5 Simple Steps to Building a Successful Chatbot Strategy for Your Business.

Introduction

Chatbots are changing the way consumers interact with businesses, and businesses are responding by creating bots to address common inquiries.

Chatbots have become a standard customer service feature because they offer businesses an easy way to reduce the number of support tickets and help customers more efficiently. 

For many businesses, the idea of implementing a chatbot may seem like a massive undertaking. However, creating a chatbot does not need to be complicated or take up too much time or resources. 

In fact, you can build your own simple chatbot in as little as one afternoon. The trick is knowing where to start and what is essential when it comes to strategy and implementation. 

Read on to learn how you can build a successful chatbot strategy for your business.

STEP 1. Define your Chatbot Strategy

Before you even get started, you need to make sure that you understand your chatbot strategy.

• What is the aim of the chatbot? 

• What questions will it answer? 

• How will it make the customer experience better? 

The chatbot strategy will be completely dependent on your business and the customer experience you want to create. However, there are two main categories that all chatbots fall under: -

1. Information bots: These bots provide information about your product or service. For example, a restaurant bot might provide a menu for online ordering.

2. Help bots: These bots are designed to assist customers with their particular issue or need. For example, a customer service bot might respond to questions about a refund.

STEP 2. Know Your Audience

Once you know the type of chatbot you want to create, it is time to consider who the chatbot is for. Arguably this should be the first step, but if you don't understand the nature of your business how could you even know your audience?

Since chatbots can be used to answer many different types of questions, you must decide which questions your chatbot will respond to. 

For example, if you want to create a restaurant menu chatbot, you could respond to questions like “What is the special of the day?” or “Do you offer gluten-free options?” 

However, if you want to create a help bot, you probably want to respond to something more specific like “What is your refund policy?” or “Where is your nearest location?” 

This will help you narrow down your target audience and figure out what your chatbot should respond to.

STEP 3 Decide on Channels

Now that you know who you are creating the chatbot for and what the chatbot will respond to, you need to decide the channels through which you will deploy the bot. 

This might seem like an unnecessary detail, but it is essential to know where you want to deploy your bot before you get started building it. 

The most common channels for chatbots are: 

• Website: 

By adding a chatbot on your website, you can easily transfer traffic from your website to a chat interface. This can help you provide better customer service while keeping customers on your site and reducing the number of support tickets. 

• Messenger: 

Messenger is one of the most popular and widely used channels for chatbots. This is likely due to the fact that almost everyone has it installed on their phone and it is incredibly easy to set up.

• In-app: 

If you have an app, you can also choose to deploy a chatbot in your app. This is a great way to provide better customer service while keeping customers inside your app.

STEP 4 Choose a Platform

Now that you have narrowed down the channels and know where you will be deploying your chatbot, you need to decide what platform you are going to use to create it. 

There are many different platforms you can use to build your chatbot, but here are a few suggestions.

• If you want to create a simple chatbot quickly and easily, you can use a platform like ConversioBot that lets you build a bot with just a few clicks. 

• If you want more control and want to build a more advanced chatbot, you can use a platform like Dialogflow. 

• If you want an all-in-one solution that lets you manage your entire chatbot strategy, you can use a platform like ManyChat. 

• If you want to create a visual chatbot, you can use a platform like Chatbot (formerly Botengine). ConversioBot is also great if you want to create a chatbot for your website or Facebook Messenger.

STEP 5 Estimate Effort

Now that you have decided on the strategy, the audience, channels, and platform, you need to decide how much effort will go into creating the chatbot. 

This will depend on the complexity of your chatbot and the type of platform you choose. While creating a chatbot is not a huge undertaking, it is important to take into consideration the effort required to create, deploy, and maintain the bot. 

There are a few things to consider when estimating the effort of creating a chatbot. 

• Research: 

Before you even begin building your chatbot, you need to do research. You need to analyze your current customer service strategy, decide how you want the chatbot to fit into that strategy, and research what types of questions your customers are asking. 

This research will help you create a better bot that serves your customers better.

• Design: 

When you create a chatbot, you may want the bot to have a visual representation. You can create a simple visual bot by creating a character or avatar for your bot. 

Alternatively, you can create a more advanced visual bot by creating a 3D or 2D animation for your bot.

• Programming: 

There are a few different programming languages that you can use to build your bot.      This will depend on the platform you choose.

Build And Test

Now that you have done all of the above 5 simple steps, you are ready to build  and test your chatbot. 

This can be a fun and exciting process and can help you create a better customer experience that can reduce support tickets and increase customer satisfaction. 

Now that you know how to create a chatbot and what is essential when it comes to chatbot strategy and implementation, it’s time to get started. 

With a good chatbot strategy, you can build a successful chatbot that provides better customer service and increases customer satisfaction.