Admit it…
You dread opening your inbox in the mornings. You don’t want to look at cart abandonment numbers for the last 24 hours.
Because you know that if this continues for the next couple of months, you will have to revise your annual sales targets.
Worse, you might be out of business.
If only you had some means of converting even 10-15% of those abandonments into sales, things could be much better.
But you have no clue why potential customers are abandoning their carts.
However, there is no need to despair.
You can immediately start taking steps to put things right.
By using chatbot software.
What is a Chatbot
Chatbot is a computer software or application that can hold human-like conversations with users. Have you noticed a message pop-up on websites asking if you need help? That’s a chatbot in action.
The IVRS (Interactive Voice Response System) deployed on many telephone systems is also a type of chatbot. One of the first chatbots to find widespread use and acceptance.
So is chatbot a software, you ask.
Yes, it is.
Chatbots are software that you can develop from scratch or build using drag and drop interfaces provided by chatbot platforms.
Chatbot conversations are usually text-based but voice-based chatbots such as Alexa have also become popular. The best thing about them is that they can be available to your customers whenever, wherever they want. In the middle of the night or while your team is busy celebrating Christmas. They can be deployed on multiple channels such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, phone and any other channel used by your customers.
If you want to deploy a chatbot for your organization, you need not build it from scratch. There are dozens of chatbot platforms available in the market, which you can use to design your chat bot. Alternatively, you can also use open source chatbot software to have more control over how your chatbot is built, deployed and works.
Remember, whatever way you choose, any chatbot is as good as its programming. So you must focus on defining the rules and workflows to guide chatbot interactions.
Open source chatbot software
Chatbot software whose source code is freely available is called open source chatbot software. You can use this source code to fully customize the chatbots. It is akin to building your chatbot from scratch, programming all its components according to your specific needs.
Closed chatbot software
Closed chatbot software is more like a no code platform where you create your own rules for functioning of the chatbot. The core of the program remains untouched. Modern chatbot platforms such as drift chatbot or Google chatbot provide a range of customizations that are usually sufficient for handling typical business needs.
Now that you know which software is used for chatbots, let’s dive into the different types of chatbots that can be developed using them.
The Only 3 Categories of Chatbots You Need to Know About
There are many types of chatbots out there, but these are the only three you need to be aware of.
Chatbots That Follow Your Rules
Rule-based chatbots are programmed to hold conversations according to predefined rules. They respond to simple event triggers such as when the user chooses one of the given options, as you can see in this chatbot on the Deputy website.
Rule-based chatbots are sometimes referred to as menu-based chatbots and work according to a fixed decision tree (if this happens then do this).
Chatbots That Know Their Keywords
Like the rule-based chatbot, a keyword-based chatbot also functions according to its “design playbook.” However, their triggers are keywords relevant for the business. They ask simple questions from the users and filter the keywords to give appropriate responses.
AI Chatbots That Know How to Talk
AI chatbots use artificial intelligence and natural language processing capabilities to identify sentence structure, filter out keywords, interpret the input based on knowledge database and respond accordingly. Also called conversational chatbots, they also use these conversations to improve their ability to answer future queries.
AI chatbots do not have pre-programmed responses to any user question or choice or use of keywords.
5 Compelling Reasons to Use Chatbot Software for Your Business
Here are 5 reasons why you should use chatbots:
- Automate business workflows
- Provide awesome customer service 24/7
- Perform repetitive tasks with 100% accuracy
- Scale customized marketing conversations with minimum effort
- Reduce time and effort invested on omnichannel customer engagement
These Chatbot Examples Will Blow Your Mind
Now that you are convinced of the benefits provided by using chatbots for your business, let’s look at the most common situations where these are most useful.
Get Qualified Leads Only
There are leads and then there are qualified leads. You cannot but agree that a qualified lead is more cost-effective and provides better RoI than a generic lead.
Now, you can slap up a quick form to go with your lead magnet and hope your landing page copy is good enough to get you conversions.
Or, you can fire a chatbot on strategic points and start conversation with visitors, promoting your lead magnet, gathering basic information as well as getting qualifying questions answered by the leads.
The key here is designing the chatbot appropriately to make the conversation as engaging as possible.
As Uma Challa, Sr Director Analyst in the Gartner Customer Service & Support practice, said,
“When designed correctly, chatbots can improve customer experience and drive positive customer emotion at a lower cost than live interactions.”
The key here is “when designed correctly.”
24/7 Customer Support
Modern customers are impatient; speed is everything for them. According to this HubSpot survey, 90% of consumers say that immediate response is important/very important when they have a support question.
Chatbots can provide scalable and cost-efficient 24/7 customer support and immediate response the modern consumers seek.
Let Your Employees Breathe Easy
Be it customer support, product development, team building, mentoring, employee onboarding or answering common HR questions, chatbots can help your employees breathe easy by taking over repetitive tasks. Strategically designed and deployed chatbots can reduce workload of your key members dramatically.
For instance, if a chatbot can answer the common payroll queries including overtime, paid time off, bonus, reimbursements, etc., imagine the amount of time it releases for HR managers.
Sell More with Chatbots
While customers are browsing your store, Chatbots can pop-up to suggest related products to add to their cart. Like Amazon does this through two categories of suggestions – “Frequently bought together” and “Customers who viewed this item also viewed.”
Offering customized product suggestions improves customer experience and motivates them to explore related products they may purchase later. When you know they are in the market for some items, it makes sense to display maximum possible items in that category.
Automate Workflows
Using chatbots to automate workflows considerably reduces time and effort required for accomplishing repetitive tasks, specially those that require collaboration between multiple people or devices or a combination of both.
Chatbots can collect instructions, carry them out and relay the output with minimal human intervention.
Curate Tailor-Made Recruitment and Onboarding Experiences
Adverts can help not only in customer service scenarios but curating tailor made recruitment and onboarding experiences too. Chat bots can help filter the right candidates to your recruitment filters by getting answers to qualifying questions.
The applicants don’t mind engaging with such chat bots because it decreases they also wish to apply to positions suitable for them.
Chatbots can also help in onboarding new recruits by providing answers to common questions a newcomer might have. This also helps reduce managers, time and effort.
Gather Customer Data Without Appearing Nosy
Admit it. You need as much customer data as possible for customizing user experience, designing future campaigns, launching new products, etc. Chatbots can gather customer data without being intrusive.
Top 5 Chatbot Platforms (According to Customer Reviews)
When starting out, figuring which chatbot software is the best can become a nightmare. Here is a list of 5 top chatforms that customers have found amazing. Their reviews say so!
Signals
- G2 rating: – 4.9 out of 5 from 105 ratings
- Pricing from: $3500 per month, billed annually
- Standout features: Drag and drop custom chatbot builder, Custom experience A/B testing, Buyer intent signals, Third party research intent
Signals is the easiest to use chatbot builder platform according to G2. The platform allows you to build chatbots that engage with website visitors with targeted messages with chatbot sequence templates.
Besides custom chatbot builder, Signals provides tools for personal messaging, A/B testing, email messaging, lead qualification and more.
Pricing and Features
| Features | Team Plan | Company Plan | Premium Plan |
| Pricing | $499/month, billed annually | $999/month, billed annually | Custom pricing |
| Free users included | 3 | 10 | 3 |
| No. of users | 10 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Automated meeting scheduling | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| A/B testing | No | Yes | Yes |
| Trending account alert | No | Yes | Yes |
| Custom experience builder | No | Yes | Yes |
| BI Integrations | No | No | Yes |
Qualified
- G2 rating: – 4.9 out of 5 from 586 ratings
- Pricing from:
- Standout features:
Qualified is a pipeline generation platform for Salesforce users. It offers three solutions – Qualified for Marketing, Qualified for Inbound Marketing and Inbound for Outbound Marketing.
One of its products is Qualified Conversations, which provides the necessary tools to build custom chatbots to engage with website visitors, generate and qualify leads, and automatically book team meetings.
Qualified also routes the right visitor to the right rep, which helps qualify leads, convert prospects or resolve issues faster.
Pricing and Features
| Features | Growth | Premier | Enterprise |
| Pricing | $3500 per month, billed annually | $6000 per month, billed annually | Custom pricing |
| Maximum number of users | 15 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Buyer-intent signals | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Meeting scheduling | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Custom experience A/B testing | No | Yes | Yes |
| Custom visitor segments | No | Yes | Yes |
| Third party research intent | No | No | Yes |
| Multiple languages | No | No | Yes |
Tidio
- G2 rating: – 4.7 out of 5 from 1315 ratings
- Pricing from: $39 per operator per month; free plan available
- Standout features: 35+ Chatbot templates, Visual chatbot editor, Zapier integration
Tidio claims to be an all-in-one customer service platform with robust tools for live chat, building AI chatbots and end-to-end ticketing management. It supports multiple conversations simultaneously, without compromising on wait times.
With Tidio’s chatbot builder. You can build your own fully customized chatbot builder using 35+ templates. You can use these AI chatbots to assist customers in placing orders, lead generation, upselling, product recommendations and more.
Pricing and Features
Although the Tidio chatbot feature is available only for Chatbot and Tidio+ plans, we compare all the four pricing plans here.
| Features | Free | Communicator | Chatbot | Tidio+ |
| Pricing | $0; no credit card required | $15.83 per month | $32.50 per month | $240.83 per month |
| Ideal for | Small websites | Mid-sized teams focusing on live chats for customer support | Businesses focusing on Self-serve options for customers | Businesses that need advanced features and dedicated support |
| No. of operators | 1 | 5 | NA | Customisable |
| No. of live chats supported | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| No. of chatbot conversations supported | 100 | 100 | 40k | Customisable |
| Integrations available | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Chatbot plan can be bundled with other plans.
Drift
- G2 rating: – 4.4 out of 5 from 821 ratings
- Pricing from: $2500 per month, billed annually
- Standout features: Customised AI chatbots, A/B testing, Real time notifications, Real time audience insights
A conversational sales and marketing technology company, Drift enables you to start and sustain conversations with customers. Drift Conversation Cloud is a platform that helps you build personalised messages for your buyers, wherever they are in their journey.
It provides tools for marketing, sales and customer success teams. In terms of industries, Drift focuses on financial institutions, technology, manufacturing and professional services.
Pricing and Features
| Features | Premium | Advanced | Enterprise |
| Pricing | From $2500 per month, billed annually | On request | On request |
| Schedule meetings | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Conversational landing pages | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| A/B testing | No | Yes | Yes |
| AI-powered chatbots | No | No | Yes |
| Customer support | 12/5 | 24/7 | 24/7 |
| Sales user training | None | Annual | Semi-annual |
Zendesk Support Suite
- G2 rating: – 4.3 out of 5 from 5469 reviews
- Pricing from:
- Standout features: AI powered automated answers, Emails with unlimited addresses, Omnichannel messaging, Automatic translations
Zendesk Support Suite is a customer service solution that sets up your customer success team to provide 24/7 engagement and support to customers. It is an affordable solution for businesses of all sizes from startups and small teams to enterprises. At the time of publishing this article, Zendesk was providing Zendesk to startups free for six months.
The app includes AI-powered chatbots that can provide answers to typical customer queries.
Plans and Pricing
| Features | Suite Team | Suite Growth | Suite Professional | Suite Enterprise |
| Pricing | USD49 per agent per month, billed annually | USD79 per agent per month, billed annually | USD99 per agent per month, billed annually | USD150 per agent per month, billed annually |
| AI messaging | 50 | 100 | 500 | 500 |
| AI powered knowledge management | No | Yes | Yes | Advanced |
| Reporting and analytics | Prebuilt | Prebuilt | Prebuilt and customisable | Prebuilt and customisable |
For an Enterprise plan with advanced data security needs, you can choose Additional enterprise-ready plan at USD215 per agent per month, billed annually.
Choose the Right Chatbot Platform in These 8 Steps
Now you know all there is to know about chatbots to begin deploying them on your websites.
Here are the steps you need to follow for choosing the right platform.
- Make a list of use cases where you think chatbots can help.
- Pick the top 3-5 where you need help the most.
- Go through the features of chatbot software.
- Choose the top three that seem the most suitable.
- Explore their features further.
- Choose one.
- Sign up for a free trial.
- Design the scripts and get going.
But remember, unless you start using chatbots you will never know what to improve upon and how.
Ready to Wow Your Customers?
You are already losing by not using a chatbot so an imperfect script is an improvement over not having one at all.
So take the first step by listing all your pressing business problems including cart abandonment.
