Answer
Feb 08, 2019 - 04:47 AM
I guess we will start by first defining the term “chat-bot”. People often use this word interchangeably with AI, personal assistant, virtual assistant, and messaging, however, a chat bot has limited functionality and often answers questions as per a set script. I liked Chatbots Magazine’s definition:
“A chat bot is a service, powered by rules and sometimes artificial intelligence, which you interact with via a chat interface. The service could be any number of things, ranging from functional to fun, and it could live in any major chat product (Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, Text Messages, etc.).”
Intelligent chat bots often have the capability to recognize customer’s buying intent and can evolve by machine learning. On the other hand, a virtual assistant is distinct in that, the industry defines VA as a business application that simulates a conversation for delivering information and advanced ones can take actions such as enabling transactions.
Chat bots drive engagement and sales
Chat bots are an ideal game changer in the quest to drive customer engagement and sales and just in case you were wondering, why you should care about them, here are a few reasons:
First, people are now using messenger apps more than they are using social network sites themselves. This is a huge turning point as this is likely to dictate the future of engagement and customer support services for ecommerce players. Therefore, you are keen about building your online presence (engagement) then you have to do it right where the people are (right now that place is inside messenger apps).
Secondly, messenger chat bots enjoy the biggest open rate there is online. This is an important benchmark for judging efficiency of chat bots in driving sales and engagement online. While conversion rates for landing pages average less than 10%, messenger bots boast of high open rates -88%, and a click-through rate of 56%.
Thirdly, from a storeowner’s perspective, it is quite easy to build a list of leads for messenger than it is to create an email list. Adopting chat bots, as a tool to rack up ecommerce engagement points and sales, remains one of the most viable strategies.
Providers of Chat bots services.
If you have sound programming skills and are conversant with frameworks like Heroku, then you can get working to build your own bot. However, other providers walk you through the process of creating your own bot with the help of a template. Think of it as a WordPress theme that you just need to customize for your website.
Neil Patel’s blog post aptly describes how to go about this in a simple and clear manner.
Chatbots Magazine also ranks the providers of bots and you might want to head over and have a look at their objective list.
Chat bots versus Email
Open rates- chatbots enjoy massive open-rates compared to emails of about 20%.
Click-through rates- high click through rates at 56% compared to email’s
When it comes to email, consumers often prefer chatbots only in as far as speedy response is concerned such as in getting 24 hours service, or quick response. However, email retains a definitive edge when it comes to getting detailed responses or seeking expert answers.
As for metrics, check out this table that MailChimp compiled on the KPIs:
Source: MailChimp
Takeaways
If you are not yet convinced, you can check out an article on our site that partly answers this question. However, the parting shot will be the outlook of this scene in future. This state of the chatbots report can help clear the air a little bit.
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