Six Leaf | Anthony Lee: Can Messenger Chatbots Make You More Money on Amazon?

It’s a simple question. And no doubt you’ve heard of what a Messenger bot is. So, the question stands: Are you leveraging chatbots to grow your brand?

Often when we embark on the journey that is selling a private label brand online, specifically through Amazon FBA, it can become very easy to focus solely on the marketplace. We become overwhelmed with the new skills we must learn, and dedicate time and energy to mastering them; keyword ranking, optimization, sponsored product ads, promotions, coupons, lightning deals, and so on.

Rinse and repeat this process long enough and one day we look up and, ideally, we see that we’ve built a successful…Amazon business. Not that there is anything wrong with that at all. Quite the contrary, there is a lot of money to be made on Amazon and leveraging the platform makes sound business sense. Success is success.

The problem comes when we start to believe that the Amazon marketplace is the only source of gaining new customers. When we fall into this trap, we leave so much money on the table.

Research and statistics show that the majority of purchases on Amazon started with a keyword search using the platform’s search engine. That simply means the majority of sellers, including your competitors, aren’t doing a very good job driving targeted and directed traffic to their Amazon listings from outside sources. This presents a great opportunity.

The Viability of “Chatbots”
Messenger bots, otherwise called chatbots, represent a marketing strategy still in its infancy. Facebook just allowed Messenger objectives as an option in 2016.

What’s more, there is a good chance your competitors aren’t using chatbots in their marketing yet. While the technology is growing rapidly in popularity, many business owners and marketers still express concerns that the Messenger platform will one day go the way of email and people will simply tune out.

That seems like a viable concern, except that it isn’t.

The reason is because, unlike email, a mostly free service that isn’t heavily monitored and barely any support is offered to, Facebook is heavily monitored, heavily moderated and has a vested interest in ensuring the Messenger platform remains one of the most popular ways people communicate.

Simply put, Facebook cannot allow the Messenger platform to become over-run by bad marketing. It exists to enrich the lives of users, and now businesses have the unique opportunity to engage with that process.

Just take a look at some of these stats:

From the user perspective, according to the 2018 State of Chatbots Report, a large majority of people have plenty of reasons to engage with a chatbot if one is available. Chief among them are things like 24 hour service and getting an instant response.





From the business owner’s perspective, predictions of the growth of chatbots and what they are expected to achieve serve as a clear sign that they can help companies make money, hands down. Just look at these chatbot statistics from Ubisend:



Ok, so now that we are all on the same page regarding how viable a marketing channel Messenger is, what do we do about it?

Using Chatbots to Grow Your Brand
The Facebook Messenger platform, and chatbots that operate within it, are simply communication channels. But that is essentially what we as Amazon sellers lack, isn’t it? The ability to communicate with our customers?

But what can we achieve if we gain the ability to talk with customers?


For starters, we can provide more immediate and more helpful customer service. Sometimes, a sale or even a repeat sale rests on the strength of an interaction with a company.

If you compare side by side the process of interacting with a customer through Amazon’s messaging system, versus through Facebook Messenger, the results are startling. First of all, unless you are already logged into Seller Central, you won’t see that you received a message on Amazon until you get either an email notification, or you log back in.

When you use Amazon’s messaging system, you are limited to only seeing order information if the message is in connection with an order. So, if you are approached by a potential customer, you will only see their profile handle and no other information about them.

Contrast that with the rich and robust experience of Facebook Messenger. It is fast, users are alerted when their message has been read, the experience is seamless and highly convenient as well. Now, if you add a chatbot to the mix, customer support issues can be resolved almost immediately, information can be disseminated quickly and the customer can be moved through a positive experience with your brand in record time. This most assuredly can and will lead to more sales.

And that is just when using a chatbot for customer support. Now imagine you use it to communicate information about products.

To illustrate the potential here, I would like to show you screenshots of my own results. Now, I know my limited experience will not accurately represent the industry as a whole, but industry statistics are very much in line with my personal results.

First, take a look at this. These are the last five broadcasts I sent through one of my Manychat accounts. I use broadcasts to survey my audience, give them pertinent information about my brand, and introduce them to new products.





First, take a look at the open rates. 83 to 100%. That is simply incredible. I’ve never written an email that got those kinds of results (and I’m not a bad writer).

Now take a look at the next column, the click through rate. While those are much lower than the open rates, on the LOW end they hover at 25%. Again, this is an incredible number.

Now let’s compare that to an email list with roughly the same number of people on it. Here is a number of autoresponder sequences I have set up. Notice the abysmally lower open rates and CTR’s.




If that doesn’t open your eyes to the possibilities of chatbots in your marketing, I don’t know what will.

How to Maximize Your Chatbot/Amazon Experience
If you are already doing well on Amazon, that’s fantastic, but you can do even better. One of the best ways to achieve this is to turn on outside marketing channels in a highly targeted way. I suggest that the most cost effective way to get lasting results is through Facebook ads, targeting custom audience lookalikes with a Messenger objective, distributing a deal.

If you upload your buyer information from Amazon into Facebook you can create what is called a “custom audience.” This audience, once it becomes available to you, can be used to target advertisements to. That in and of itself is powerful. However, you can leverage the amazing power of Facebook’s platform intelligence even further by creating a “look alike audience” from that custom audience. When you do this, Facebook will identify millions of people on their platform who most similarly resemble your buyers.

With a pool of millions of potential customers, now you can run targeted ads with the objective to have them engage with your Messenger. Then, by setting up a simple chatbot like Manychat, you can offer people who engage with your ad and bot a deal to entice them to make a purchase.

And now the process is easier than ever.

Bridge by SixLeaf allows you to create a custom audience at the push of a button. With Bridge, you can also filter your buyer information by things like product, brand, amount spent, and more. You can even create an LTV (lifetime value) look alike audience directly from Bridge, so you can laser target only the people most likely to vote for your products with their wallet.

Code Courier by SixLeaf now offers Manychat integration, so you can distribute single-use Amazon coupon codes through Messenger that not only give out promo codes, but also direct buyers to your Amazon listing using our legendary Heatseeker URL. This is the most powerful way to both build your own list of customers and brand advocates AND rank for keywords simultaneously.

Messenger, chatbots and custom targeting are all innovations in advertising and communications technology that are shaping the future of marketing. SixLeaf is perfectly poised to offer Amazon sellers exactly the tools they need to leverage that technology and stay ahead of the curve, and their competitors.

UPDATE: March 2019
While the purpose of this article was to educate people on the potential of what they can achieve for their brand using chatbots, as well as to introduce everyone to features we have to integrate our tools with Facebook Messenger, we’ve gotten many requests for more details on those features.

We will write more extensively on this topic, but I thought I would add some more in-depth information on our Courier and Manychat template and campaign integration here in this post.

Let’s go over campaign setup and features within Courier by SixLeaf.

A Courier campaign offers the ability to distribute single use codes, a general code, or no code at all (for rebate setups). It also lets you add time and/or quantity based scarcity.





Next you can choose an integration (Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, etc). If you choose an Amazon product then you have the ability to use SixLeaf’s proprietary Heatseeker URL in the campaign.



You also have the ability to customize the Courier campaign “widget” fully. You can manipulate the fonts, text, spacing, imagery…every aspect of the offer window.



Analytics allows you to see which codes were taken, when they were taken, and by what IP address.



And you can also choose to install and integrate with our Manychat template, which will allow you to distribute your codes and/or URL through Facebook Messenger.

From there you can tag users, add them to sequences, and followup for a number of exposure-getting, brand-building actions (like reviews, social shares, referrals, etc).



Article Source: https://www.sixleaf.com/can-messenger-chatbots-make-you-more-money-on-amazon/

ManyChat: How to Set up an Amazon Giveaway Bot Contest That Generates Sales, Leads, and Product Reviews

The idea of giving something away for free and still making money sounds a little wonky at first glance.

Seasoned marketers know that giving products away for free can be an extremely effective marketing tool. Just look at the businesses around you and observe what they’re doing. You won’t have to look far before seeing plenty of offers to “buy one get one free” or “claim your free widget today.”

Think about how many times you’ve started a free trial for software or services. If you liked the product, you probably ponied up the cash to buy it. But what if there hadn’t been a free trial? You would have been much more reluctant to pull out your credit card and might have even gone to a competitor of the product instead.

How about free samples? If you’ve ever been to Costco or Amazon giveaway bots, you know they’re all pushing free samples all the time, and it’s not just a coincidence.

Why? Because free works.

Free is one of the most powerful ways to provide leads and/or established customers with huge value to build brand awareness and loyalty.

And so, with this information in mind, here’s yet another feather in the cap of Messenger Marketing: bots are pretty much the perfect tool for running a giveaway campaign, often with (much) higher engagement rates than email.

Today we’re digging into one of the most effective ways to utilize freebies, a time-tested classic marketing maneuver: the giveaway.

Except this time, we’re going to put a more modern spin on it…

Why Giveaways Work for Amazon Sellers
A lot of ecommerce business owners tend to shy away from giveaways, especially when they’re just starting out. With a limited budget and inventory, the idea of giving away their precious product for free seems foolhardy.

This, however, is a pretty massive misconception.

Product launches—whether it’s your first or your hundredth—are a super effective time to launch a giveaway campaign, whether that’s in the form of a contest or a “buy one get one” scenario.

The bottom line here is that giveaways are an investment, not a loss.

Suppose that you run a giveaway contest on Facebook. While plenty of successful campaigns give away a single product, let’s go a little crazy and say you were giving away 10 items. To keep things easy, let’s say your cost per product is $10. That’s a total of $100 “lost” to the giveaway campaign.

However, say that your contest racks up 1,000 new leads (not unheard of by any stretch of the imagination). That’s $0.10 per lead… which, to put it plainly, is dirt cheap pretty much regardless of your product type or niche—physical product sellers typically pay significantly more per lead.

That, of course, is a fairly simplified example, but the point stands: giveaway campaigns + messenger bots = a match made in heaven.

Let’s dive into the details of how you can run one of these campaigns yourself.

The 3 Steps to Harnessing the Power of Giveaways With Facebook Messenger Bots
Time for nuts and bolts.

Here’s a rough sequence of events for running a giveaway with messenger chatbots:

Create a landing page for your giveaway. ManyChat’s free growth tools make it easy to create a straightforward opt-in page.
Get visibility for your giveaway. This will likely be via Facebook ads. There are free methods of course (including simply posting the giveaway details on your page), but for the most visibility ads will be best.
Create your messenger bot sequence and tie it all together. This is where the real magic happens.
That’s it—three steps to generate sales, leads, and reviews by giving away a handful of your products for free.

The messenger bot sequence is where the real meat and potatoes are found, which we’ll discuss shortly. If you’ve been an online entrepreneur for any length of time, steps 1-2 are likely things you’re already pretty familiar with, although we’re going to dive into a few expert tips to improve your chances of success with this particular strategy below.

Messenger Bot Giveaway Landing Page Do’s and Don’t’s
The first thing to be aware of is that landing pages for messenger bot giveaway contests should not utilize long form copy at all—we’re not saying that it’s impossible, but generally speaking it’s totally unnecessary and will likely be detrimental to the performance of your campaign.

In other words, we’re going to be applying the good old K.I.S.S. principle here: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Your short form copy should clearly explain…

What the product is and why it’s so great. Keep in mind that it’s possible people coming across your giveaway don’t know what your product is or why they’ll need it. Your copy should touch on the most important benefits and pain point solutions of your product.
How to enter the contest. This will likely be something along the lines of “Click the ‘Send to Messenger’ button below OR to comment below the post to be auto-added to your list, depending on your backend setup OR to enter their email address. In some cases, you can link your email marketing platform with your ManyChat messenger bot. More on this later.
When the contest ends. It has to end sometime, after all. Setting a firm date will create a sense of urgency for users and give you the opportunity to reach out to winners (and, as we’ll see later on, to contact the majority of users who didn’t win).
Keep the images and graphics light, with a clear eye path to your CTA and/or button.

Simple, short landing pages work better for contests because for most people, the decision to enter is a spur of the moment thing. If you’ve ever entered one, you probably thought, “I probably won’t win but it would be neat if I did, so I’ll go ahead and dedicate the next 15 seconds of my life to entering.”

If entering the contest took too long or if too much of your information was demanded, unless you really, really wanted whatever it was,  you were probably out of there.

If you’re not a designer, don’t sweat it: ManyChat’s free growth tools make putting together a landing page with these features a breeze.

Amazon Giveaway Facebook Ads Done Right




Above is an example campaign. As you can see, short ‘n sweet is the order of the day here as well. In large part, you’ll want to mimic the same strategies that you would use for a landing page.

However, if you look a little closer at this campaign, you’ll notice that users can opt-in to the giveaway simply by commenting below.

If you haven’t ran a contest with comment opt-ins, you’ll be blown away by the response rate they can get. It’s easy and simple for people to enter, and yes, they do occasionally tag friends, which is just more free exposure for your contest.

As for the copy itself, you’ll notice that we…

Added a bit of social proof (“people are freaking out”)
Clearly explained what they’re getting (a year’s supply of dog food)
Clearly explained how to enter
Clearly explained that you’re going to follow up via Facebook messenger and that they’ll need to follow the instructions.
You’ll also likely want to mention below-the-fold that entrants must be 18+ and residents of the US (or your preferred country). You’ll also need to add a note about the contest not being associated with Facebook—copy for ads like this typically include boilerplate like:

You must be 18 years of age or older to enter. US residents only. This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Facebook. You understand that you are providing your information to the owner of this Facebook page and not to Facebook.

Also, and this should really go without saying, you need to be running a real contest with real winners—if you try to go “blackhat” and get cute with a campaign like this, it’ll more than likely bite you back down the line.

Tip: always split test your ads.

Now, let’s move on to the fun stuff, your messenger bot sequence after a user opts in.

Giveaway Messenger Bot Sequences
This is where things get exciting. Designing the sequence of your messenger bot messages is easy thanks to ManyChat’s Flow Builder. We’re going to proceed assuming you have a basic understanding of messenger bot sequences. If you don’t, read the post linked above.

It’s fairly obvious that a giveaway gives you a great opportunity to build a strong relationship with the winner(s). That’s great, but the vast majority of your entrants won’t be winners. There’s power in numbers, and the people who didn’t win are your bread and butter.

You’re not going to warm up to everyone on your first message; it takes time. Your complete sequence might last anywhere from two weeks to a full month—you’re playing the long game here.

Here’s an example of what your sequence might look like:

Day 1: Send them a welcome message confirming their entry into the contest. This is actually your opportunity to confirm that they want to hear more from your bot. Typically you’ll have them reply with a string or tapping a check mark (e.g., “Reply with ‘enter contest’ to get all the details from us!”).
Day 2: Second confirmation of entry. This follow up message can pick up a good percentage of users who ignored the initial message. If they already entered, this is your first opportunity to sell your product. You might tell them that if they don’t want to wait, they can buy the product at a discount “today only.”
Day 7-10: Typically contests run for 7-10 days, so somewhere in this time range you need to announce the winners. Again, you have an opportunity to offer those who didn’t win the chance to buy your product at a discount (as something of a consolation prize).
Day 15: Another follow up message, letting users know this is their last chance to get a discount on your product.
Day 20: At this point if a user purchased your product, they probably would have received it in the mail. Now is your chance to ask for a review.
Day 25: Review follow up.
As you can see, this sequence runs for nearly a month. There are three offers for your product at a discount—and asks for an honest review of that product twice.

It’s important to ask for reviews, whether you’re doing so via messenger bot or any other mode of communication. 70% of consumers will leave a review for a business… IF you ask them for one.

This sequence can of course be tweaked in many different ways. Maybe on day 10 you offer them a free ebook that really dives into how to use your product and the benefits of doing so. Maybe on day 15 you offer them the steepest discount yet, along with a video demonstration of your product in action.

When you set up your flows correctly, you can even segment your entrants into different categories. Winners can receive offers for complementary products later. Entrants who haven’t purchased the product by a predetermined time might be offered a different product.

There are so many different ways to spin your sequence and flows that you should be mentally salivating at the possibilities.

Bottom line? Free is good.

What’s Next?
Facebook messenger bots offer an incredibly unique opportunity. If history has taught us anything, those entrepreneurs who jump on new technology enjoy the most rapid and profound growth. (Don’t you wish you were doing email in the late 90s?).

Here’s a few other posts from the Manychat blog that you may find complementary to the information in this post:

Facebook Messenger Marketing Case Study: How A Local Mexican Restaurant Generated 85¢ Leads Using A Simple Chatbot
The New Business Card: Generate Customer Reviews on Your Facebook Business Page Using a Customer Review Bot
The Ultimate Guide To Messenger Marketing and Facebook Chatbots
If you’re an Amazon seller or other ecommerce entrepreneur, you’re plain old silly if you ignore this technology. There’s so many different ways to use it, but we humbly believe giveaway campaigns are among the most powerful.

Don’t miss this gravy train.

See you on the other side.


Article Source: https://manychat.com/blog/amazon-giveaway-bot/

3 Huge Brands That Use Chatbots for Better Business

Chatbots have revolutionized the relationship between consumer and company. Today, startups, scaleups, and multinational corporations are using this technology to resolve customer service problems, facilitate communication and provide 24-hour service. Moreover, 34 percent of consumers say they would prefer to communicate with a chatbot or virtual assistant when dealing with an e-commerce business. But which companies are using chatbots effectively? Here are three brands that use bots for better business.

1. Sephora
Beauty retailer Sephora uses a messenger platform to interact with its millions of customers around the world. Sephora Reservation Assistant allows online users to make an appointment with one of the company’s beauty experts from the comfort of their own home. Using natural language processing and the latest in UX design, the platform’s bot understands complex requests and makes bookings without any human intervention.

“This allows us to provide richer, more varied conversations that ensure clients get exactly what they want out of the experience,” says Mary Beth Laughton, digital senior vice president at Sephora.

2. Spotify
Music streaming platform Spotify has millions of users worldwide, so using chatbots to interact with consumers makes sense. Bots allow the company to expedite customer service issues and provide a better service.

Chatbots also enables Spotify users to discover the latest music artists, tracks and genres through Facebook Messenger. Consumers can even interact with the company on the platform and receive playlist recommendations based on their current mood.

3. 1-800-Flowers
Founded in 1982, 1-800-Flowers is one of the largest floral gift retailers in the United States. The company now uses a virtual assistant to speed up the purchasing process and provide customers with useful information.

This bot allows users to view floral arrangements, send gifts in the mail, and make payment. No humans facilitate this process — chatbots use natural language processing to automate tasks and complete the transaction.

The three brands on this list have utilized chatbots to improve customer engagement, streamline workflows and provide excellent service. It’s no wonder, then, that so many other companies are incorporating bots into their customer service and sales models.

Article Source: https://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/3-huge-brands-that-use-chatbots-for-better-business

How Artificial Intelligence Is Revolutionising The E-Commerce Industry

With the help of AI i.e. Artifical Intelligence, the e-commerce industry can improve customer experience with personalization, targeting potential customers to increase sales, and recommending them products based on their purchase and browsing behavior.

According to an article published by Business Insider, early 85% of all customer interactions is going to be managed without human support by 2020. Considering this advancing trend, many e-commerce businesses have begun to use different forms of artificial intelligence technology for understanding their customers better, offering them the best user experience, and generating more sales and revenues.

In this article, we will discuss how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the e-commerce industry:

1. A customer-centric approach

Often it happens that the customers, after browsing the e-commerce website for a while, abandon their search and leave the website. This generally happens when the customers are not able to find enough relevant product results. In such scenarios, AI can help a business with an intelligent solution.

By narrowing, conceptualizing, and finally improving the search results for online shoppers, AI can help the e-commerce business combat with the issue. By using machine learning, a sub-field of AI, websites, and apps can include visual search elements that see the world as customers do. It can help the business to design and develop a customer-centric experience by using advanced image and video recognition technologies.

This way, e-commerce businesses can make sure good customer retention rates.

2. Chatbot Experiences

Have you ever experienced the customer care services of a business? How do you feel when your call is on hold and you have to wait for countless minutes before you connect to the human agent? Annoyed, right? You might then try to reach the business via unlimited emails hoping for a revert, which generally takes a minimum of 48 hours. Such niggles result in bad user experience. Due to this, Human Powered Live Chat and Artificial chatbots are gaining momentum to advance client service.

chatbots are a computer program created to conduct conversations through auditory or textual methods to automate communication and create personalized customer experiences.

With the help of chatbots, the businesses can give the customers with literally 24x7 customer service along with personalized recommendations.

3. Identify the target audience

AI also makes the lead generation ability of e-commerce businesses easy. AI solutions for marketing, sales, and CRM can help the business in predictive marketing. AI helps the marketers meet the demands of the customer by providing real-time services and solutions over the queries. With AI, a business also gets forecasting capabilities by calculating customer purchases probability.

4.Conversational Platforms

AI provides conversational platforms such as Amazon Echo or Google Home that allows shoppers to carry on a task. With the help of Artificial Intelligence technologies like Natural Language Understanding, shoppers can speak to a robotic machine to receive answers to queries about items.

5. The Virtual Mirrors Experience

It is an engineered entity residing in software that connects with the connection to communicate with a human humanly. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, shoppers can virtually "try on" clothing to have an idea of what the clothing would seem like in various colors. For example, Lenskart offers real-time mirrors for the shoppers to try on different specs on-screen, giving them an idea of how they will look like those specs in real.

Therefore, Artificial Intelligence gives a benefit to e-commerce businesses to improve the user experience with virtual mirrors.

6. Gesture Recognition

Artificial Intelligence improves the shopping experience by translating specific gestures into commands such that the consumers can find the exact product they are looking for.

7. Improved recommendations for shoppers

With the help of Artificial Intelligence solutions, brands efficiently collect and scan huge amounts of results to predict customer behavior and give relevant and useful recommendations to all the shoppers. This way, Artificial Intelligence plays a crucial role in providing a "personalized shopping experience" for customers.

8. Quality Product Descriptions

It can be time-consuming and costly to prepare proper and SEO-friendly descriptions for all the items. Artificial Intelligence helps in combating such a time taking activity by scrutinizing chief features to design modified product descriptions and create quality product descriptions without human intelligence.

CONCLUSION

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are providing shoppers with extraordinary user experiences. Today, the e-commerce business is booming and, more and more customers are adapting to this trend of online shopping. In such a golden scenario, Artificial Intelligence plays a really important role in perceiving the shoppers' buying behavior for creating personalized experiences. If you have an e-commerce business, get in contact with the best E-Commerce Web Design Company Delhi provider at a competitive price. For competing with e-commerce giants like Amazon, businesses should adopt AI and inculcate Artificial Intelligence in their business processes as soon as possible.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10152159

Your Customer Engagement Strategies Are About to Become Obsolete

A customer needs help with one of your products for that big important meeting first thing in the morning. What does he do?

No, he doesn't call, or waste time trawling through your website for an elusive bit of information. He clicks on the "Live Chat" icon, types in his question, and waits. What happens next decides whether he continues to be your customer the next morning.

In a 24/7 world, customer engagement strategies can't afford to nap. Customers already prefer live chat over any other communication channel, and why not? It's quick, it's unobtrusive, and it makes a lot more sense than hanging on to a call while an automated voice tells you how important you are to them. Problem is, 24/7 customer support is expensive to maintain; too expensive for most small and mid-level companies.

The solution is, of course, chatbots. Chatbots, or interactive software robots are already sophisticated enough to handle basic conversations and questions. Some of the more advanced ones can even hold rudimentary conversations, adding elements of whimsy and delight to even the most rote responses. Also, since every good chatbot platform has at its core a powerful machine learning algorithm, it is only going to become smarter and better with time.

But what about the human element? Is it really advisable to completely remove it from your customer engagement strategies? The obvious answer is no, which is why chatbots are not meant to replace your customer service personnel.

A chatbot platform is there to provide support. It can make conversations quicker and responses more accurate. In fact, only for the most generic conversations and queries is a chatbot supposed to handle the entire conversation itself. Anything more challenging can be transferred to a human customer service executive. In fact, most leading chatbot platforms already provide this "live agent" feature, making it easy for companies to have a hybrid system in place.

As we can see, chatbots are extremely powerful and flexible tools that have considerable impact on customer satisfaction and thus, business growth. For example:

1. Chan Brothers, one of Singapore's leading travel agents, claims chat conversations have contributed to between 10 and 15 percent of company growth in a few months. Their chatbot helps users with travel package suggestions, currency conversion and real-time weather updates.
2. The National Railroad Passenger Corporation or AMTRAK has saved over one million dollars in customer service expenses
3. Rapidminer, a data science company, has replaced all lead capture forms with chatbots, and claims that over a quarter of the sales pipeline is influenced by chatbots
4. Online recruitment firm Firstjob employs an AI recruiting chatbot assistant that has automated 75% of the entire qualifying process.

Chatbots are taking over almost every aspect of customer engagement strategies, and why not? They combine the advantages of traditional customer service, powered by human agents, with the benefits of scale and accuracy provided by technology. It doesn't matter whether a chatbot is talking to one person or one thousand; every conversation is customized and specific to its audience. As a company grows and there is more inflow of data, chatbots will only get better, smarter, and more helpful. And make all other strategies pretty much obsolete.

Chatbots can empower your customer engagement strategies, and it's time to buy in or get left behind. Visit us at https://www.webspiders.com for a free and quick demo.





Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/John_Murphy/1489150

Should Your Small Business Use ECommerce Chatbots?

Conversation is a core part of the buying process, whether you're asking the wine clerk what red she recommends or messaging a store owner on Facebook to see if they sell gift cards.

I'm sure you've visited a website and had a chat box pop up, asking if you needed help or offering to start a conversation. Chances are, the "person" with whom you're speaking isn't human.

A chatbot allows business owners to provide responses and solutions - and even generate leads and sales - 24/7 through automated customer service live chat. According to IBM, up to 80% of routine customer service questions could be answered by a chatbot.

There are two types of chatbots:

1. Those that rely on rules and can only accept/respond in limited ways.

2. Those that use artificial intelligence to employ sophisticated algorithms to accept/respond.

One of the areas we'll see this tech more and more in is healthcare. While nothing will replace a professional - especially in an emergency - it's convenient and fast to ask a bot a simple question about a cold or what medications interact with breastfeeding.

Here's an example: Florence is a popular online personal health assistant. "She" has become focused on two main features: health tracking and medication reminders. All users have to do is start a chat with her in Facebook Messenger, Kik or Skype and she'll jump in.

Now, let's take a look at three pros of conversational commerce:

1. Fast responses, multiple options. You're able to answer queries ultra-fast and this type of interaction is possible on a wide range of platforms including Facebook Messenger, SMS, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Apple Business Chat and WeChat.

2. Money, money, money. You don't need to work late responding to questions and you don't need to pay employees to respond to every interaction. If you want to sell through your bot people can purchase your product or service anytime, anywhere.

3. You automatically gather data. eCommerce chatbots collect data so you can offer a more personalized experience each time someone communicates with your brand. And, you gain lots of valuable insight on your users' needs, pain points and buying habits.

Caption: Domino's uses a wide variety of tools to allow pizza lovers to rapidly order, pay and track their food.

Let's balance that out with three cons:

1. They can't replace humans. Especially in the medical and legal fields, there's a concern that patients may use these technologies instead of seeking professional help. Also, you shouldn't use conversational commerce as your only form of customer service. Your clients should be able to connect with a live person, at least during your regular business hours.

2. Misunderstandings can happen. The problem is with natural language understanding, which is the ability to determine intent. Bots aren't as skilled at understanding us as our fellow humans are - at least not yet. Customers will get frustrated with eCommerce chatbots that don't work well and will take their business to a competitor.

3. They're not right for every situation. It's true that many companies can benefit from this ever-changing technology, but don't try and force it. If your services are too complex to map out in AI chat or require thorough consultations, a chatbot probably won't help lead-qualifying efforts or sales.

Chatbots are far from perfect, and while they'll certainly advance going forward, you don't want to alienate customers now. By understanding the pros and cons, you can ensure you're making the best chat-choice for your business.





Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10075504