You’re going to start hearing about chatbots a lot. Here’s why!
The unbelievably rapid pace with which technology gets adopted and evolves has given us a few lessons. Namely, that we have to be first to adopt, and open enough to experiment often.
The reason why we mention this in the context of Chatbots is that we are finding ourselves in that rare space of time to implement a new technology where it’s not too late that everybody else has it already, but it’s not so early that it cannot be implemented in its full form and make a strong statement. This is particularly the case with Chatbots.
Before you read this article, we assume you are aware of the fact that UX cost is not measured in terms of the money your users spend in your product online, but in terms of the time it takes them to find the information they want. Having said this, chatbots are quite simply programs (or robots, if you will) that take the place of human conversations and give answers and services to your clients through a text messaging platform they already use, such as Facebook. The potential is huge, especially because of how much they are able to do. Here are a few reasons why they are so cool:
CHATBOTS UNDERSTAND NATURAL LANGUAGE
Companies spend countless dollars on optimizing their apps and websites to help users find the information they are looking for (and convert) as effectively as possible. Chatbots are a natural solution to the optimizing question because they answer because they understand your clients in their own natural language. That means that you are not pushing them into a framework of categories or search, but that they plainly ask for their desired information, and like magic, it appears. It hardly matters which way your clients ask.
This can be quite helpful when you have a customer service team that spends 90% of its time answering the same Frequent Asked Questions over and over again.
CHATBOTS CAN BOOK SERVICES OR SHOW PRODUCTS
Because chatbots are framework agnostic, you can connect them to any API you have to handle reservations or bookings on your business. Your bot can rapidly understand what the client needs, and hand of a standardized request to your platform to send back options like available dates, costs, etc.
Clients can ask chatbots something like “show me watches under $200”, and it is smart enough to search through your inventory and send back rich content like images, videos, or links to more information about it. Most importantly, Chatbots can be programmed to understand when a client is ready to convert and be overridden to put in a human in the mix.
CHATBOTS CAN BE A FUN BRAND VOICE
More often than not, a chatbot is a great opportunity to just express your brand voice through a humanized bot that can joke around with the client, and talk about your brand in a relaxed and fun way. The best part is that the more it is asked questions, the more it learns how to answer them.
…AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, CHATBOTS ARE A WINDOW TO HOW YOUR USERS THINK, SEARCH AND BUY
Since most chatbots connect to either your brand’s Facebook Page or another regular chat interface, you have access to chat logs from every single use. That means tons of data that goes well beyond website analytics, and into the specifics of how each and every user looks for information, what he or she wants, when he or she wants it, and when exactly they become ready to buy.
We are strongly working with chatbots on the CPG, travel, and media industries, and the success stories are amazing. However, we believe that this first mover advantage won’t last for long. Optimists say that chatbots will replace a huge percentage of app interactions because of how much time it saves people from wanting information to getting it, so we believe it’s just a matter of time until it becomes mainstream.
We hope we have inspired you to research about it and experiment with it before then.
If you would like to learn more, go to our website www.binarymango.com or contact us at hello@binarymango.com.
