“Hi! I’m ABC. Glad to meet you! How may I help you today?”Have you come across this text bubble when you open a website? Then you interacted with a chatbot. It is forecasted that by the end of 2023, chatbots will actually save over 2.5 million human business hours! Isn’t that amazing?
Most users drop off new sites because they are confusing and hard to navigate. Whereas the sites that have chatbots retain users as they can drop off and start a conversation in case of any doubt. Chatbots are proven to provide excellent customer service, stand apart from the competition, and build engagement with your customers.
If you are also planning to incorporate an AI chatbot into your website, here are some features you should know about.
1. Complete customisation
When you open the chatbot of various websites, they might appear extremely similar, but that is not necessary. Chatbots are completely customizable. From the tone and language you want to incorporate to the flow of the chat, you can change it all to suit your brand needs. There are several companies that provide chatbot integration that allow you to customize how you want the chatbot to interact with the users.
A few things to keep in mind while working with chatbots is to keep the brand's tone uniform. Try having links to redirect the users to the generic queries that they might have to provide a hassle-free user experience. Also, ensure that you define your availability based on your bandwidth.
2. Incorporate feedback
One of the most helpful features of AI chatbots is their ability to learn and incorporate user interactions. A chatbot needs to understand the queries, track them, and provide solutions. If your chatbot fails to analyze the questions your users ask, it won’t be able to provide a solution that will defeat the purpose of integrating it in the first place. Of course, it is tricky to track each individual, however ideal it might be, but it should be able to solve the queries of most without human intervention.
A great way to achieve this is by letting your users provide feedback on how useful the conversation with the chatbot was. You can make the questions for feedback in a way that doesn’t consume too much of users' time but gives you a clearer picture of the efficiency too. For example- ask the users to rate on a scale of 5 or 10 and an option to choose what can be improved.
3. Suggestive keywords
Consider the scenario if a user is reaching out to chat; they don’t really want to spend too much time and want quick resolution or answers. Can you expect the user to write the complete query in such a case? The answer is simple- No. Well, how can you then help customers in that situation? You can focus on the possible questions that customers might have and have them as keywords. After taking in the user details, you can simply of a list of questions for which answers can mostly be provided at the chatbot level. If the user needs further help, the call option can always be an accessible thing but try to cut down on it as much as possible.
A good practice is analyzing what you generally get asked or a range of problems you feel a user can have. The more research you do in this respect, the more efficiently you will be able to resolve the issue.
4. Conversation flow
Do you remember the time when customers would only have the option to reach out to customer care by calling them to get all their queries resolved? The companies extensively train the executives and give them handbooks to handle the questions. There was a set flow on how to go about each query. When it comes to chatbots, you can only leave some things to AI. While AI will help in the conversation, how the chatbot converses is up to you. This is the first step in integrating AI chatbot into any platform, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be revised.
When it comes to any conversation done by you or on behalf of your company with anyone, it has to maintain the company’s identity. A well-defined flow for the conversation won’t only help your customers but also help you to understand how to help them better. In the longer run, it allows you to exact the loopholes and resolve them.
5. Third-party integration
In the present day and age, where most of us spend most of our time on social media, having the solutions on your website isn’t enough. Just like you need to have a social media presence for brand recognition, you also need to integrate chatbots on all possible platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Slack, WhatsApp, etc. Since your users are already used to being on social media apps, it is easy for them to get information.
Additionally, many people drop out of the website and need help to solve their problems because it requires them to stay on the website. Whereas even if they are not on social media apps, they can still get notifications and contact as and when required.
5. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text
Another amazing feature that makes AI-integrated chatbots stand out is their ability to convert text to speech and vice versa. This is not only helpful for people with reading disabilities but also for people who speak English or the language used on your website as a secondary language. They can just ask for keywords, and the AI can efficiently understand and provide the solutions.
Apart from this, you can also give the users an option of choosing languages to enhance their experience and give an even smoother user experience. This will not only help in resolving your customers' problems but also make your company stand out from your competitors for being inclusive.
Technology is helping us in more ways than ever imagined, but it is not just what technology can do but also how we use it. The chatbot has come a long way from the first version and is getting more and more evolved every day. Using AI ML technology, chatbots are not only helping new customers to understand the company but are also helping to retain customers.
So, when you decide to integrate a chatbot into your website, make sure to incorporate and make the utmost use of these features.