Featured article by Jelena Dinic, creative writer and blogger at Podroom CreativeÂ
It’s expected that by 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be handled without a human agent. Instead, they’ll be handled by the best AI chatbots.
2020 is right around the corner, and now would be a good time for your business to create a chatbot and implement it.
Chatbots with the best AI can give you an omnichannel presence to attract more customers. They can make you available 24/7, and they can have a significant impact on your overall customer satisfaction (and ultimately your bottom line).
Once you’ve found the right chatbot for your needs, it’s essential that you are careful with how you set it up and introduce it to the public.
So, take a look at what you need to pay attention to once you’ve decided to deploy a bot.
Start Small
If you want to guarantee success with your chatbot and it’s your first time dealing with this technology, you’d better start small.
A website chatbot can have some incredible functions. It can be transactional, offer amazing options to the users, upsell, down-sell, and cross-sell products, and so much more.
You might be tempted to go all in and create a chatbot with the best AI and with all the interesting features, but this isn’t necessary, and can actually be disadvantageous.
Think about the features that are essential for your business right now, and use only them. Platforms such as SnatchBot.me allow you to create a bot without any previous coding experience. However, you’ll still have a lot to learn as you use your bot.
All the extra features can easily be added once you’ve got the basics, so you don’t have to go all-in at once.
Test It Out… Then Test Some More
When you create a website chatbot customer support agent, you have to pay very close attention to details. It will be handling most customers’ initial interactions with your business, and you don’t want it to be a bad representative of your company.
So, it’s crucial to test it out. Think of all the possible questions your customers might ask and see how the bot responds.
You should also make sure that a few other people test out your bot before you make it go public. Check how the bot performs on smartphones, desktops, and tablets, and test it out from different internet browsers. Only if everything is going smoothly should you deploy your chatbot.
Make Changes as Necessary
For your chatbot to be effective, you’ll need to know your audience pretty well. You’ll have to do thorough market research, create detailed buyer personas, and be prepared for the unexpected.
Consumer trends are always changing. It’s only after you’ve deployed your bot that you can find out exactly what it is that your customers want from it. So, even though you’ve probably invested a lot of time and effort into creating a bot, your job isn’t done yet.
You’ll need to monitor its performance in the real world, and make changes as necessary. At the end of the day, your bot is here to help both you and your customers. You’ll probably need to tweak a few things to ensure the utmost customer satisfaction.
Don’t Oversell Your Bot
So, you’ve created a chatbot. It’s performing well in all the tests – it’s helpful, witty, and humorous. You’ve deployed it and are excited for the world to find out about it.
You’ll want to market it and tell the people about all of its capabilities, and this is great. It’s essential. However, many make the mistake of overselling their bot, claiming it’s incredibly smart and can outperform even the experts.
This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make when setting up a chatbot. It’s usually untrue, as few chatbots can actually outperform an expert, and can be offensive to the audience.
So, be sure that your claims about your chatbot are reasonable, invite people to test it out and tell you what they think about it.
Be Prepared for Future Advancements
AI is progressing rather quickly, and chatbots are getting smarter by the day. The later a business decides to incorporate them into its system, the more difficult it will be as the technology advances.
Even if you’re already in the process of creating a bot, you’ll still have to keep in mind what tomorrow may bring. Think about which new features might pop up and which capabilities will become essential.
It’s also good to remember that most businesses that create a chatbot don’t stop at just the one. As its benefits become obvious, more bots usually follow, and you’ll need to be prepared for this.
So, start planning for expansion right away. Plan for the inclusion of more bots, plan for their updates and stay informed about the trends.
Always Prioritize Your Human Workers
Lastly, when setting up a chatbot, if you want to make it work and become beneficial for your business, you’ll have to prioritize your human workers.
Yes, these tools might replace some of your in-house customer support agents. However, their purpose is not to take over your human workforce, but rather to help them do their jobs better.
So, if a bot takes over a task, provide your human worker with a replacement task of a higher value.
This will keep your workers happy, the customers satisfied and will ensure that your business thrives.
The Bottom Line
Today, it’s easy to create and deploy the best AI chatbot, but this doesn’t mean you should be careless when you set it up.
To set up a chatbot without making a mess out of it, remember to:
1. Start small
2. Test it out thoroughly
3. Make changes as necessary
4. Make reasonable claims about the bot
5. Be prepared for future advancements
6. Prioritize your human workers
Following these steps will allow you to set your bot up for success.
About the Author
Jelena Dinic is a creative writer and blogger at Podroom Creative with a Master’s degree in Serbian Language and Literature from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad. She is passionate about topics like lifestyle, business, art,  travel and gastronomy. Her latest writing attempts include works of fiction. Apart from being a movie aficionado, Jelena enjoys magic realism, black tea, red currant berries, cats, and declares herself as a Whovian.
