu navigation or cutting edge conversational AI, is a chatbot. Chatbots can be found across any nearly any communication channel, from phone trees to social media to specific apps and websites.

AI chatbots are chatbots that employ a variety of AI technologies, from machine learning that optimize responses over time to natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) that accurately interprets user questions and matches them to specific intents. Deep learning capabilities allow AI chatbots to become more accurate over time, which in turns allows humans to interact with AI chatbots in a more natural, free-flowing way without being misunderstood.

Virtual agents are a further evolution of AI chatbot software that not only use conversational AI to conduct dialogue and deep learning to self-improve over time, but often pair those AI technologies with robotic process automation (RPA) in one interface to act directly upon the user’s intent without further human intervention.

To help illustrate the distinctions, imagine that a user is curious about tomorrow’s weather. With a traditional chatbot, the user can use the specific phrase “tell me the weather forecast.” The chatbot says it will rain. With an AI chatbot the user can ask, “what’s tomorrow’s weather lookin’ like?”—the chatbot, correctly interpreting the question, says it will rain. With a virtual agent, the user can ask, “what’s tomorrow’s weather lookin’ like?”—the virtual agent can not only predict tomorrow’s rain, but also offer to set an earlier alarm to account for rain delays in the morning commute.

Common chatbot use cases

Consumers use AI chatbots for many kinds of tasks, from engaging with mobile apps to using purpose-built devices such as intelligent thermostats and smart kitchen appliances. Business use is equally varied: Marketers use AI-powered chatbots to personalize customer experiences and streamline e-commerce operations; IT and HR teams use them to enable employee self-service; contact centers rely on chatbots to streamline incoming communications and direct customers to resources.

Conversational interfaces can vary, too. AI chatbots are commonly used in social media messaging apps, standalone messaging platforms, proprietary websites and apps, and even on phone calls (where they are also known as integrated voice response, or IVR).

Typical use cases include:

Timely, always-on assistance for customer service or human resources issues
Personalized recommendations in an e-commerce context
Definition of fields within forms and financial applications
Intake and appointment scheduling for healthcare offices
Automated reminders to for time- or location-based tasks

Benefits of chatbots

The ability of AI chatbots to accurately process natural human language and automate personalized service in return creates clear benefits for businesses and customers alike.

Improve customer engagement and brand loyalty
Before the advent of chatbots, any customer questions, concerns or complaints—big or small—required a human response. Naturally, timely or even urgent customer issues sometimes arise off-hours, over the weekend or during a holiday. But staffing customer service departments to meet unpredictable demand, day or night, is a costly and difficult endeavor.

Today, chatbots can consistently manage customer interactions 24×7 while continuously improving the quality of the responses and keeping costs down. Chatbots automate workflows and free up employees from repetitive tasks. A chatbot can also eliminate long wait times for phone-based customer support, or even longer wait times for email, chat and web-based support, because they are available immediately to any number of users at once. That’s a great user experience—and satisfied customers are more likely to exhibit brand loyalty.

Reduce costs and boost operational efficiency
Staffing a customer support center day and night is expensive. Likewise, time spent answering repetitive queries (and the training that is required to make those answers uniformly consistent) is also costly. Many overseas enterprises offer the outsourcing of these functions, but doing so carries its own significant cost and reduces control over a brand’s interaction with its customers.

A chatbot, however, can answer questions 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It can provide a new first line of support, supplement support during peak periods, or offload tedious repetitive questions so human agents can focus on more complex issues. Chatbots can help reduce the number of users requiring human assistance, helping businesses more efficient scale up staff to meet increased demand or off-hours requests.

Generate leads and satisfy customers
Chatbots can help with sales lead generation and improve conversion rates. For example, a customer browsing a website for a product or service may need have questions about different features, attributes or plans. A chatbot can provide these answers in situ, helping to progress the customer toward purchase. For more complex purchases with a multistep sales funnel, a chatbot can ask lead qualification questions and even connect the customer directly with a trained sales agent.

Best practices and tips for selecting chatbots

Selecting the right chatbot platform can have a significant payoff for both businesses and users. Users benefit from immediate, always-on support while businesses can better meet expectations without costly staff overhauls.

For example, an e-commerce company could deploy a chatbot to provide browsing customers with more detailed information about the products they’re viewing. The HR department of an enterprise organization may ask a developer to find a chatbot that can give employees integrated access to all of their self-service benefits. Software engineers might want to integrate an AI chatbot directly into their complex product.

Whatever the case or project, here are five best practices and tips for selecting a chatbot platform.

Pick a solution that can accomplish your immediate goals but won’t limit future expansion. Why does a team want its own chatbot? How is this goal currently addressed, and what are the challenges that are driving the need for a chatbot? Does it offer templates to help your organization scale up and diversify chatbot offerings in the future, or will other teams need to develop something else from scratch? Does the pricing allow for efficient internal expansion?
Understand the impact AI has on the customer experience. Chatbots are an extension of your brand. The right AI can not only accurately understand what customers need and how those needs are being articulated, but be able to respond in a non-robotic way that reflects well upon your business. Without the right AI tools, a chatbot is just a glorified FAQ.
Ask what it takes to build, train and improve your chatbot over time. Do you need something simple and ready-made, or sophisticated API access for custom implementation? AI doesn’t train itself. You need a clear sense of what intents and content arrive pre-built and what you’ll need to create yourself. Some chatbots offer the ability to use historical chatlogs and transcripts to create these intents, saving time. Those using machine learning can also automatically adjust and improve responses over time.
Look for ways to connect to, not replace, existing investments. Often, emerging channels or technologies seem like they will replace established ones. But instead, they become just another medium for an organization to manage. A chatbot that connects to these channels and customer case systems can provide the best of both worlds: Modernizing the customer experience while more accurately routing users to the information and individuals that can solve their problems.
Determine if the chatbot meets your deployment, scalability and security requirements. Every organization and industry has its own unique compliance requirements and needs, so it’s important to have those criteria clearly defined. Many chatbots are delivered via the cloud to draw on the learnings and outcomes from other customer conversations, so if you require an on-premises solution or a single tenant environment, the list of available providers is much shorter. It’s also important to understand if and how your data is used, as it can have major impacts in highly regulated industries.

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Chatbot Definition, Types, Pros & Cons, Examples

Amilcar has 10 years of FinTech, blockchain, and crypto startup experience and advises financial institutions, governments, regulators, and startups.

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Fact checked by Vikki Velasquez

Vikki Velasquez is a researcher and writer who has managed, coordinated, and directed various community and nonprofit organizations. She has conducted in-depth research on social and economic issues and has also revised and edited educational materials for the Greater Richmond area.

What Is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a computer program that simulates human conversation through voice commands or text chats or both. Chatbot, short for chatterbot, is an artificial intelligence (AI) feature that can be embedded and used through any major messaging application.

There are a number of synonyms for chatbot, including «talkbot,» «bot,» «IM bot,» «interactive agent» or «artificial conversation entity.»

Key Takeaways

Chatbots, also called chatterbots, is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) used in messaging apps.
This tool helps add convenience for customers—they are automated programs that interact with customers like a human would and cost little to nothing to engage with.
Key examples are chatbots used by businesses in Facebook Messenger, or as virtual assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa.
Chatbots tend to operate in one of two ways—either via machine learning or with set guidelines.
However, due to advancements in AI technology, chatbots using set guidelines are becoming a historical footnote.

Understanding Chatbots

The progressive advance of technology has seen an increase in businesses moving from traditional to digital platforms to transact with consumers. Convenience through technology is being carried out by businesses by implementing AI techniques on their digital platforms. One AI technique that is growing in its application and use is chatbots. Some examples of chatbot technology are virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant, and messaging apps, such as WeChat and Facebook’s Messenger.

A chatbot is an automated program that interacts with customers as a human would and costs little to nothing to engage with. Chatbots attend to customers at all times of the day and week and are not limited by time or a physical location. This makes its implementation appealing to a lot of businesses that may not have the manpower or financial resources to keep employees working around the clock.

According to industry research, the COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerated the implementation and user adoption of chatbots around the globe.

Types of Chatbots

A chatbot works in a couple of ways: set guidelines and machine learning (ML).

Set Guidelines Chatbot

A chatbot that functions with a set of guidelines in place is limited in its conversation. It can only respond to a set number of requests and vocabulary and is only as intelligent as its programming code. An example of a limited bot is an automated banking bot that asks the caller some questions to understand what the caller wants to do.

The bot would make a command like “Please tell me what I can do for you by saying account balances, account transfer, or bill payment.” If the customer responds with «credit card balance,» the bot would not understand the request and would proceed to either repeat the command or transfer the caller to a human assistant.

Over time, chatbots have evolved with new AI advancements and are far more responsive to human interaction than chatbots based on set guidelines.

Machine Learning Chatbot

A chatbot that functions through machine learning has an artificial neural network inspired by the neural nodes of the human brain. The bot is programmed to self-learn as it is introduced to new dialogues and words. In effect, as a chatbot receives new voice or textual dialogues, the number of inquiries that it can reply to and the accuracy of each response it gives increases.

Meta (as Facebook’s parent company is now known) has a machine learning chatbot that creates a platform for companies to interact with their consumers through the Messenger application. Using the Messenger bot, users can buy shoes from Spring, order a ride from Uber, and have conversations with The New York Times on news issues of the day. If a user asked The New York Times through the app a question like “What’s new today?” or “What do the polls say?” the bot would reply to the request.

Chatbots are used in a variety of sectors and built for different purposes. There are retail bots designed to pick and order groceries, weather bots that give you weather forecasts of the day or week, and simply friendly bots that just talk to people in need of a friend.

The fintech sector also uses chatbots to make consumers’ inquiries and applications for financial services easier. In 2016, a small business lender in Montreal, Thinking Capital, uses a virtual assistant to provide customers with 24/7 assistance through Facebook Messenger. A small business hoping to get a loan from the company needs only answer key qualification questions asked by the bot in order to be deemed eligible to receive up to $300,000 in financing.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Chatbots

Chatbots are convenient for providing customer service and support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They also free up phone lines and are far less expensive over the long run than hiring people to perform support. Using AI and natural language processing, chatbots are becoming better at understanding what customers want and providing the help they need. Companies also like chatbots because they can collect data about customer queries, response times, satisfaction, and so on.

Chatbots, however, are still limited. Even with natural language processing, they may not fully comprehend a customer’s input and may provide incoherent answers. Many chatbots are also limited in the scope of queries that they are able to respond to. This may lead to frustration with a lack of emotion, sympathy, and personalization given fairly generic feedback. In addition to customer dissatisfaction with not reaching a human being, chatbots can be expensive to implement and maintain, especially if they must be customized and updated often.

Chatbots

Lower cost than human workers
Online 24/7
Can be used as a sales & marketing tool

May not understand user queries
Lacks emotion and is not personalized
May be expensive/complicated to install and maintain

Examples of Chatbots

Today, chatbots are ubiquitous on corporate websites, e-commerce platforms, and other customer-facing sites online (on the web or via app). These can help with customer support such as how to return or replace an item, how to request a refund, and so on.

Chatbots have also been implemented to help with public policy and inform citizens if they have certain questions. For example, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several health chatbots were created by governments and healthcare providers. A recent study of such chatbots identified five key applications of the current health chatbots, which were:

disseminating health information and knowledge;
self-triage and personal risk assessment;
monitoring exposure and notifications;
tracking COVID-19 symptoms and health aspects; and
combating misinformation and fake news

Furthermore, these technologies can ask and answer questions, create health records and history of use, complete forms and generate reports, and take simple actions. Nonetheless, the use of health chatbots poses many challenges both at the level of the social system (i.e., consumers’ acceptability) as well as the technical system (i.e., design and usability).

Is Siri a Chatbot?

Siri is a type of chatbot that employs AI and voice-recognition software. Along with other examples like Amazon’s Alexa (Echo devices) and Google Home, these are often packaged into smart speakers or mobile devices to both listen and respond in natural language.

What Was the First Chatbot?

The word «chatbot» first appeared in 1992; however, the first chatbot is thought to be a software program called ELIZA, developed by MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s. ELIZA was able to recognize certain key phrases and respond with open-ended questions or comments. The intent at the time was that ELIZA could be used as sort of a therapist that could listen to peoples’ problems and respond in a way that made them think that the software understood and empathized with them.

You can still interact with a version of ELIZA here.

Who Has the Best Chatbot?

Chatbots are often created for particular companies and for specific purposes. Therefore, it is difficult to rank chatbots across the board. There are, however, several websites that rate and rank various popular chatbots found online. However, there does not seem to be any consensus at this point on which are decidedly the best.

9 ways chatbots work as a customer engagement tool

Chatbots are the latest trend in customer engagement.

Chatbots are replacing the old fashioned customer engagement techniques by automating tasks and eliminating over time consumption. Time is important to everyone, and 70% of the fall outs of leads is due to slow responses and slower customer engagement tactics. Older techniques of customer engagement fell out of the market because they were repetitive, costly, time-consuming and often mismanaged. Hence, chatbots came into the game.

Chatbots help the customers with fast responses, suggestions, online booking platforms, reminders and much more!

Importance of chatbots

The attention span of the entire human species has decreased all the way down to 8 seconds, 1 second less than even that of a goldfish. People don’t want to spend their time talking on a phone to a customer service representative. They want to get their work done as quickly as possible and get on with the rest of their day. Afterall, which rational-minded person would want to waste minutes on something that could get done in seconds?

But a chatbot doesn’t just improve the customer experience, it even saves the business a lot of time and money. By 2019, about 30% of US financial firms had employed bots to improve their user experience, and these firms do know quite a bit about financial impact.

Even in 2017, the number of customer service requests around the world was about 265 billion a year, which cost businesses $ 1.3 trillion to handle. We can expect the number of customer requests to rise even further in 2020, but the cost to service them does not need to remain this high. Infusing chatbots into the customer service process can actually reduce the cost of customer service by over 30% and simultaneously improve the customer experience by enabling the customers to get quicker responses to their requests.

The automated process will even improve the customers’ perception of the company by reducing the scope for human error. Imagine a local business that provides services like on an appointment basis. If the customers have to book the sessions by messaging a human executive, who then needs to update a database with regard to the booking, there is a lot of scope for error. If the executive has many other responsibilities, she/he may very simply forget to update the database, which would certainly result in a seriously dissatisfied customer. A local business may not really be able to afford another executive to be specifically responsible for this task, and that’s where a virtual assistant would come in. By automatically accessing and updating the database as and when the customer wants to schedule an appointment, it would reduce the scope for human error.

With chatbots being operational 24×7, all customers and website visitors can be attended to. Information can be gathered and service requests can be handled at any point in time, so those who visit your website or face an issue with your product or service at odd hours will not end up being left unattended and feeling frustrated.

9 ways chatbots help in customer engagement

#1 Make the customer understand your product.

Chatbots engage customers by making them understand your product better. When your customer fails to understand something, the chatbot will read this and send them details about your product and help them in decision making.

#2 Keep customers hooked with different methods

Chatbots use a variety of methods that keep the customer hooked during and even after the customer starts interaction with the chatbot.

#3 Notifications

Once the customer comes in for a query, or to find out about your product, chatbot will automatically take this as a user attribute and automatically send them notifications about the product post-conversion. This way the customer will have gentle reminders about your product and this can keep them engaged for a long time.

#4 Reminders

When you schedule an appointment, have a booking or a deadline, the chatbot will automatically send you reminders or you can even set reminders in the chatbot. This way you can use your bot for multiple purposes.

#5 Send images, videos, audios

Visual representation is always nice to look at, easy to understand and more engaging. Chatbots can send your customers – images, videos and audios related to your products and engage in a better way.

#6 Follow ups

Follow ups are important and are a vital part of keeping your customers hooked. This can be done with chatbots using methods such as emails, notifications etc.

#7 Broadcast messages

Broadcast messages can keep the customers engaged by sending them regular updates on new product launches, most viewed products, discounts and much more which will keep the customer engaged even after they’re done talking to the chatbots. Social media chatbots, such as WhatsApp chatbots are the best example here, to broadcast your message to all your customers on their preferred communication channel.

#8 Track engagement

Tracking engagement refers to tracking traffic and keeping a watch over your customers activities on your website. With chatbot development platforms like Engati, you can track engagement and know what area you have to work on better for better customer retention. Another advantage is that you can track engagement on multiple channels, and pick the conversation on the channel of your customer’s preference.

#9 Quick solutions

One of the best parts about chatbots is its quick engagement with instant replies. Slow replies lead to less retention rates and it’s a bad engagement technique. Chatbots can avoid this by quick replies and solutions to the customers. By doing this, the next time the customer

How are chatbots changing customer experience?

Chatbots have revolutionised customer experience and also put extensive efforts of customer services to rest. Here are a few examples-

24/7 hours assistance
Fast replies and instant resolution to any customer queries
Lead generation and customer engagement
Makes suggestions, plans, bookings, schedules appointments, payments and much more.

How chatbots contribute to your digital marketing activities?

Bots are gaining popularity day by day and businesses honestly cannot afford to perform digitally without a chatbot. Let’s look at a few instances through which chatbots provide business as well as customer support.

Better understanding of what your customers want

Majority of the customers prefer texting over speaking over the call – That’s a given. So, there’s no harm and only an advantage at integrating your business website with a chatbot. On the other hand, human agents are busy responding to a deluge of customer queries so they cannot possibly find time to entertain all requests immediately at once.Therefore, it’s important that you give a personal touch to your bot while building it. You may give it a common name that your customers can relate to. Design a relatable logo and create greeting messages that sound personal but not too overwhelming.

Gather quality leads for your business needs

Spray and pray is a long lost strategy when there weren’t really many means to measure your performance and strategies. In fact, while designing and giving structure to your bot you’ve got to ensure customers feel like you care for them.This way, you will be able to generate good quality leads that will pass through the sales funnel faster. Moreover, you can also integrate the LIVE chat feature with your bot so that whenever a customer wants real human support, your customer support agent can jump in.

Bots will make your product sell on its own

The bot is extremely capable of managing your customers so you can sit back and relax and intervene only when required. So, you only have to manage the initial-level inputs so that the rest of the journey is taken care of by the bot.

A seamless user experience will help you measure business success

Did you know, more than 70% of online customers like it when they see personalised, and not forced, advertisements. Bots can easily collect user data and help you create personalised customer journeys according to the user path.

How to build your customer engagement bot?

There are two ways of building a bot-

DIY chatbot building platforms– Easy to build, no coding, easy integrations, customisable, nominal pricing, use of AI and the fastest way of building a bot.
Coding a bot– time consuming, more expensive, coding needed for integrations, team required for regular chatbot testing and less retention rates, however, with the right software development process it can be really effective.

These days, almost all enterprises and businesses are opting for the former method to create chatbots because of obvious reasons, of course. Though it’s easy and fast, building these bots from DIY chatbot platforms also do have certain steps and tools that you need to implicate to build a robust and ideal bot for your business.

Wrapping up!

Chatbots have single handedly revolutionised the customer experience and people are a lot more engaged now. With chatbot development tools like Engati, you can even track your customer’s traffic and activities which allows you to make further improvisions.

We hope you found this blog helpful. Happy botting!

9 что такое чатбот

You definitely interacted with them while shopping online or looking for another tool for your business. Chatbots seem to be everywhere…

… Except on your website. You haven’t implemented one yet and don’t know whether it’s worth it. You may even remember a negative experience you personally had when a non-functional bot couldn’t help you and made you go shop somewhere else instead.

So is implementing a chatbot a good idea for your business? How exactly does the technology work? Can you do it without any coding or API skills? Find the answers to all these questions in the detailed overview of chatbots below.

Table of Contents

What Is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a virtual assistant communicating with your audience via a computer program. It can proactively start chats, answer user questions, create tickets, and automate other tasks without any human intervention.

an example of a chatbot on a business website

You can implement a chatbot on your website (via a live chat widget), social messaging platforms (e.g. Facebook Chatbot), or/and messaging apps (e.g. WhatsApp bot). Quality chatbot software providers let you build multichannel chatbots that provide a consistent customer experience across messaging apps and widgets.

Types of Chatbots

There are three major types of chatbots: AI-powered chatbots, flow-based chatbots, and hybrid chatbots.

Flow-based chatbots

Despite chatbots being typically described as AI-powered virtual assistants, the majority of chatbots used by businesses are still actually flow-based.

Flow-based chatbots (also known as decision-tree or rule-based bots) handle chats according to predefined conversational flows.

How flow-based chatbots work? Flow-based chatbots are extremely easy to set up and manage. By using if/then logic and a simple drag-and-drop builder, you can design any conversation flow you want.

Here’s an example of the chatbot setup process with Brevo Conversations:

a flow-based chatbot built with Brevo

Brevo Conversations is our new chat app where you can build flow-based chatbots in a few clicks.

You set up the bot answers to the user questions you expect to receive in advance and turn the bot on. There’s no room for improvisation, the bot will follow the script. Such a setup has its pros and cons.

On one hand, you have full control over customer interactions and eliminate mistakes an autonomous AI-powered bot can make.

On the other hand, it takes a deep understanding of your prospects’ and customers’ problems to build relatable conversational paths. If you don’t have customer interaction history to pull the data from (e.g. live chat history, emails, sales calls), you won’t be able to map out chat flows that meet customer expectations.

And of course, rule-based chatbots can’t handle conversations that go beyond their predefined scenarios.

AI-powered chatbots

Artificial intelligence chatbots, or conversational AI bots, are solutions trained to operate on their own by using machine learning and natural language processing (NLP). These chatbots are able to understand the context of the message and provide users with appropriate, logical answers.

an example of a ai-powered chatbot understanding context

The advantage of AI-powered chatbots is that they run human-like conversations without actual human interaction other than initial setup.

How AI-powered chatbots work? They are able to learn and improve performance over time. By holding conversations regularly, AI chatbots learn to navigate conversations more effectively.

So before you launch your AI-powered bot, you need to train it to handle the most common customer queries. Your bot will learn keywords and synonyms, start understanding context and recognizing user intent to be able to provide helpful replies to customer questions.

The training process isn’t too complicated, but it’ll definitely take time before the conversational chatbot can operate adequately. This, and the need for more advanced chatbot technology solutions make many smaller businesses turn to the simpler alternative – flow-based bots.

Hybrid chatbots

Hybrid chatbots offer a mix of decision-tree chatbots and live chat. These simple yet effective solutions enable bots and humans to work together by offering seamless chatbot-human handoffs.

In a hybrid model, chatbot’s responsibilities are limited to starting conversations and answering common questions. A user can always choose to speak to a human operator to receive a personalized consultation or resolve a complex issue. Most chatbots allow for easy bot-to-human handover, enabling seamless user experience.

The setup process is very simple and straightforward: you build sequences and define scenarios when a conversation should be forwarded to an agent.

an example of aa hybrid bot built with Brevo

With Brevo Conversations, you can build hybrid chatbots to balance automation and human conversation.

What Is a Chatbot Used For?

Are chatbots only good for customer support? Definitely not.

According to the Intercom Chatbot Trends Report, chatbots are most commonly used by sales teams. Other chatbot use cases include marketing, customer service and support, onboarding, and feedback collection.

Discover chatbot examples to inspire you.

chatbot uses stats

Chatbots for marketing

There are plenty of scenarios where chatbots can be useful for marketing. As a marketing tool, chatbots can:

Announce new products and offers
Share news and updates
Educate customers about the product
Automate and support multichannel marketing campaigns
Follow up with cart abandoners
Upsell and cross-sell
Improve brand reputation

Highlight on Upsells and Cross-sells

Using chatbots for upselling and cross-selling is particularly effective in ecommerce.

A chatbot can proactively identify and offer relevant products based on the user search history. AI chatbots can do that better than rule-based chatbots since they can collect customer data in real-time and provide highly personalized recommendations.

Chatbots for sales

60% of businesses using chatbots are B2C. Chatbots help move potential customers through the sales funnel by recommending products, guiding through the payment process, assisting with pain points when making a purchase.

But chatbots can be a powerful sales channel for B2C brands, too. They’re capable of running entire lead generation campaigns on their own:

Promote lead magnets to grab a website visitor’s attention
Capturing leads with embedded forms
Nurturing leads with automate flows and targeted messages
Booking appointments
Qualifying leads
Even running product demos right within chat widgets

Chatbots for onboarding

SaaS companies often use chatbots to offer self-service onboarding to new users.

Here are just a few tasks chatbots usually offer their assistance with:

Setting up a new account
Navigating product features
Upgrading
Highlighting rules and policies
Troubleshooting

The easiest way to guide new users through your product with a chatbot is by integrating your chatbot platform with your knowledge base. Whenever someone has a question about your product, a chatbot will pull the answer from a knowledge base and communicate it through a chat widget.

Chatbots for customer service and support

Customer support has been ranked as the second most important chatbot function (37% of cases). Indeed, when customers have a problem, it’s easiest to ask for help directly via live chat. Customers enjoy how quickly they can get assistance and how they don’t need to hunt down a support email address.

A hybrid model allows customer service agents to offer 24/7 support and handle simple problems automatically. If a chatbot can’t resolve an issue, the request can be forwarded to a human agent in real-time or converted into a ticket for further investigation.

Chatbots for collecting feedback

A chat widget can also automatically gather feedback from your customers. All you need to do is embed a survey or a feedback form into your chat flows.

While users tend to ignore elements like popups and sticky banners, chat widgets are still hard to ignore. Chatbot solutions offer a range of advantages over other methods of collecting feedback:

They attract attention with genuine, human-like messages.
They keep customers engaged by sharing questions one by one.
They don’t redirect users to a dedicated survey page.

That’s why customer service chatbots are a soft but reliable tool for gathering customer feedback.

The Benefits of Using a Chatbot

Sales, marketing, and customer service teams use chatbots for a number of reasons. We’ve highlighted the six most significant benefits a chatbot solution can bring to a business of any size.

1. Drive user engagement

Chatbots proactively engage website visitors and increase user interaction. For example, you may be just browsing Gong’s site, but then you see this:

proactive bot starting the conversation

It’s hard to resist the temptation to click on that button, right? This is how the conversation starts.

By sending proactive messages, chatbots get users’ attention and start exchanges that often turn into sales opportunities.

2. Improve brand reputation

You have to agree that Gong’s chatbot is an awesome idea. You’re likely to remember it for a long time. This experience creates a positive brand perception, moving prospects one step closer to conversion.

But setting up a funny welcome message isn’t the only way to improve your brand reputation with a chatbot.

In today’s fast-paced world, people will appreciate it if you simply respond promptly and accurately to their questions. We all like brands that value our time and make an effort to help.

3. Automate time-consuming tasks

Chatbots can take over all repetitive questions so you don’t have to answer them again and again. They also eliminate tasks like scheduling meetings and recording lead contact details. With a proper chatbot solution, you won’t have to spend hours copy-pasting and can focus on high-impact tasks.

4. Boost customer satisfaction

Customers want fast and easy service. No wait times, straight answers to their questions, no complicated tools to use or forms to complete. Chatbots provide this direct support channel. And people will be happy to come to your site when they know the experience will be pleasant.

5. Improve employee engagement

Don’t chatbots steal customer support reps’ bread? No, quite the opposite – they help build more productive teams and boost employee engagement.

The truth is, handling loads of unqualified chats every day doesn’t make a very exciting job.

Implementing a chatbot is like hiring an assistant to support your employees’ efforts. It takes over boring, repetitive chats, enabling chat operators to handle high-level conversations where human touch is needed. Thus, they can deliver tangible results and feel accomplished.

6. Increase revenue

Prompt support and personalized customer service lead to more sales (67% more!) and higher customer retention.

Chatbots also contribute to your company’s ROI through cost reduction. “Cost savings” is one of the top 3 reasons why business leaders adopt AI chatbots.

What to keep in mind about chatbots

Too good to be true? Of course, as with any marketing tool, there are a few things to consider about chatbots before jumping in:

You need to analyze your audience’s needs and pain points beforehand. To build conversational flows that don’t get on your customers’ nerves, you should have a deep understanding of what really matters to them and why they contact you via a chat widget in the first place.

Your chatbot software should be easy to integrate with your CRM system. A stand-alone bot is of little help. You need it to sync with your CRM so you can record lead and customer data for further campaigns.

It’s best to go for a multichannel solution. If you choose an all-in-one service, you not only get a built-in CRM system but also access a toolkit for running multichannel campaigns. For instance, you can set up email or transactional campaigns targeting site visitors after they’ve interacted with your chat, and vice versa.

You still need live agents to handle complex issues. Even the most sophisticated bot can’t do it all. Treat your chatbot as a way to take the burden off your employees while they’re handling really important conversations.

Get started with chatbots from Brevo

Live chat & chatbots integrated with CRM, email, SMS and signup forms. Triggered messages, lead capture and agent productivity tools starting from $15/month.

9 что такое чатбот

9 что такое чатбот

Chatbot Definition, Types, Pros & Cons, Examples

What Is a Chatbot?

Key Takeaways

Understanding Chatbots

Types of Chatbots

Set Guidelines Chatbot

Machine Learning Chatbot

Advantages and Disadvantages of Chatbots

Chatbots

Examples of Chatbots

Is Siri a Chatbot?

What Was the First Chatbot?

Who Has the Best Chatbot?

9 ways chatbots work as a customer engagement tool

Importance of chatbots

9 ways chatbots help in customer engagement

#1 Make the customer understand your product.

#2 Keep customers hooked with different methods

#3 Notifications

#4 Reminders

#5 Send images, videos, audios

#6 Follow ups

#7 Broadcast messages

#8 Track engagement

#9 Quick solutions

How are chatbots changing customer experience?

How chatbots contribute to your digital marketing activities?

Better understanding of what your customers want

Gather quality leads for your business needs

Bots will make your product sell on its own

A seamless user experience will help you measure business success

How to build your customer engagement bot?

Wrapping up!

9 что такое чатбот

What Is a Chatbot?

Types of Chatbots

Flow-based chatbots

AI-powered chatbots

Hybrid chatbots

What Is a Chatbot Used For?

Chatbots for marketing

Chatbots for sales

Chatbots for onboarding

Chatbots for customer service and support

Chatbots for collecting feedback

The Benefits of Using a Chatbot

1. Drive user engagement

2. Improve brand reputation

3. Automate time-consuming tasks

4. Boost customer satisfaction

5. Improve employee engagement

6. Increase revenue

What to keep in mind about chatbots

Get started with chatbots from Brevo

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