Are Chatbots Effective?

Chatbots have become a trend in making marketing more effective but are they really? Through this article, you'll get to know everything about chatbots, how they help businesses, and how effective they are in doing their job. We'll also give the best choices of chatbots builders in case you want to create one in the future! 

Table of Contents

• What are Chatbots?
  • How Does a Chatbot Work?
  • Uses of a Chatbot
  • Disseminating Information Chatbots
  • Success of Chatbots in Customer Service
• Chatbots as Mental Health Advisers
• Are Chatbots Safe to Use?
  • Effective Chatbot Characteristics
  •  Successful Implementation of Chatbots
• 3 Best Chatbot Platforms
• What's Next?

What are Chatbots?

Chatbots are, in simple terms, an extension of existing Human Interface Mediums (HIMs), such as mobile phones and the internet.

They let customers interact with a service provider (e.g. a bank, online shopping catalog, or public utility) via an artificial messenger or ‘bot’.

Many of the current generations of Chatbots can respond to more complex questions orally too – you just have to look at the popularity of AI assistants like the Amazon home hub bot Alexa to recognize that voice is becoming an increasingly important feature of chatbot technology.

Chatbots in the commercial sector have moved well beyond the ‘Press one for admin’ automated phone response and, thanks to fledgling AI, are now interacting with customers on a far more personalized level.

In fact, it’s often difficult to tell whether you’re talking to a Chatbot or a real person. This has resulted in some concerns as to the security of such technology. Fortunately, chatbot security specialists are way ahead of the curve.

How Does a Chatbot Work?

Training a chatbot occurs at a considerably faster and larger scale than human education. While normal customer service representatives are given manual instructions which they must be thorough with, a customer support chatbot is nourished with a large number of conversation logs, and from those logs, the chatbot can understand what type of questions needs, what kind of answers.

For many applications, the chatbot is connected to the database. The database is utilized to sustain the chatbot and provide appropriate responses to every user. NLP can translate human language into data information with a blend of text and patterns that can be useful to discover applicable responses.

There are NLP applications, programming interfaces, and services that are utilized to develop chatbots. And make it possible for all sorts of businesses – small, medium, or large-scale industries. The primary point here is that smart bots can help increase the customer base by enhancing the customer support services, thereby helping to increase sales.

Instead of using a live chat that does not operate 24/7, an AI program has helped reduce the expenditures of business owners while making more sales. A chat agent may be more emphatic than an AI program but there are tasks an AI can do that agents can't. 

Uses of a Chatbot

As the technology is often used to collect personal data, and bots typically have access to a large knowledge base, some commentators are concerned that the technology could be targeted by malicious actors.

Despite this, big businesses have adopted Chatbots with open arms, incorporating them into both their automated response systems and social media platforms. Facebook, SMS, WhatsApp, and WeChat are all being prepared for greater Chatbot use and future customer service tech is expected to be predominantly chat-based.

But it’s not as simple as building a bot and sending it out to interact with anyone who happens across it. All businesses have a legal responsibility to ensure the safety of personal information, no matter how that data is transferred, stored, or collected. With the introduction of GDPR, this responsibility is more explicit than ever.

While the most secure means of safeguarding your chatbot and fulfilling your legal obligations is to employ the help of chatbot professionals, it’s also a good idea to have a thorough understanding of the threats, concerns, safeguards, and counter-measures yourself. With this in mind, we’ll begin by looking at the potential risks associated with the technology.

There are plenty of ways to make use of a chatbot, it can be a source of answers for customers' inquiries and a chatbot service that could do inbound marketing based on the customers' preferences. They can also be a virtual guide for a process either an application guide or signing up mostly for social media users having difficulty navigating the applications. 

Disseminating Information Chatbots

While many chatbots didn't live up to the hype, industries like fintech, healthcare, and retail are quietly adopting the technology to free up busy professionals’ time and offer guided, personalized experiences to consumers.

The use of chatbots in news media platforms, although relatively recent, offers many advantages to journalists and media professionals and, at the same time, facilitates users’ interaction with useful and timely information. When COVID started, a lot of sectors started to implement chatbots on their websites, and social media platforms to disseminate information and awareness to a wider demographic. 

The lesson these sectors and businesses have learned during the failed chatbot revolution helped them gain more momentum after several studies have been published online and control over the chatbots' effectiveness in what information chatbots deliver. 

Chatbots disseminate information in a very minimal to no error manner that is very helpful during a specific crisis. Since, there are a lot of users who go online, taking advantage of them as disseminating information chatbots is the best to get the awareness spread in no time. 

In March 2021, Forbes published how AI chatbots have helped in disseminating the vaccines for COVID. Below are the benefits they've listed from using chatbots in the midst of the pandemic. 

The chatbot can allow them to:

• Search for the nearest vaccination center, and check appointment availability.
• After the appointments are booked, the chatbot will set a reminder to ensure the patient reaches on time for the procedure.
• An automatic reminder for the second shot.

It will ensure the process is more streamlined and transparent. Proper appointment booking promises time-efficient management of those who wanted to get vaccinated.

The government can use the chatbot for additional purposes:

• Limit the number of patients visiting a vaccination center and ensure adherence to physical distancing norms.
• Automatically follow up with each patient to record his health condition and track any complications.
• Healthcare workers can guide patients post-vaccination and offer immediate assistance in case of an emergency.
• Study analytics collected by the chatbots to identify and address common issues arising during vaccination.
• Simplifying the process in digitally advanced cities across the country will free up human resources. The government can deploy them for other important roles or in rural and remote regions.
• A foolproof system for sharing essential information and appointment tracking will also put a check on black marketing and preferential treatment.

Success of Chatbots in Customer Service

A customer service chatbot uses artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and natural language understanding (NLU) to mimic human speech. Businesses have been steadily adopting chatbots and incorporating them into their service models to answer customer questions and automate routine tasks. While chatbots have some limitations - they're not very smart yet - they can play a useful role when performing the right tasks. 

Nowhere is this radical change to the customer experience as apparent as in the new wave of chatbots. AI-powered chatbots have become widely available and let you do what was once impossible: help customers 24/7, automatically resolve questions without any human intervention, and provide support to multiple customers at once.

Here’s a look at how customer service chatbots can improve your conversational support experience and drastically enhance your support team’s efficiency.

AI chatbots use your existing information and resources, like FAQs or knowledge base articles, to help answer and resolve your customers’ questions about the business you are running. They can recognize and answer multiple forms of the same question and can be trained to give instant responses using your preferred voice and tone.

Consider implementing targeted messaging and product tours, or services if you have yet to do so. By proactively educating your customers about your business and pre-emptively answering their questions, you’ll reduce your support volume and improve your customers’ experiences no matter the size of your business.

Chatbots as Mental Health Advisers

Chatbots software is not just good at marketing. They can also be a way of giving help to those people struggling with mental conditions such as depression, anxiety, and the urge to self-harm. Things can get tough sometimes and not everyone got someone to talk to. Mental health mobile applications are already accessible these days.

Some government sectors and private facilities have implemented chatbots to do mental health interventions. With the automated conversational agent, people get to talk to them and feel less lonely which owners hope to improve mental health by opening up or talking to a chatbot. 

A mental health chatbot does not only answer questions but also provide healthy and helpful alternatives to turn negative thoughts into positive one. Studies show that people feel the urge or experience a peak of their mental illness during dawn, an evening when most live chat agents are asleep. 

Bots can do the job 24/7. They can ask things that will help them feel better and get through the bump they're experiencing. Bots can give links to articles or materials they can read to help them ease a bit the overflowing negative emotion they're feeling. Aside from being a mental health adviser, it can be a process healthcare chatbot, too, or the so-called health retail chatbots. 

The JMIR ment health has been the open-source of these programmed chatbots to help these people in need.

Are Chatbots Safe to Use?

While face-to-face human interaction seems less common, we’re much more inclined to talk to our tech. From Siri to Alexa, the machines are starting to answer back. Now, the commercial sector has recognized the potential inherent in chatbot services and is incorporating them into their own networks, creating a more efficient and user-friendly customer experience across multiple platforms.

However, there is one key issue – chatbot security. As with any messaging platform, ensuring data that’s shared with a chatbot remains secure is of paramount importance. So, how can businesses ensure their chatbot isn’t chatting away to the wrong people?

Effective Chatbot Characteristics

A chatbot is only as good as its script. The purpose of any company, business, or use case, from e-commerce and education to retail and real estate, to use chatbots is to improve customer experience and make it fast and efficient. Considering that the mode of communication of chatbots is a conversation, we need to ensure that we choose words and phrases that simply and effectively get the work done.

Writing a good chatbot script requires you to pull out skills from your copywriting and user experience arsenal. Any chatbot, be it rule-based or artificial intelligence (AI), or natural language processing (NLP) based, that successfully gives its users a fulfilling journey is equipped with a few characteristics as the ones detailed below.

Here are the 6 characteristics a chatbot script must posses:

1) They are conversational.

Humans primarily interact and express themselves via conversations. Therefore, while we know that a chatbot isn’t human, we want its messaging style to mimic human speech characteristics while upholding brand personality and voice. However, we must ensure that chatbot scripts are constructed with simple, easy-to-understand elements that don’t use sophisticated vocabulary or complicated sentence structures. 

2) They are to the point.

Good chatbot scripts always keep sentences short. When your customers or users are confronted with large blocks of text, they are likely to get overwhelmed and lose interest in the conversation. Cutting out unnecessary words and using bullet points instead of lengthy answers in your script can help you maintain a concise and simplistic dialogue and give better customer support. Good conversational UI instructs that if you do have to write more, you should break sentences into multiple immediate responses.

3) They are adequately human.

Regardless of the popularity of chatbots, they are still a mystery to many people. A friendly, human-like tone that puts customers at ease can help you make a more personal connection. Personalization, with an understanding of what’s relevant and useful, is a great addition to any chatbot script. A simple, yet personalized greeting can make your chatbot more approachable as well as give your customers a great first impression.

4) They have a distinct personality.

A characteristic that every chatbot script should possess is a distinct personality. Think of your chatbot as a character that your customers would enjoy getting support and answers from. Like in a real conversation, your script must take into account what your customers may find humorous, helpful, or inspirational.

You must ensure that the personality you try to align your bot to should also align with that of your brand. This could also mean using appropriate quick replies, emojis, gifs, photos, and videos. Staying in character is as important as eliminating dull and generic conversation from your chatbot script. This will help you engage in more effective real-time customer support.

5) They are prepared to handle the unexpected.

Your chatbot script should be equipped to handle misunderstandings or ambiguities with the customers. Possible solutions could be suggesting related questions or FAQs and preparing an error message in case of a misunderstanding so that your customers can get back to the conversation without having to restart. There should also be scope for the users to change their minds and ask other questions with ease.

6) They are always works-in-progress.

Good scriptwriting should always be supplemented by regular updates. Closely analyzing questions asked, leads generated, and customer reviews in your first chatbot script will help you improve your dialogue, add in additional questions, and add new conversation flows. You can also internally test the bot to solve any issues before it is deployed for usage by your target audience. While AI bots can learn on their own from interacting with users, you can still monitor the bots’ learning efforts.

In short, consistency in message and voice paired with the ability to gauge context and prepare for unknowns is key to developing the perfect chatbot script. One must always remember that a chatbot is an evolutionary tool. Even the best ones need regular updating with constant manual monitoring and self-learning AI. 

Successful Implementation of Chatbots

Chatbots reduce customer service costs while also improving customer experience. Backed by powerful AI technology, they automate a significant percentage of inquiries, reducing wait times, facilitating self-service, and freeing up human agents in the process.

As our AI technologies continue to evolve, chatbots will play an increasingly important role in the modern contact center.

However, some organizations are concerned that chatbot implementation is too complicated to warrant investment. Here, we debunk this myth by walking you through the best practices for chatbot implementation.

Before you begin implementing chatbot technology, you’re going to have to justify the investment to those who control expenditure. At this stage, the cost is the principal hurdle.

Compared with other customer service technologies, chatbots are a relatively affordable investment, but you may still meet resistance to what is perceived as an emerging technology.

With the implementation of the GDPR and a growing awareness of the importance of cyber-security, data privacy has become a key issue for all organizations that handle sensitive information. This means it’s also a key consideration in chatbot implementation.

A chatbot needs to have robust security from day one. Many users now expect certain security protocols, such as HTTPS and HTTP metadata (Transport Level Authentication), to be utilized in any internet channel that makes use of their personal data.

While some customers may refuse to use your service if these security measures aren’t in place, the biggest threat is a security breach. The financial impact of cyberattacks is considerable,  but the damage to your business' reputation is a real concern.

• Useful
• Relatable
• Accurate
• Trustworthy
• Likeable

There are several ways to categorize chatbots and it’s important to understand what each of the different types does. One of the main distinctions between the various types of chatbots is whether they’re voice-activated or text-based.

While an engaging, technologically advanced chatbot is impressive, your implementation plan also needs to focus on how the ‘Bot helps customers.

A chatbot that can hold a natural, detailed conversation but can’t perform routine customer service tasks is next to useless. A good way to think about this is to ask yourself how your chatbot makes your users’ lives easier.

This could mean providing customers with instant access to personal data, giving them useful information that enriches their experience (or even makes their day better) or helping them in their work. More regularly, it means resolving their inquiries without having to rely on human intervention.

Integrating Chatbots into a digital system (especially if it’s a system that uses both online portals and IVR telephony) is a task that requires a considerable amount of expertise.

By far the best option is to work with a specialist to create a bespoke system specially adapted to your business. While there are platforms that allow you to build generic bots, they lack the nuance of tailored designs, are unlikely to provide your customers with a satisfactory experience, and will be difficult to integrate into your wider channel shift strategy.

3 Best Chatbot Platforms

Chatbot marketing may seem complicated at first, but due to the emergence of chatbot platform tools, creating and distributing a chatbot on your website and messaging apps is now easier than ever.

We've compiled a list of the 3 best chatbot builders that you can use to build your very own chatbot and supercharge your marketing and other business needs. 

1) TruVISIBILITY 

Being at the top of the list, with TruVISIBILITY, the gap between “growing” and “great” is automation. From customer attraction to nurturing, to onboarding, and building fans, their AI Chatbot builder gives you the same tools Fortune 500 brands use to automate their processes.

It doesn’t matter if your goal is to:

• Generate more leads
• Earn more subscribers
• Segment your audience
• Convert more sales
• Build a tribe of fans

Chatbots can manage routine work, freeing your team to dive deep into strategic tasks that generate revenue. Route visitors and customers to live staff only when needed. And building AI Chatbots to do these repetitive tasks requires no coding experience or special knowledge. If you can operate your smartphone… you can build a chatbot. TruVISIBILITY offers a free-to-start and affordable as you grow kind of subscription.

2) HubSpot

With HubSpot’s free chatbot builder, you can build a chatbot to book meetings, provide answers to common customer support questions, qualify leads, and more. Additionally, HubSpot’s chatbot builder is integrated with HubSpot’s free CRM tool, which means your bots can deliver more personalized messages based on the information you already have about your contacts.

You can start using HubSpot’s chatbot builder for free. To integrate this chatbot builder with other HubSpot marketing tools, you can sign up for HubSpot Marketing Free — a free inbound marketing toolkit that includes forms, analytics, pop-ups, and email integration for your site.

3) BotKit

BotKit is a leading developer tool for building chatbots, apps, and custom integrations for major messaging platforms.

BotKit has an open community on Slack with over 7000 developers from all facets of the bot-building world, including the BotKit team. 

To view BotKit’s pricing plans, you’ll need to sign up for their free plan. And then once the account is created, you need to login into the dashboard and click on ‘Unlock Full Version’ from the top menu bar to view the following pricing plans:

• Developer – $5/month (3 bots, 100 active users)
• Professional – $20/month (unlimited bots, 2500 active users)
• Business – $99/month (unlimited bots, 10000 active users)

There will be more chatbot platform tools emerging very soon and it’s only a matter of time before the big players jump on the chatbot bandwagon. But for now, these are the top 3 chatbot-building tools you can rely on to build chatbots for your business.

What's Next?

You're now geared up and knowledgeable about the effectiveness of chatbots. Aside from being used in marketing, chatbots can save lives and bring awareness to millions of people in a short period of time. If by any chance, you'll need a chatbot for your small business, you won't have any problems anymore.