So, you’ve decided you need a chatbot. Congratulations! This is a great investment in your business that will provide consistent, streamlined customer engagement. Chatbots can automate a lot of your basic customer service, sales, and marketing tasks, while providing an easy, engaging experience for your audience.
As chatbots have risen in popularity, the number of chatbot builders has grown exponentially. With so many choices, it can be hard to decide which provider is right for you. Here are some factors to consider.
What Can I Do With a Chatbot?
Before you select a provider, make a list of what you’re going to achieve with a chatbot. Do you want a bot to encourage mailing list signups? Provide your business information, such as your hours and prices? Help customers with shipping updates and tracking numbers? Gather customer data to guide your marketing efforts? A chatbot can do all that and more, but you’ll want to make sure that your provider can handle the workflows you have in mind, as well as successfully host them on your desired platform.
Cost
Your chief goal in using chatbots should be to drive conversions and boost customer retention, both of which boost your income. However, you don’t want the cost of a chatbot to eat into those profits! Aim to spend less than $1,000 a month on your chatbots. Some providers will get you quality chatbots for only $50 per month. If you only need a bot to answer basic questions or sign people up for your mailing list, you don’t need to spend big bucks on it.
Ease of Use
Building a chatbot workflow can be daunting. If you’ve never built any sort of automated workflow or script and have no idea where to begin, choose a provider that offers pre-made templates. If you’re comfortable with building workflows and want a bit more customizability, look for a feature-rich provider that lets you design any conversational UI experience that you can think up!
Integration with Facebook Messenger
Messenger is the fastest-growing chatbot platform. Thousands of bots provide everything from games to daily news to vocabulary and fun facts. Your bot can enhance your social media presence and easily integrate with your website to provide a seamless transition between your site visitors and your social media followers.
READ: 12 Ways You Can Turn A Facebook Bot Into A Lead Generating Powerhouse
Support
You want your bots to be working 24/7, so choose a provider with fast, robust support that can help you if issues arise. Plus, a good support team can help you build more complicated workflows or figure out logical errors in your automation.
Wrapping Up
Ultimately, chatbots can save you a lot of money by handling a lot of routine tasks and customer service interactions, thereby freeing up your human team to work on things that only a human can do. Choose your provider carefully to ensure that you can get all the functionality you want without spending more than you’d be saving. Then set up your chatbots and watch your conversion and retention rates soar!