Every business owner knows that it’s getting harder and harder to reach both old and new customers. According to the 2018 DMA Email benchmark report, the average cross-industry email open rate is 18.1%, and the click-through rate is 1.9%. This means more than 80% of customers don’t open your email, don’t even talk about reading it.
With the rise of social networking and text messaging apps, email has abandoned its position as the primary communication tool between businesses and customers. According to research conducted by HubSpot, “55% of consumers want to communicate with a business using messaging apps.”
Nowadays, people use messenger to chat with friends and relatives, connect with different brands, search for products and find something. So the question is how to reach old customers and attract new customers effectively?
One of the most innovative solutions is chatbots through mobile apps.
There are over 300,000 chatbots installed on Facebook Messenger. Facebook, or rather Meta, recently released a series of data demonstrating the value of bots to business:
- Two billion messages are sent between clients and companies monthly – 56% of people would rather text than call customer service – 53% of people are more likely to shop with businesses they can text.
This gives brands the ultimate ability to engage with customers on the platforms they already use every day. Social media allows business owners to reach a billion audiences to offer their services and products. Also, most users are in the younger age group, which is an essential demographic for marketers, publishers and brands’ representatives.
A chatbot is a service powered by triggers and sometimes artificial intelligence. Users communicate with a chatbot through a chat interface, similar to how they would talk to a real person.
Chatbot customer support
The most common practice for using chatbots services is for online customer service. Chatbots automate customer communication and help businesses save on customer service costs by speeding up response times, freeing agents for more complex work, and answering up to 80% of queries.
The benefit of using a customer support chatbot for users is that they get an immediate response. No need to wait; you can write to the business directly and get an answer in real-time. Chatbots respond immediately to ensure that you won’t lose leads again.
For example, the German company Tec InStore always has a lot of requests from their customers. Customers describe problems they are having with their phones, asking customer support many typical questions.
It takes a lot of money and effort to please every customer and answer questions. By using a chatbot mobile app to provide users with information on the most common questions, Tec InStore was able to reduce the number of requests to the customer support center by 50%.
Source: 13Chats.com
Better to deal with a few chatbots than with a lot of apps
Nowadays, people’s mobile phones are overloaded with many different applications. To use the chatbot, you don’t need to download a special app. They use your existing messengers like Facebook, Telegram, Slack, Kik, WhatsApp.
“20 years ago, there was a website. Ten years ago, it was social networking. Five years ago, there was an application. Today, it’s messaging. And that’s the biggest platform change we’ve ever seen.” Shane Mac, CEO at Assist Inc.
No need to uninstall
You don’t need to host a bunch of apps on your phone with chatbots. When a chatbot becomes irrelevant, it simply stays in your message, and you don’t need to uninstall it. If you don’t want to keep a chat with a chatbot in your inbox, you can delete the entire chat history in seconds.
Chatbots are faster, more affordable, and easier to develop
Launching a chatbot compared to apps is faster because of the messaging app, where your chatbot will be built. All you need is to create a chatbot which is much less complicated than developing an application.
For the past few years, many different chatbot automation platforms have been created. These start-ups are easy to use for people with no prior coding knowledge and are relatively cheap. Using these platforms, you can design simple chatbots that can make and respond to basic user requests.
Nowadays, many companies use chatbots to provide customers with some information, notify about updates, advertise products or accept payments, and many other purposes. Also, adding smart pop-ups and live chat will increasingly boost the conversion rate.
Step #1 – Identify the main goal of your chatbot
Before starting the chatbot development process, the first thing to do is state the reason for implementing a chatbot. This can be understood as the primary goal of your chatbot, namely, understanding the problem that the chatbot will solve.
We recommend answering a few questions first:
“Why are you developing a chatbot?”
“What exactly does a chatbot do?”
“What problem will it solve?”
Step #2 – Find the end-user problem your chatbot will solve
Step two is to understand that a strategic chatbot must directly solve an end-user problem or optimize processes inside the company.
Focus on finding a real problem your target audience might have. Think of the most common, repeatable actions that can be automated in a particular industry. Remember, you don’t have to overload your chatbot with extra and unnecessary features, significantly if solving such problems already exists with more effective solutions.
Step #3 – Define the target audience for your chatbot
The next step will be to define the target audience for your chatbot. Who will have a need for kind of support? Only then can you proceed to establish the overall requirements of the project.
For any type of product, it is important to understand who its end users are. The same applies to trigger based chatbots. Take your time and think:
What is the average age of a customer who will communicate with your chatbot system?
Are they 25 or perhaps 50 years old?
What jobs do they have?
Are they working in the office and using their laptop?
Or maybe they’re doing their job differently?
What are their hobbies?
What problems can be encountered in their daily life so that chatbots can become the best solution for them?
This is an extremely important step because based on how you create the buying personality for your chatbot, it will be integrated into the bot’s personality.
Here are the benefits of Facebook Messenger ads and chatbots
– No form
Now people don’t need to fill out forms; they immediately do it in the chatbot in a more engaging way.
– Stay on the same platform
There is no need to redirect users to a website that often causes a loss of leads. All sales processes happen in Messenger, and there are far fewer hurdles like load times, new looks to learn, and loads of options.
We recommend having one person oversee the chatbot’s activity during the initial launch. This person’s main task will be to take over the communication process if something goes wrong. This will keep you from losing leads and potential customers.
Also, be sure to include a live chat option, so users always have the opportunity to chat with an actual person if needed.
Platform to build chatbots
There are several messaging apps where you can launch your chatbot. When considering a variety of platforms, the most important focus should be on your target audience. You have to understand which messaging platform your targeted person frequents the most. Choose the platform your users are already on and ensure it’s a good fit for your company.
Source: 13Chats.com
To conclude: Apps are harder to maintain
“99.99% of apps are on the sidelines, and their technology is not being used. Through simplicity, chatbots can solve this problem. ” Stefan Kojouharov, Founder of Chatbots Life and Chatbot Consulting.
Recent studies show that there are currently two million mobile apps for iOS devices and two million apps for Android devices.
This statistic shows how complicated it is for an app to get noticed. The other problem with the app is that they have to be constantly updated. New OS versions are released every year, and if you don’t update your app, it won’t be supported on the latest devices.
Therefore, you also have to upgrade your app design so that you don’t fall behind and keep up with the trends. Failure to update an app’s design can sometimes be enough to lose users over time.
