Chatbots are all the rage these days. We see them everywhere used by businesses for support, promotion, entertainment, and so much more. But what are they exactly? Are they really worth the hype? If they really are what people make them out to be, how do I get one for my business?
What is a Chatbot?
A chatbot is a service, powered by rules and sometimes artificial intelligence that users interact with via a chat interface. It can handle conversations because it can mimic the unstructured flow of a human-to-human conversation. Despite its relative infancy in the industry, chatbots have become quite ubiquitous across the internet.
Chatbots function in two main ways depending on what they are built on, which can either be a predefined set of rules where responses are prebuilt, or machine learning, where responses are learned during each interaction.
A chatbot that functions on a set of rules is limited because it can only respond to a specific set of commands. On the other hand, a chatbot that functions using machine learning can understand language because it is built on artificial intelligence, which includes natural language processing. But do take note that AI-powered chatbots require a lot of data and much more expensive to create.
Purposes of a Chatbot
The study Why People Use Chatbots and was presented at the 4th International Conference on Internet Science in November 2017 presented four general reasons why chatbots have become quite popular.
Productivity
Imagine performing a task that does not require much work because you already have all the information you need at your fingertips. Wouldn’t it make your work a lot easier? It also lets you complete the task way faster than before. Now, imagine having all that power at the palm of your hand. Chatbots let you do just that as they contain just about all the information that you need.
Entertainment
Have time to kill? Chatbots can offer entertainment when you have nothing to do. A great example of this is MojiHunt, one of the most popular chatbot games in Facebook Messenger where users complete amusing tasks using emojis. Another popular chatbot game is Trivia Blast where users will be asked trivia questions after choosing a topic.
Social and Relational Factors
Chatbots are also able to address social and relational motivation. They can help avoid loneliness, fulfill the desire for socialization, and can even enhance one's social experiences with others.
Curiosity
People are curious about the novelty of chatbots. Some research participants typically state that they want to explore this new technology suggesting that they enjoy being early adopters of it.
The Importance of Chatbots in Business
The chatbot market is expected to grow exponentially in the following years. In fact, according to a study conducted by Gartner, 40% of mobile interactions will be managed by smart agents such as chatbots by 2020. This technological advancement completely altered the business landscape and if you want your brand to stay on top of its game, you would want to adapt to these changes.
Here are five benefits that chatbots can give to your business:
Improves User Engagement
The internet is awake 24/7 but it is impossible to be constantly online. But with bots, your customers will always have someone (or something) to talk to even if you are away. If done right, chatbots can answer your customers' queries and would make them more likely to return.
Increases Sales
Chatbots can aid your customers through the buying process which helps improves your sales.
Immediate Availability
Nowadays, consumers expect an immediate response from businesses. If you fail to deliver, they will move on and find another brand to buy from. This is why it is important to respond to your website visitors as soon as possible to stand out from your competition.
Mobile-Friendly
The prevailing trend is that as more and more brands are making their sites and services more mobile-friendly – the same goes for chatbots.
Cost-Effective
The best thing about chatbots is that they are cheap and require virtually no maintenance. There are also chatbot templates that you can find online to cut the chatbot-building process less than the usual time it takes to build one from scratch.
Simply said, chatbots promise to provide a high amount of returns with minimal costs.
Using Chatbot Templates
Building a chatbot requires a lot of work and would require you to dedicate loads of hours on the project - hours that you or your employees may not have. This is where chatbot templates come in.
What is a chatbot template?
Chatbot templates are called a lot of things; pre-made chatbot content, plugins, modules, etc. No matter what they are referred to, the idea is still the same. It is a finished layout, already trained with sentence examples, a set-up for internal and external links and suggested answers - ready to be applied to any chatbot.
Each template focuses on a specific service and will handle the recurring inquiries in that sector. For example, if you own an online retail store, you will most likely be asked about shipping rates, availability, sizes, and discounts so you should be looking for a chatbot template that caters to these questions. No matter what product or service you offer, there is surely a chatbot template for you.
Through chatbot templates, you can invest your time on improving the answers and getting your bot's tone of voice right instead of building it up from scratch.
Where to Find Templates for Chatbots?
A quick search online will give you a plethora of templates for chatbots specifically created for whatever industry you are in. Here are our favorites:
Food
The following templates are great for restaurant owners. Make booking a reservation, food order and delivery easier for your customers and get feedback from them through the feedback chat template.
• Book a table
• Food Ordering and Delivery
• Get feedback
Fashion
Do you own a fashion retail site? Give your customers personalized product recommendations and make it easy for them to view and buy those items.
• Personalized product recommendations
• View collections and buy
• Loyalty program
Health
The following chatbot templates are perfect for fitness and health gurus.
• Fitness center
• Multispecialty health clinic
• Doctor’s feedback
Customer Support
If you want to improve your customer support, the following templates for chatbots will work wonders.
• Small business support
• Service explainer
Didn’t find what you’re looking for? Check out the following sites:
• Hellotars.com
• Collect.chat
• Botmakers.net
• Mobilemonkey.com
• Zebo.io
Conclusion
There are a lot of benefits to having a chatbot. Businesses can save money on support, improve their service and earn more sales through it. And with chatbot templates, you don’t have to worry about investing a lot into making one. The pre-made content from a chatbot template will dramatically cut your chatbot building time.
