Bot-Marketing: The Pursuit of Human-Like Interactions

Probably at least once you were browsing through a website when a little window popped up. It contained a welcome message and an offer for help.

That was a Chatbot.

Their use has increased exponentially in several industries and is set for an exponential growth in the next years. But before talking about how they’re going to impact the digital marketing let’s see what chatbots are exactly and how they work.

What is a Chatbot?

Very far away from other Artificials Intelligence like the android Sophia — that wants to destroy humanity — or the scary but fictional Skynet — that succeeded in destroying humanity — chatbots are nevertheless Artificials Intelligence themselves. They are programmed to simulate a convincing human interaction when they engage in a conversation with a user. You can find them everywhere a messaging system is supported: apps, websites, a messaging application, and also via telephone.

How does a chatbot work?

The chatbot answers an input sent by the human user. So, in other words, they need us to ask them something in order for them to proceed.

The first thing the chatbot tries to do is identify the user’s need or, in other words, why is the user visiting the website or app?

It’s not casual that the welcome message is along the lines “Hi! How can I help you?”. You can read it in a robotic — style “Do you have some money to spend on my company?”.

The quality and length of the interaction that chatbots are able to face are influenced by some factors:

- The digital data the owner of the website gave the chatbot permission to access

- The accuracy of the keywords used in the questions

- Exchanged of pieces of information the chatbot was able to perform with other apps connected to its system.

If the chatbot is unable to locate the right answer, it could ask us to repeat the question — and in this case, better pick different words — it’s going to request more information to disambiguate the results it found, ot it might connect you to a Live Agent!

Why are chatbots useful for a business in 2019?

The first advantage is quite obvious: they are not humans, ergo they don’t need vacations time or sleep. Differently, from traditional customer service, chatbots can answer questions and guiding potential customers 24 / 7. They can’t do all the work, for example, they can’t offer custom discounts as an operator could do and sometimes (even though automatic discounts can certainly be set up in a chat bot!), they can’t answer complex questions, but their capability to be always active is a valuable asset.

It has been calculated that in a not — so — far away future, at least 80% of the first interaction between a business and a customer will pass through a Chatbot.

Does this mean they’re going to replace humans?

The only thing that can replace humans is other humans. The human touch will be required to conclude transactions, contact customers, and let’s not forget that humans are the ones programming Chatbots. However, the possibility to use them to redirect customers in the right direction is an appealing one for many businesses today.

Chatbots’ work isn’t beneficial only for entrepreneurs. Digital marketers organizing a marketing campaign can benefit from them as well.

Let’s see how:

• Monitoring digital campaigns: chatbots can become a litmus test to verify if a digital marketing campaign is heading in the wanted direction both in terms of engagement with customers and success in pushing the brand through search engines and social channels. They can also be used to check what product the customers are asking more to see and which others need to be marketed differently. See what your customers ask the chatbot more, and you’ll see what product is interesting them!
• Improving engagement: truth to be told, chatbots aren’t maybe the first choice when speaking about engaging with customers. Nonetheless, competent digital marketers know that every bit helps when working to obtain the customer’s attention. Having a virtual assistant like a chatbot means giving the customer the option to find quick information using a very customized path in their research. The ability to take advantage of this is strictly tied to the creativity of who is in charge of writing the scripts for the chatbot. You can pick the tone of voice, the level of formality, the length of the answers. The programmers play a fundamental role as well, choosing how the chatbot will approach the potential client, how and when it will appear. The important thing is that these two professionals work together to create a tool as close as possible to a human “voice”. Another thing that makes them a useful tool is that chatbots are easy to use and intuitive. They don’t require a particular level of expertise to use them.
• Improving the customer experience: it doesn’t matter what time is it or what type of information your customer is searching for, having a chatbot answering it helps business cutting corners — you don’t need to hire someone to answer 24h per day — and customers to feel guided in their research. Sometimes, they don’t have time for research, so asking the chatbot where a product is or how much it costs to save them time. Most importantly, if the chatbot is a customized one able to address the client’s name, username, location, and many other pieces of information.

Although the evolution of the chatbot was too much hyped in the past, they are a valid tool even if we’re not at the point where an Artificial Intelligence can do all the stuff movies pushed us to believe we would have at this point (it’s getting there!).

Even if chatbot is prominently used to engage with customers while they’re browsing through a page, website or completing a purchase, they can also be used in other two different ways:

• To test the client’ satisfaction: chatbots can be programmed to send surveys to customers. They are effective as long as these questions are short and quick to answer. It has been calculated that a one — minute questionnaire is more than enough. An excellent way to engage the customers is to have a survey where the chatbot identifies the user and asks a direct question. For example “Please, Rose, tell me what do you think about buying on this website: Easy — Quite Easy — Confused — Too Complicated” it’s a question that works better than “Hi, please give us a score about your purchase. 1 is poor service and 5 is the best service online: 1–2–3–4–5”.
• To Sell: the chatbot can interact with customers while they are on your website or they’re leaving it to offer some deal or discount. It can be a good way to interest a customer in buying a product they have already visualized multiple times. Ultimately Chatbots can be used to structure complex Marketing Funnels where the amount of human interaction equals to zero. Many times I have found myself using Chatbots for creating advanced marketing campaigns, starting from a Messenger Bot.

As we saw in this article, Chatbots aren’t only a way to cut costs, but they’re a powerful tool to both give your customers a personalised and smooth experience on your website or app and to engage with your audience.

They are being adopted more and more, and a business which wants to have a strong online presence can’t ignore them just because they aren’t as perfect as we imagined they would have been right now. Eventually incredible improvement will be implemented shortly on Chatbots giving them advanced AI Predictions, Faster-Problem Solving, and a Human-Like Experience.

It’s a technology that professionals are still developing and things are moving very quickly, as often happens online. It’s worth keeping both eyes on it.