How To Use AI Chatbots For Customer Service

One of the biggest marketing and e-commerce trends for 2018 and beyond are chatbots. When set correctly, they can help customers answer questions and fulfill an array of tasks, helping you monetize your social media pages. In this short guide, we’re going to discuss the benefits of using chatbots, how they work, and what platforms can you use to build your own chatbot online for your brand.

Source: Unsplash @robertbye

What are chatbots?

Chatbots are computer software that engage with customers simulating human interaction to answer questions. They can respond to simple queries by accessing a specific set of responses or actions, relieving human agents of exhausing and repetitive tasks. Companies use chatbots to cut the costs in their customer support operations, and customers don’t have to wait long hold times to get the response.

Here are a few popular situation where AI Chatbots are being used to offer instant answers:

• Responding to common queries - Chatbots can respond to frequently asked questions by taking information from a FAQ knowledge bank.

• Booking an appointment - Customers can book an appointment online by accessing a menu of options embedded in chatbots.

• Placing an order - Customers can also place an order online via chatbots. For example, Starbucks makes it very easy to avoid waiting in long lines by placing an order using their app. The chatbot will tell you when your order will be ready and the total cost.

• Gathering customer feedback - Customers can leave feedback quickly and easily on the chatbot, which can help you improve customer understanding in the future. Sephora’s chatbot can send you all kinds of makeup tutorials per your request, but this personal assistant will also help you by providing product reviews and ratings when you’re shopping in a store.

• Registering for simple requests - Chatbots can be used to provide simple information such as airline schedules or shipment tracking codes. Spotify’s Facebook Messenger bot makes it easy for its customers to search for, listen to, and share music. Once you choose the Get started option, you will get playlist recommendations based on your mood.

Implementing chatbots for your customer support service has never been easier, as there are numerous platforms available at the moment, so you don’t need any coding experience in order to install the chatbot. Below is a list of our favorite chatbot platforms.

1. Chatty People

Source: Chattypeople

If you need to create an AI chatbot on Facebook with integrated Facebook commerce, then the Chattypeople is the best platform for you. The platform allows you to create a Facebook message quickly and easily, and it is ideal for entrepreneurs and marketers in smaller companies.

2. Botsify

Source: Botsify

Another AI chatbot on Facebook, Botsify, helps you make it easy to integrate chatbots into the system. Its free subscription helps you manage basic messages and small talk, schedule messages, create media blocks, and Slack and Google Sheets integration. All the chatbot templates are free, and there are 12 categories available, including Feedbacks, Services, Food & Restaurant and General template. In case you need some extra features, such as 24-hour availability or website chatbot, you can upgrade for only $10 per month.

3. Chatfuel

Source: Chatfuel

Chatfuel is one more Facebook bot solution that makes it easy for you to create your own Facebook chatbot without any coding experience necessary. It works by letting users link to external sources through plugins. The bot-building platform is free for everyone, but if you want to remove their branding from your messages, you can upgrade to premium.

4. Facebook Messenger Platform

Source: Facebook Messenger

Lastly, you can start building your own bot directly through Facebook Messenger’s landing page. This method might be a little complicated than the previous ways we mentioned, but there are a lot of resources that Facebook Messenger provides in order to help you accomplish your brand new creation.

5. Smooch

Source: Smooch

Smooch acts as more of a chatbot connector that bridges your business apps with your everyday messenger apps (for example, it connects Slack and ZenDesk with Facebook Messenger or WeChat). It links these platforms together by sending all of your Messenger chat notifications straight to your business apps, which streamlines your conversations into just one application. This can result in smoother automated workflows and communications across teams. These same connectors also allow you to create chatbots which will respond to your customer chats. Everything you need is in this one platform!

6. Botkit

Source: Botkit

BotKit is a toolkit that can help developers make bots for Facebook Messenger, Slack, Twilio, and more. This BotKit can be used to create clever, conversational applications which map out the way that real humans speak. This essential detail differentiated it from some of its other chatbot toolkit counterparts.

7. FlowXO

Source: FlowXO

FlowXO is a platform that you can use to create bots for Messenger, Slack, SMS, and the web. This platform allows for creating various flexibility in bots by giving you the option to create a fully automated bot, human, or a hybrid of both.

The quality of customer service depends on how the customers are treated during their interactions with the company. By providing the right tech and AI tools, customer service agents are relieved of doing low-value tasks and empowered to deliver superior support.