Chatbots are great for customer service. They are fast, efficient, and can manage multiple tasks simultaneously while maintaining a unified brand tone and voice. Chatbots can save up to 30% in customer service costs. Businesses across various sectors such as the financial industry, healthcare, and retail understand how exceptional chatbots are, as seen by a 67% increase in chatbot adoption within businesses between 2018-2020. 

So the question remains; How exactly do you create a great chatbot for your business? Read on, and we’ll provide you with ten essential tips. 

Before we dive in, it’s vital to understand what chatbots are, how they enhance customer service and CX, and why chatbots are essential for business growth.

What are Chatbots?  

Chatbots are AI-powered conversational assistants created to communicate with customers without human intervention. Powered by machine learning capabilities, chatbots learn to understand human behavior, communicate more naturally and constantly improve the customer experience. Companies using chatbots can automate their workflow and service processes, improve efficiency and drive business growth. 

Chatbots © Umnat Seebuaphan | Dreamstime.com

How Chatbots Enhance Customer Experience 

1. 24/7 Support – With chatbots, your business is always available. You can communicate with customers worldwide, provide immediate responses, and solve problems around the clock without on-site human support agents. 
2. Better Customer Communication – Chatbots understand your customers’ intentions and provide answers accordingly. You can use chatbots to automatically solve similar customer problems while providing the same tone and friendly voice that suits your brand.
3. Omnichannel Communication – Chatbots can make your brand more approachable by operating on multiple digital platforms such as instant messaging apps, social media, SMS, online portals, and more.
4. Chatbots break the language barrier – AI-powered chatbots can conduct conversations in multiple languages, expanding your customer service boundaries. If you have bots, you don’t need a representative who can speak five languages, only one bot to care for your customers worldwide. 
5. Vast Service Capabilities – Chatbots are capable of multiple tasks in various areas. They don’t need unique training to be knowledgeable in areas such as insurance or banking; AI does all the work. 
6. Automation – Chatbots automate repetitive assignments and processes such as signing forms, answering common questions, conducting customer satisfaction analysis, and providing insights. 

👉 10 Tips For Creating A Great Chatbot – Get the Free PDF – Download PDF  👈

Why Chatbots Are Important For Business Growth 

1. Chatbots optimize your Customer Service Center –  Chatbots solve customers’ problems faster while simultaneously reducing loads from your human support agents. Chatbots also improve your SLA by automatically responding and solving customer problems quickly.
2. Chatbots Increase Sales – Chatbots enhance your customer experience and that’s essential for your bottom line. 86% of customers say they are willing to pay 13%-18% more for a better customer experience. Chatbots also increase your chances of selling and acquiring more customers. Research indicates that 55% of businesses using chatbots have generated a greater volume of high-quality leads. 
3. Chatbots reduce costs – Chatbots take care of multiple customers simultaneously, replacing many support agents and saving the time necessary to solve problems. Embracing chatbots allows you to save dozens of support agents, reduce your operating hours, save office space and operational expenses. 

Use chatbots to drive business growth. (© Unsplash)

Chatbots: 10 Facts You Should Know

1. Chatbots can result in 80-90% response rates. 
2. 69% of consumers prefer chatbots for receiving instant responses, and they’re most likely to use chatbots for service-related inquiries. 
3. Consumers rate “24-hour service” as the most significant benefit of having chatbots available for online services.
4. 64% of businesses believe chatbots allow them to provide a more customized customer experience. 
5. Chatbots can help businesses save up to 30% on their customer service..
6. 55% of businesses using chatbots have generated a greater volume of high-quality leads. 
7. Chatbots increases sales by an average of 67%, according to business leaders. 
8. Chatbots can manage 30% of live chat communication
9. The top 5 industries profiting from the adoption of chatbots are real estate (28%), travel (16%), education (14%), healthcare (10%), and finance (5%).
10. By 2022, chatbots are expected to handle 75-90% of queries.

How to Create a Great Chatbot: 10 Winning Tips 

👉 10 Tips For Creating A Great Chatbot – Get the Free PDF – Download PDF  👈

Define goals and develop a compatible strategy

Before creating your chatbot, define your business needs, goals, and objectives. Determine the problems you want your chatbot to solve and develop a suitable strategy that includes:

• Business needs, goals and objectives.
• Chatbots’ part in your organization, either for customer service, process automation, internal communications and more.
• How chatbots solve existing problems. 
• A step-by-step plan for adopting chatbots and future expectations.
• KPI’s for measuring chatbots’ contribution to business performance.
  

Use a chatbot creation platform

The easiest way to build a fully operational chatbot is to use a platform designed for this specific purpose, such as Commbox. Commbox allows SMB’s and large organizations to build chatbots in a few simple steps, with no programming skills necessary. Using Commbox, you can create customizable chatbots that will operate on multiple platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Twitter, e-mail and more. 

Creating chatbots using Commbox will allow you to: 

• Personalize your chatbots according to specific wording, voice and style. 
• Solve complex problems fast through conversational bots.  
• Divert conversations from chatbots to other chatbots or human personnel. 
• Integrate your CRM and operational systems.
• And more…

Utilize AI capabilities

Chatbots need to understand human intents and constantly evolve as humans do. That’s why you need to equip chatbots with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.
Implement an AI-powered platform such as Commbox to create your chatbots. 

• Create smart chatbots with self-learning capabilities.
• Understand human intents.
• Automatically complete recurring tasks.
• Send forms and sign customers remotely. 
• Answer questions (FAQ).
• Receive feedback through customer satisfaction surveys.

Give your chatbot a unique name and personality

Conversational chatbots should sound like humans, not like robots. That’s why you need to give your chatbot a name that meets your brand’s values and define how it will communicate with customers.  

• Name your chatbot to reflect your brand’s identity through specific wording, phrases and style. 
• Decide your chatbot’s personality – is the bot serious or funny? Professional or super-friendly?
• Determine your bot’s tone, voice, wording and phrases it will engage your customers.  
• know your target audience, how they speak, and adjust your bot’s messaging accordingly. 

Focus your chatbot on specific expertise 

A general chatbot won’t be able to provide professional advice in every subject.
However, a chatbot created with specific expertise will definitely do. Focus your chatbots’ expertise to allow them to solve complex problems fast.

• Define your chatbot’s desired areas of expertise (finance, real estate, eCommerce, etc.) fill it with data and equip it with the right set of skills.
• Focus your chatbot on 1-2 goals to ensure every conversation will be accurate. 
• Adjust your chatbot’s tone and voice according to so specific areas of knowledge.
• Stay up-to-date by constantly enhancing your chatbot with the latest data and professional knowledge required.    

AI-Powered Chatbots © Semisatch | Dreamstime.com

Make your chatbot approachable and simple to talk to 

Chatbots need to feel like humans, be clear and easy to understand. Make your chatbot as simple as possible for any user.

• Use clear wording while keeping a friendly tone and voice.
• Provide vital information according to specific keywords.  
• Allow users to ask questions on common problems.  
• Offer Buttons for quick answers.
• Avoid slang to keep a clean tone.
  

Divert to human agents

Some users, such as the elderly, might find your bot frustrating to handle. To solve this problem, you need to detect the customers that are struggling and provide them with a human touch. 

• Include a “Go Live” button in your chatbot to allow users to ask for human assistance. 
• Measure the duration of your conversations, identify conversations that are exceptionally long and automatically offer human assistance.

Customer Service © pexels

Receive feedback to improve your chatbots’ service 

Feedback is essential for your business’s success. In fact, 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase after reading a trusted review. How can you make them better if you don’t know what your customers think about your products and services? Well, the answer is, of course – chatbots! 

Use chatbots to receive fast customer feedback and achieve more significant results with no extra costs.

• Include a feedback button in your conversation with a bot. 
• Encourage customers to provide feedback by sending customer satisfaction surveys. 
• Analyze customer reviews and optimize your messaging accordingly. 

Measure your chatbot’s success and optimize regularly 

Chatbots are great at solving problems and engaging customers. However, they do not always get the job done. Small details can make a huge difference, so make sure to always measure which chatbots perform best and adjust your other chatbots’ messaging and commands accordingly. 

• Identify the chatbots your customers like best. 
• See which voice, tone, and style successful chatbots use. 
• Test your chatbots with different wording and style to find the best for your business. 

Stay ahead of your competition 

Chatbots and AI are constantly evolving. A chatbot your created 2 years ago might not be the best there is. See how your competitors engage their customers, either using chatbots or other tools, and find room for improvements. 

• Adjust your chatbot’s messaging to be more clear than your competition.
• Offer more built-in features than your competitors such as voice or video chat support, automatic answers for FAQ’s, digital signature and more. 
• Track your competitors’ latest updates to make sure yours will be better. 

Find out more about the CommBox smart customer communication solution

Commbox Chatbots: Create Your Personalized Conversational Asistant 

Commbox is an AI-powered omnichannel customer communication platform. Commbox allows you to create smart conversational chatbots powered by AI and machine-learning capabilities. 

• Commbox Chatbots learn from every interaction with your customers and get smarter over time.
• Commbox Chatbots can communicate with other bots and transfer conversations from one Bot to another according to the flow of the conversation while keeping complete transparency from the customer’s point of view.
• Commbox Chatbots can identify types of conversations (sales, customer service, etc) and route a specific conversation to suitable departments or agents

Create your unique and personalized bots in just a few minutes using Commbox. No coding skills are required. Offer 24/7 support on multiple languages and communication channels such as Websites, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Instagram and more. The chatbots are implemented in your website or application, providing a seamless customer experience.

WhatsApp chatbots– As an official partner of WhatsApp, Commbox also offers a unique self-service WhatsApp chatbot through which customers can solve their requests instantly, in an encrypted and simple platform. 

How Commbox’s Chatbots Transformed Brands Across Sectors

Commbox’s chatbots successfully scaled up customer communication for leading brands in various industries such as telecom, finance, retail, healthcare and more. 

AIG, a global financial and insurance group implemented Commbox and create a unique service bot named “Poly”.

”Poly” helped AIG: 

• Resolve 17% of first-time customer requests and facilitate the entire customer service experience for AIG. 
• Increase its customer digital interactions by nearly 500%. 
• Increase employee satisfaction by 28%.

Clarks, an international shoe retailer, used Commbox to create a unique chatbot named “CAI”. 

“CAI” helped Clarks: 

• Resolve more than 30% of customer interactions.  
• Produced a 99% improvement in SLA, reducing response time from 5 days to one hour. 
• Solve 25% of inquiries using Commbox conversational chatbots.

In Conclusion 

Chatbots are an essential tool for any service provider. Chatbots help you provide 24/7 responses, increase engagements, automate processes and more. Creating great chatbots requires you to know your business goals, audience and competition. Once you understand each one, you can decide on your next steps.

Give your chatbot a name to meet your brand’s values, and focus it on specific expertise. Utilize AI to create a self-learning chatbot that will engage users, learn how they speak and communicate better over time. Get feedback, measure your performance regularly and track your competition to constantly improve your chatbots and business performance.  

Use Commbox to enhance your business with AI-powered chatbots. Create your unique and personalized chatbots, generate more sales, achieve higher customer satisfaction, and lower churn rates over time, while you provide an exceptional customer experience.

About Commbox 

Commbox offers an innovative solution for customer interactions, creating a holistic customer communication experience. Using the Commbox platform, companies and enterprises can automate recurring tasks that are excessively time-consuming, allowing your agents to focus on more important tasks. Commbox paves the way for autonomous business communication without losing the quintessential human touch.

Commbox’s mission is to pave the way for companies worldwide to become autonomous enterprises, without losing their quintessential human touch.