How Can A Chatbot Help An SME?

In most articles we have repeatedly mentioned the advantages of the tools but in general the context of the benefits for a local business has been very little covered, especially in Latin America.

Undoubtedly benefits include: reduced operating costs, no-wait response to customer questions, and 24/7 availability as real benefits you can see at a glance.

But chatbots aren’t just a collection of isolated features, which is why it’s worth taking a closer look at the environment in which they are created and the relationships they establish with users. We hope that thanks to this article, you know how Messenger chatbots improve businesses. And how you can implement it in your company.

Messenger chatbots are always at hand.

Regardless of the size of your business or the industry you work in, you know that choosing the right communication channel is absolutely vital. If you are not where your customers are, sooner or later, they will go to your competition. And consumers will always choose a company that responds immediately to their needs, a place where interaction does not require effort or so much processing. For that reason, young people prefer apps like Instagram or Snapchat, because it gives them immediate access to what they are looking for. Let’s remember the times when we had to look for a phone number in a huge paper directory and dial to wait in line for eternal minutes. The internet made life easy for us, let’s make it easy for customers.

So let’s start at the beginning: Facebook Messenger hosts the most Chatbots of all the messaging platforms and it’s no accident. Facebook, along with WhatsApp and Instagram take 75% of the time of Latino users online in terms of social networks. When combined with a Facebook fan page with the conversational skills of Messenger it creates an ideal environment to communicate with your brand’s customers. This is a bridge between you and your clients and allows you a more personal assistant and intimate dialogue.

 Using the Messenger, you don’t have to pay or install any additional app or website. Users get in contact with the company through that communicator that they already use on a daily basis. It requires minimal effort on their part. Plus gives the brand the ability to use all the resources and features of the Messenger platform, but manually maintaining Messenger is tedious and will take away your time and sleep. That’s why Bots can solve up to 60% of recurring issues and ease that workload so that you and your collaborators focus on doing more and better business.

Personalized responses in Messenger.

Customers exchange 20 billion messages with companies per month. That’s more than double compared to the 8 billion messages last year. And this is just the beginning. People are used to writing (more than reading) and we already spend time in messaging apps than in social networks themselves.

And what are the most popular reasons why customers write to companies? According to Facebook:

• 83% want to know more about a given product or service
• 83% want support.
• 76% want to make a purchase.

We can see that customers treat Messenger as a useful channel to communicate with brands, a source of product information and support. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet their demands. Imagine that you have to answer the questions of 100 or even 10,000 people in a day, it is totally crazy to do it manually, or it would be better to become a call center. Having a personalized and individual conversation with each of them would require an enormous amount of time and work. In some cases, it is even impossible. Especially if the company’s user base and the number of questions is higher. Chatbots are very supportive in this field. Well designed, they give customers quick, clear and simple answers. Domino’s Pizza domibot Messenger chatbot is a perfect example of how robots can satisfy individual user needs. It allows them to see the newest menus from the nearest Domino’s pizzeria (hello geolocation!), Order their chosen pizza and even file a complaint. The chatbot answers all user questions at the same time. Responding to all messages individually.

Attractive online communication with chatbots.

Social networks have another great advantage: they allow users to engage with graphics, GIFS, Stickers, animated content or emoticons, active ingredients that have stolen hearts and are favorites of Internet users. Messenger gives you much more room for action in this field than other tools available on the market. And make a dialogue with a company more personal. Chatbots that were established in Messenger can use the full interactive and attractive potential of the communicator for the user. First of all, because the tool is still relatively new. It attracts the interest of users and inspires positive feelings (the surprise when you constantly discover new functions). In addition, Messenger allows the use of a wide variety of elements, which evoke positive emotions and encourage interaction.

Among them are GIFS, short animations that have conquered social media and communicators (GIPHY itself, a popular GIF website, has 300 million active users per day!).

GIFs, often excerpts from well-known and appreciated TV series or movies, allow short text messages to be animated, making them more “human” in nature. On top of this, brands that integrate GIF into their communication can create a more engaging way of speaking.

They allow for online dialogues that are closer to natural face-to-face conversations. The dialogues of a Chatbot for SMEs can also be enhanced with emojis. As non-verbal elements, they help users understand what to click on or simply allow brands to adjust to the specific nature of communication on social media.The two elements I have mentioned may seem quite obvious, but you will be surprised how easy it is to forget about them, especially when you are thinking about the user journey or customer journey.

Other chatbot elements are carousels, perfect especially when it comes to sales. They make it easy for users to navigate through the products or services in which they are interested. They also provide easier access to information about the given items.

How can I implement a chatbot in my small or medium business?

Now you can say: “A chatbot in Messenger: a communicator used by several people, with the possibility of creating personalized answers to user questions and with a wide variety of elements that improve conversations with SMEs.

But how can this tool really improve my business?

This question is asked more often than you think. SMEs have been searching for a solution to various problems that are on their growth journey. Above all, it is best when your chatbot is focused on a different activity or when looking for a solution to a specific problem. The more areas the chatbot has to “cover”, the worse it is for its performance. Set a goal to help you find a solution, and then measure your results. Typically, companies focus on one of the following areas:

They help customer service.

 In most cases, it includes answering frequently asked questions, displaying current offers, or receiving complaints. This type of customer service will be a perfect solution if you have a defined customer base, need assistance maintaining many different communication channels, or are currently unable to offer 24/7 support for your customers.

Help your Marketing.

Virtual assistants are generally used to automate processes. But the true marketing gurus use it to market their own services. And it is that they can serve as a simpler alternative for online contests, raffles, give aways or customer loyalty programs. It is much easier and cheaper to organize them in a Messenger chatbot than to create a separate home page from scratch. Messenger chatbots are tools that enhance your marketing arsenal and support different types of marketing campaigns, for example. Customer awareness or events;

They help your Sales. 

Chatbots allow you to present your products in a personalized way, generate leads or provide assistance to your customers during the different stages of the purchase process (for example, they can notify them about the status of their order). There are many examples of how Messenger chatbots improve sales: from the cosmetic industry, where the L’oreal Beauty Gifter chatbot combines inspirational and advisory content for the restaurant industry (the aforementioned Domino’s Pizza or the Turkish Burger King), and even the automotive. sector (for example, the Kia Motors America chatbot), which we had covered in bots with AR / VR implementation.

How to measure the KPIs and the success of your chatbot?

Interpreting the results and metrics that we obtain with the chatbot is necessary to improve its operation in the future. In this sense, Google acquired a Startup called Chatbase, which is in beta for creators, which in the opinion of some professionals from major brands who have been able to test it, has increased the queries made with its bot by 35% thanks to optimization of those that presented a high rate of loss of users in Messenger. There are many ways to measure bot KPIs, but they all require additional tools.  Among the tools available in the market we find: 

• Chatbase
• Botlytics
• Botanalytics
• Dashbot
• Wordhop.io
• bCRM
• Botmetrics
• Amio
• And Facebook Analytics (Messenger bots)

With Bots, SMEs can have a powerful virtual assistant at a low cost.

Conclusion:

If you want your tool to effectively improve your business, don’t forget to embrace your brand identity and tone of voice. Of course, keep in mind that you also need to provide clients with relevant answers, this already depends on your writing and copying prowess.  

You should also produce visual and emotional sensations with the help of graphic content – free items that you receive as a bonus from Messenger. In this way, the virtual assistant will become a natural extension of your communication strategy, not a useless technological device. 

Again, remember that the more tasks the chatbot has to do, the less it will benefit from it. Set a specific goal and work towards it. The saying that “practice makes perfect” can also be applied to virtual assistants. 

You have to constantly work on developing your bot. For example, if you introduce innovative sales elements or the newest features offered by Messenger, your tool will be even more effective. It will satisfy your customers and make business growth easier, if you want support to build your first bot, please ask us.