What is one of the first things you notice as soon as you land on a website these days? That’s right. A popup from a chatbot that says something of the likes of- “Hi, do you want to talk?”

Chatbots

Chatbots have become the driving forces behind conversational marketing. Unless you were hiding under a rock last year, you’ve probably heard of the term. Conversational marketing is gaining much traction in business circles.

Conversational marketing repackages the age-old idea of listening to your clients and customers, taking note of their feedback, and being aware of their needs. Conversational marketing practices include email marketing, customer success story capturing, loyalty programs, chatbots, and live customer support.

Chatbots have become popular drivers of growth and sales in businesses today. Here’s the activity of chatbot discussion from January 2017 to January 2018, according to Facebook IQ data.

Source: Facebook IQ Data

Benefits of a Business Chatbot

According to the 2018 State of Chatbots reports by Drift, consumers believe these are the most critical benefits of a chatbot:

• 24-hour service (64%)
• Direct responses (55%)
• Answers to simple queries (55%)

The same report sheds light on a few other use cases for chatbots. Survey respondents believe the most common use of chatbots would be in soliciting a quick reply during an emergency.

Source: Convince and Convert

For the second most common use case, it makes a lot of sense to believe chatbots will allow users to resolve a complaint or an issue. Since businesses are using chatbots to augment their customer service efforts, it is about time these intelligent bots wear their ‘fix-it’ hats.

35% of respondents believe they’d like to garner detailed explanations from chatbots when they use them. Empowering chatbots with data and information is the obvious thing to do.

When customers ask for the same information over and over again, it can be relayed to chatbots and humans can be freed of this repetitive menial task.

No matter how useful and efficient chatbots might seem for all businesses and across platforms, there are stories of their failure- and many of them. Therefore, let’s explore why chatbots fail.

Common Mistakes that Mean Death for Your Chatbot Strategy

Here’s what to avoid when crafting a strategy for your chatbot.

Wrong Scoping and Objective Setting

The biggest mistake you can make is to believe you can develop a chatbot that engages in a conversation at all levels. Don’t buy into the hype. Assess what a chatbot can do for your business and then set achievable, realistic, and clear objectives.

Aim to offer a guided conversational experience through your chatbot instead of open-ended conversations. DOn’t allow users to go astray and keep them on the “happy path”- one that leads to problem solution and customer satisfaction.

Poor Design and Development

Inefficiencies in the design and development of your chatbot would only lead to a loss in ROI and a lot of negative consequences. Design your chatbot conservatively, clearly defining its scope and features. Decide when to escalate the conversation to a human rep.

An ineffective design would make your chatbot repel users rather than bring them in as inbound leads.

Source: Ineffective Chat Design

Lack of a Detailed Strategy

A chatbot can be easily compared with a landing page- it will either keep visitors engaged with your business or drive them away. Introduce all the right elements in your chatbot by working step-by-step through a detailed strategy.

Find out key information such as your chatbot’s target audience, its primary functions, its benefits to users, etc. Then, plan at length what you chatbot will and won’t do.

Insufficient Testing

Even when you know every bit of it, a software should still be tested, and thoroughly for that matter. Comprehensive testing is necessary to tackle problems such as:

• Incorrect execution of code due to mistakes in functions.
• The possibility that clients misunderstand your chatbot’s functions. It is important to create a focus group and test the UI/UX experience to uncover anomalies that you might find hard to, being involved in the project since scratch.
• Too many or too few features- both of which are lethal for any software.

Spammy Bot

You most certainly have seen a bot make loud and annoying noises when you first open a website. And, then, these intelligent programs bombard you with messages until you close the website and breathe a sigh of relief.

A spammy bot is the surest way to failure. Want to drive customers off? Create a bot that spams them and they will mute your notifications and forget about it.

Not Learning about the Target Audience

The main aim of any chatbot is to automate communication with potential clients and customers. To do this effectively, you should know what your customers ask often.

Discuss with your sales department and learn what questions they frequently receive from customers. Survey your existing clients and watch their language and constructs. Learn from your competitors and examine personal messages before automation the conversation.

Learn about your target audience enough.

Weak Brand Personality

Does your chatbot compliment your brand? Or is it an entirely different entity that your customers wouldn’t recognize without your logo?

Chatbots need to keep your brand personality alive. The voice, tone, look, and feel of a chatbot should closely match your other branding efforts.

Needless to say, the personality that comes out of your chatbot should be interesting, vibrant, and exciting, so your customers want to have conversations with it.

Conclusion

Chatbots can be your winning strategy to get ahead of the competition. Beware of these success-killers if you don’t want your chatbot strategy to be another failed project.

Users’ expectations increase as more and more chatbots come into the market. Businesses will have to put in extra effort to match user demand. But, with the right strategy, chatbots can become your gateway to user conversations, effective inbound funnel, and boosted conversions.

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