Looking to Deploy Chatbots? Here’s All You Need to Know

What Types of Queries Do We Want to Automate?
Are They Suitable for Bots?

Customers prefer different touchpoints for different types of communication. For example, they may prefer messaging when they want to update their address, but opt for SMSs when it comes to receiving reminders. Businesses should conduct a thorough assessment of which queries customers prefer to have answered over messaging and focus on deploying bots to answer those queries.

What Kind of Chatbot Would Best Suit Our Purposes?

Many businesses dive headlong into deploying AI-driven bots, also known as virtual private assistants, which are “intelligent” and learn from every single interaction. They can improve the quality of their answers over time. However, building such bots is highly expensive as well as complicated. Any mistakes in execution can lead the bot to provide incorrect responses that can lead to a negative brand experience for customers. Also, many surveys reveal that customers prefer to chat with bots for simple queries and prefer a human agent for more complex ones. So for companies looking to deploy chats, it’s worth considering what you intend to use the bot for, and if at all a sophisticated bot needs to be used for it. Bots come in all varieties – from customer support bots, to lead gen bots, e-commerce bots, recruitment bots, and so on. Companies need to choose wisely as per their needs.

So, once these questions are sorted, you would do well to keep these things in mind:

1) Use Bots for Highly Repetitive, Less Complex Use Cases​

When thinking of bots, we suggest businesses start with the ones that solve simple problems customers face on a day-to-day basis. Companies face repetitive queries from customers on a daily basis, for instance when customers want to schedule an appointment or request information about a particular product or service. Replying to such queries on phone or email requires companies to maintain a huge customer support team. What’s more, customers who call are put on hold for a long time, as a customer support agent can’t handle more than one call at a time. This clogs up the support pipeline and creates frustration for customers. Companies can start with automating such repetitive queries that can be easily solved in a menu-driven way that customers find easy to navigate.

2) Choose Your Bot Wisely​

Not all bots are made the same. Many companies do not need to invest in AI-driven intelligent bots and can instead use simple rules-based bots that are task specific. These bots are not equipped to analyze queries or customer intent, or answer questions out of the defined rules. They pose simple questions to customers in the form of pre-decided options that customers can choose from to arrive at the answer they are looking for. A great advantage of such bots is that a good user experience is guaranteed as they are highly predictable. They are especially suitable for companies that want to deploy chatbots as an FAQ source or help users complete simple tasks by simply selecting from the menu options. A good example is a rules-based bot that helps customers order food online. The conversation flow is preset — the chatbot poses questions from a template, allows users to make the selection, confirms the order and shares payment links. The whole process only requires customers to click through to complete their orders.

3) Deploy Bots That Are Easy to Set Up​

Rules-based bots are more accessible for brands as they are very easy to set up. They can be quickly set up, are easy to control, and can be applied to a wide variety of business use cases. They don’t require complicated coding by developers or help from agencies. Once the best chatbot use cases are determined, non-technical users simply need to choose the most appropriate conversation design platform from a host of available options and map predetermined dialogue flows based on relevant cases. Platforms such as those offered by edna can be customized according to prebuilt chatbot templates that are industry-specific. They come with a simple drag-and-drop interface, where users can build automated conversations with no absolutely no coding requirements.

4) Use a Bot That Can Be Optimized for Multiple Channels​

Customers typically use more than one touchpoint when they want to get in touch with businesses. So it makes sense for companies to deploy bots on multiple mediums – for instance, not just on live web chat, but also chatbots on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Apple Business Chat, and more. However, managing bots across multiple channels can create fragmented experiences as bots might behave differently on different interfaces – say interaction on WhatsApp vs In-App chat. So it’s vital for companies to coordinate the interactions across platforms and ensure a similar experience for users. A lack of channel cohesion can leave a customer with a bad omnichannel experience, sometimes putting them off digital channels altogether.

The best way out for companies is to build a single bot and optimize it across multiple channels. Platforms like edna can easily handle channel-specific response formats. edna’s bots come with universal usability. Once you have customized and trained the bots, you can deploy them across multiple platforms such as live chat on web and app as well as on various social messengers. Once deployed, the bot can be continuously trained by your contact center agents for more personalized customer communication. You can also choose to differentiate responses across messaging platforms or use channel-specific interface elements.