If you have ever given your smartphone a command or asked a question and it acted, you have used a chatbot. Chatbots can create a fun, helpful, and engaging experience. Many large brands are beginning to invest heavily in chatbots to grow customer loyalty. It is expensive to develop the complex artificial intelligence technology in chatbots, but that doesn’t mean that smaller businesses can’t leverage chatbots to further engage their customers.

Marketing with Chatbots

Though chatbots are relatively new in marketing, they came in at a great time. The more traditional digital advertising tactics have become less effective as they only provide one-way interactions. Customers prefer the back-and-forth engagement the chatbots can provide. This helps build long-term customer relationships.

Chatbots make the customer feel like their interactions are individualized, empowering them to have ongoing interactions that are more like a conversation. Users can request help, make a purchase, ask questions, conduct research, and share their experiences with family and friends. Businesses understand that the best way to reach a customer is to engage them, and bots provide that.

A Look Behind the Curtain

Smaller businesses don’t have the same large budgets the bigger companies have for developing their own chatbots. There are many technical things that must go into the artificial intelligent implementations that use the information businesses collect from customers and analyze that data. There’s also much language processing and neural networks that allow the chatbots to understand and make sense of a command or question from the user.

Luckily, smaller businesses can partner with companies such as Botworx to get their chatbot applications up and running. These companies can help a small business acquire customers and keep them.

Before any company launches a chatbot, they must first determine why they want to use chatbots in the first place. Once that is determined, they must then decide if they want to build an in-house chatbot or if they want to partner with a developer.

Using a Chatbot

A chatbot, just like a website, is designed on two main components: the front-end user interface and the back-end data collection and analysis. It is important to keep the user interface simple and to provide an experience that engages the user. This can only be done if the backend has artificial intelligence technology that provides immediate answers to the user and can also analyze data quickly. This allows the chatbot to be more proactive as it learns to anticipate what the user may ask or command.

Of course, rolling out a new chatbot is an exciting endeavor, but there are still many steps to take to build customer loyalty. You must earn their trust to convince them to continue interacting with your chatbot once its novelty wears off. This is where good old-fashioned business practices come in.

If you’re interested in incorporating a chatbot on your website, or to learn more about our website design services, contact RedWave Technology Group at (205) 917-5757.