Everyone has heard of Google Home, Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, but have you ever thought much about chatbots and how they are used for everyday digital marketing?
A chatbot is an AI (artificial intelligence) software that performs automated tasks for chat platforms such as Facebook messenger and other automated response systems. They can answer basic questions or more complex questions depending on how the programmer prepares them. They can also be a huge boost in customer service and response time efficiency.
For example, many companies have automated responses for Facebook Messenger stating an opening comment such as, “Hello, my name is Dotty. Thank you for visiting our website! If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message,” or “Thanks for messaging Fly Pages! We love hearing from our followers and strive to be as responsive as possible. Someone from our team will be in touch with you within the next 24 hours.”
A chatbot can and does have the capabilities to communicate with a human online, but these interactions are limited to only what they are programmed to do. They are a great tool to use for basic responses such as what are your hours, where are you located and even leaving an automated response letting your chatter know what your Facebook page’s typical response time is.
Here are a few things to think about before you create a chatbot for your business:
1) Think about your target audience.
Where does your audience typically comment? When do they tend to comment throughout the day? These are questions to think about as you decide where to place your chatbot. Chatbots are easy to integrate on multiple platforms such as your website and your social media platforms.
2) What do you want your chatbot to do?
You can’t have a chatbot unless you know what it is going to do! Do you want your chatbot to generate leads? Spark conversation? Make a sale? Entertain your followers? When you decide what you want it to do, you can program it to best interact with your target audience.
3) Get it created by the Pros if you don’t know how to do it yourself.
You don’t have to build a chatbot from scratch. There are many other chatbot creators who can assist you in designing your bot and integrating it to your website, Facebook Messenger or social media page.
4) What voice do you want your bot to have?
The voice of your brand is just as important as the colors, logos and taglines behind it. Make sure your chatbot goes along with the voice you want your brand to have. For example, Disney used a chatbot to sound like one of their newest movie characters. Not only did it get their fans talking, but it also established their brand voice through one of their characters.
5) Give the automated responses as much authenticity as possible.
No one wants to talk to a robot. It is important to teach your chatbot authentic language that doesn’t sound robotic or staged. Keep your word choices as natural as possible in order to increase your business’s overall customer experience and response time.
