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All platforms like the apple of their eye protect their users from spam and excessive number of messages in their messengers. Otherwise, from a private place for personal correspondence, your favorite messenger can turn into an email with hundreds (thousands?) Of unread messages.
Even if the company has a database of customers' phone numbers with permission to send them messages, messengers do not allow you to simply physically send messages to these numbers on behalf of a business account.
The only exception is, perhaps, only Viber with their Messaging API. You may have received messages from Sberbank through Viber - this is exactly this thing, but so far this tool is designed exclusively for large corporate clients.
Yes, most services have this option.
Integrators are systems that integrate various SaaS solutions by API. If the platform is in the integrators, then you can easily link this system with any other system that is in the same integrator
You don't need to know HTML. The basic set of elements in the system is enough to create a beautiful letter without much effort. If you want an advanced and unique letter design, then knowledge of HTML will be useful for you.
CTR (click-through rate) is a metric in internet marketing. CTR is defined as the ratio of the number of clicks on a banner or ad to the number of impressions, measured as a percentage.
The formula for calculating CTR:
CTR = (number of clicks / number of impressions) * 100
For example: an ad unit was shown 10 times and was clicked 2 times. This means his CTR is 20%.
Chatbots help automate tasks by working according to a given algorithm. They conduct a dialogue with the user, fulfilling his requests, answering requests or entertaining them with their answers.
What Are Chatbots?
Chatbots are programs built to automatically engage with received messages. Chatbots can be programmed to respond the same way each time, to respond differently to messages containing certain keywords and even to use machine learning to adapt their responses to fit the situation.
Chatbots leverage chat mediums like SMS text, website chat windows and social messaging services across platforms like Facebook and Twitter to receive and respond to messages.
Chatbots come in all forms. There are some fun and goofy chatbots, a chatbot that chats with real people and learns as it goes.
The Value of Chatbots
One way to stay competitive in modern business is to automate as many of your processes as possible. Evidence of this is seen in the rise of self-checkout at grocery stores and ordering kiosks at restaurants.
1. Save Time & Money
By automating conversations that would otherwise require an employee to answer, organizations save time and money that can then be allocated to other efforts.
Instead of having your reps spending all of their time answering inbound questions, those individuals reallocate time to proactively finding relevant conversations to join with social listening tools.
The amount of time you save increases as your inbound message quantity increases. And since Sprout Social research shows the number of social messages requiring a response from a brand increased by 18% from 2015 to 2016, you save countless hours by automating responses with a chatbot.
2. Generate Leads & Revenue
Chatbots use direct messages to gather information necessary to provide effective support. For example, asking users why they’re visiting your page is one question that is likely asked in every engagement.
Automating this initial interaction allows users to share the information needed for the agent to better serve them without requiring a human to ask for it. For example, Drift’s website chatbot qualifies prospects and gathers their email addresses so a sales rep can follow up.
his chatbot automatically delivers qualified leads to the sales organization while also fighting the fatigue caused by answering the same questions over and over. You’ll find the team is happier with more quality leads and time to spend on more meaningful work.
3. Guide Users to Better Outcomes
Customers don’t always know where to go to find the information they’re interested in. In fact, your customers may not even know what it is they’re interested in. Maybe they just heard your brand name in passing and decided to explore. By asking a series of qualifying questions, you route users to the best place for them to find the information they want.
Think through some of the questions to ask that will route your visitor to the best possible solution. These questions vary by business type, but some common ones are:
What problem are you trying to solve?
What are your goals?
Where are you located?
What department are you in?
What industry are you in?
Would you like personal support?
Imagine a global organization such as an airline. Between departing locations, arrival locations, potential upgrades and a myriad of places to purchase tickets, there are an almost infinite number combinations for purchase.
By personalizing the questions a chatbot asks, those airlines direct customers to the best way to buy and create a better user experience.
hipmunk chatbot
This seamless user experience makes the painstaking process of planning a trip much easier for both the user and the business.
4. Provide ‘After Hours’ Support
As we saw from the Drift data, the most popular use of chatbots is to provide quick answers in an emergency. However, organizations that don’t offer 24-hour support won’t provide answers when the office is closed.
By using a robust chatbot when your business is closed, customers still gain access to the information they need.
This is especially important as consumers expect a quicker response than brands can guarantee. According to Sprout Social’s Q2 2016 Index, customers expect a response between 0-4 hours. However, brands typically take 10 hours to respond.
people's wait time expectation vs brand response time on social
Chatbots help you significantly decrease the average time to respond, bringing you closer to your customers’ expectations.
5. Engage Users in a Unique Way
Traditionally, customer questions were routed to businesses via email or the telephone, which made user experiences fairly standard and non-customized. But chatbots offer a new, fun and interactive way to engage with brands.
One great example is Domino’s Pizza’s Twitter. Domino’s allows customers to order pizza by simply sharing an emoji. The Domino’s bots then route those orders and ask additional questions if necessary.
dominos chatbot tweet
Another great chatbot example comes from Fandango. Unlike the days when you had to spend time sorting through Moviefone’s options via its 1-800 number, you now go to Fandango’s social profiles and leverage its chatbots to find movie times and theaters near you.
fandango chatbot
These seamless and memorable user experiences ensure that your users will think of your bots the next time they’re looking for dinner and a movie.
Getting Started With Chatbots
Eager to start creating your own chatbots? Who wouldn’t be. Once you get beyond the initial fear of letting a bot assist you, the idea of creating and launching your own is exciting. Think of all the time you’ll save for new activities.
We’ll walk you through the most important things to consider and the steps to walk through when getting started.
1. Define Your Goal & Use Case
With such a wide spectrum of interesting use cases to choose from, it’s tough to nail down a specific goal for chatbots. Spend time doing some discovery at the onset to define your goal and then start to craft your use case.
Are you looking to resolve customer service issues? Promote a new product? Or generate quality leads? In order to find out which use case will be most effective for you, chat with your website and social media teams.
If your social team finds they can’t keep up with the number of messages on certain networks, you may want to leverage bots on those channels. If your website team is seeing low conversion rates, that may be something a bot can help increase.
Whatever the case, be mindful of what you’d like to accomplish as you begin to build out the experience.
2. Choose Platforms to Leverage
Your chat conversations will differ based on the pages, networks and channels your programs live on. Consider your options:
Your website
Facebook Messenger
Twitter Direct Message
Someone coming to your homepage is likely more knowledgeable of your products than someone who gets to one of your blog posts, and your bots need to be programmed accordingly.
Similarly, since demographics differ for each individual social network, someone who visits your page on Facebook is likely not going to be asking the same questions as those that go to your Twitter page. Study the social media demographics by social network to get a better understanding of those differences.
twitter demographics
Gather as much information on your audience as possible, then use it to guide the questions you ask in step three.
3. Build Out Your Content Strategy
Next, figure out what content you’d like customers to engage with throughout the chatbot interaction.
Try starting with FAQs. Think about what questions customers are likely to ask your chatbot, that way you build out the proper flows to guide users to the best possible answer.
If you’re unsure of the frequently asked questions, look internally to teams that interact with your customers.
Customer Service: Your customer service reps likely talk to your customers more than anyone else at your company. Ask them what trends they see in customer questions.
Sales: Your sales reps probably chat more with prospects than anyone else. Figure out what questions stop a user from converting to a customer.
Marketing: Your marketing team, and mostly your social media marketing team, will have insights on why individuals reach out to you on social channels. These questions are crucial for your social media chatbots.
Quora: Quora is a site where users can go to ask questions about anything, including your organization. See if there are any questions including your brand. If you see any trends in questions being asked, you may want to consider adding them to your chatbot.
If you choose to be more creative and opt for a more marketing-focused experience, evaluate what existing content you have that best supports your goal before creating new content.
4. Craft Your Bot’s Voice & Personality
If you haven’t yet, now is the time to bring in your creative team. Giving your bot a personality humanizes the experience and more closely aligns the chatbot with your brand.
To let customers know they are talking to a bot, many brands also choose to give their bot a name. This gives them the opportunity to be transparent with customers, while fostering a friendly tone.
Make sure to invite copywriting teams into the process to set clear guidelines and a consistent voice for your chatbot.
bloomerang twitter chatbot
5. Write a Great Opening Message
The welcome message is incredibly important for engaging users and getting them to respond to your bot. The best opening messages we’ve seen are those that are compelling, set expectations and ask questions.
Be Compelling
Just because it’s automated doesn’t mean it has to sound robotic. Refer back to your bot personality and have fun with your message to get users to engage. Just make sure to maintain your social brand voice.
Set Expectations
First, let customers know they’re chatting with a bot so they understand potential conversation limits. Second, let customers know how and when they will chat with a real person.
Ask Questions
Once you’ve hooked your audience, ask them questions that will keep the conversation going. Use the important questions you found in step No. 3 to make sure you’re satiating customer needs.
Below is an example created just for this guide. The bot welcomes users with a fun waving gif to get things started.
