Getting Started With Customer Service Chatbots

As small businesses work to meet the customer service expectations of demanding customers, chatbots provide a convenient tool for improving customer service and potentially increasing sales.

A chatbot is a software tool that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to understand and answer text–based questions and intent. Depending on the sophistication of the chatbot, it may rely on keywords or word patterns in the customer’s question to formulate a response.

As consumers become more comfortable communicating via instant messaging apps with their friends and family members, they also expect to be able to have similar text–based conversations with the companies they do business with.

For example, a common business application is using a chatbot to automate the distribution of information that is typically found in an FAQ document. A customer sends the company a chat message asking basic questions such as the business’s hours or location, or the status of an order, and the software pulls information from its databases to answer the customer’s inquiry.

If the inquiry cannot be addressed by the software, it is forwarded to a human customer service representative.

In another example, a dental office may open a chat session that offers a prospective or current patient common options such as scheduling an appointment, or learning about the practice’s services, its practitioners, or its hours and location. If the patient chooses the option to schedule an appointment, a new menu opens to highlight various services such as cleaning, repairing a cavity, or teeth whitening.

Once that is selected, the patient enters contact information and the appointment is booked – all without the need to call the office.

Other potential uses include:

• Providing an easy way to reach your company
• Answering questions instantly
• Enhancing the customer experience
• Providing around–the–clock service

While a chatbot is not likely to replace a human being, their ability to handle basic inquiries can free up time for people to perform more productive activities. And by gathering information about the inquiry before transferring it to a person, a chatbot can streamline the interaction between the customer and the representative.

Setting Up

An important early step in creating a successful chatbot is defining your goals for the software. In a customer service setting, a valuable step is outlining the common questions you receive and providing basic answers to those inquiries. This may be, for instance, your store hours or similar common questions.

Once you have done that, chatbot creation tools provide templates so you can paste your questions and responses into the software.

It’s also a good idea for the bot to specify that your customers aren’t speaking to a person, and to provide options to either speak to a person or to be contacted later (if the session is outside your regular hours, for instance).

Perhaps the most popular way for small businesses to launch a chatbot is to use Facebook Messenger’s open platform, which allows companies to create chatbots that can appear either alongside their Facebook pages or that can be embedded on their company websites.

By taking advantage of Facebook’s huge audience, a small business can increase its interactions and improve its customer service with a relatively modest investment (and without a need to understand chatbot programming).

Popular chatbot tools include Chatfuel, ManyChat, MobileMonkey, and others.