How to Use a Chatbot for Your Business (Guide)

You already know who it is. It's Jamal from HubSpot. And in this video, you're going to see how chatbots are making customer communications faster, easier and more effective for any business. Check out the links in the description below for tools you can use to start building your own chatbots today. And if you liked this video, give it a like and subscribe to the HubSpot YouTube channel. Let's get it. Hey Siri, what's up with Chatbots?

A chatbot is a software application used to conduct an online chat conversation via text or text to speech.

I know that, but like really, what's up with Chatbots?

AI powered chatbots can facilitate intelligent two way conversations between the customer and the brand.

Ah, I see. So what's up with chatbots?

74% of consumers prefer chatbots when they're looking for instant answers. More than 50% of enterprises spend more per annum on chatbot than traditional mobile app development. Retail spend over chatbots will reach $142 billion by 2024.

Ah, I see. Thank you. So remember five or six years ago when everybody was talking about chatbot this and chatbot that? The problem was chatbots really weren't that good. Some chatbots just couldn't handle the nuances of how people speak. Others, like M from Facebook, had to be supported by humans in 70% of interactions. But the worst disaster by far had to be Tay from Microsoft, which was shut down just 16 hours after it launched because trolls on Twitter taught it to say all sorts of politically incorrect things that I definitely will not be repeating here. But if that's what you think of chatbots today, you're missing out. Because while the hype has certainly died down, chatbots have become ubiquitous on sites, social media, virtual assistants, and even text messaging. Businesses are mastering the use of chatbots for specific use cases in marketing, sales and service interactions that can be more precisely scripted while still feeling like a natural conversation. We call this ChatBots 2.0. And to learn more, we spoke to Live Chat, a chatbot provider used by more than 32,000 businesses from 150 countries. We asked the humans at Live Chat what's driving the latest chatbot boom. They told us that over the past five years, chatbot technology has flourished. Now users can pick and choose between platforms that let them build bots without coding. Improved machine learning and algorithms can process vast amounts of information in real time and more. Chatbots use sentiment and context analysis, which allows them to go beyond answering common questions using predefined replies. Live Chat's Clients use their chatbots for a wide array of business solutions. One of them is sales, where chatbots can drive up to 30% more leads needs for B2B businesses. For example, one of Live Chat's customers, Valley Driving School near Vancouver, used their chatbot to help users sign up for lessons when a customer service rep isn't available, either due to excess inquiries or because it's after business hours. That bot has served over 12,000 customers since 2018 with a customer satisfaction rating of 94%. If I ever got anything that high in my life, I wouldn't know what to do with myself. You know, I wouldn't be human anymore. Maybe to be human is to be wrong is to err. Even if the customer isn't ready to buy, chatbots can be highly effective in the self education phase of the buying cycle. Live Chat offers marketing chatbots that work with your website and your Facebook page's messenger to diversify customer engagement strategies. These can include creating a customized shopping experience or answering frequently asked questions. Restaurants can even let customers book reservations or place orders for delivery. Another Live Chat customer, Nextdoor Burger Bar, saw their online orders increase by 300% after they started using the chatbot on their site. So now you see some of the ways that chatbots can help your business. But what does it take to actually start using your own chatbot? To find out, we spoke to PandaDoc, a document automation and e signing service, about their experience in deploying a chatbot on their website to generate leads. They told us that currently our chatbot is focused on converting website traffic into demos. After two years of using and testing workflows, copy and link content, we saw our chatbot leads creep into our top five producing and converting lead sources. We will be replaced by technology guys. It's only a matter of time. Two years might seem like a long time to start seeing results, but everyone we spoke to told us the same thing. Using a chatbot requires solid planning and constant testing, just like any other aspect of inbound marketing. PandaDoc told us this is not a tool that you can just set and forget. It needs to be managed by a dedicated representative that can focus strictly on interacting with chat inquiries and not get distracted by other responsibilities. So be prepared to staff accordingly, which can mean having sales or service reps on duty to monitor the chatbot and take over when needed. You'll also need to train your content marketing team on how to script your bot. But do not worry. Why? Because copywriters, email marketers, and even UX designers can all be great conversational designers when writing a successful script for your chatbot, Panda Doc advises that chatbots should be low commitment CTAs that give site visitors the confidence to learn more without the pressure of entering the sales cycle. So skip the hard sell and instead think of your chatbot as a concierge whose job it is to lead customers to the content they're looking for. Resources like an FAQ knowledge base, training materials or support videos can all be included in chatbot scripts, just like your blog, newsletter and social media accounts. Launching a chatbot is easy to do, but it takes real commitment to master. If you're ready to get started, HubSpot offers a free chatbot builder with proven templates to help you take those first steps. There's a link in the description below. And remember, chatbots are still in their infancy. The little incubator can't take them home yet. Still got the little anklet on. Advances in neuro linguistic programming and other artificial intelligence means that chatbots are getting smarter every year. Hopefully not smarter than me, though. I'd like to keep this job. In the meantime, I'll be chatting, hopefully with your bots. I'll see you out there. That hit the mic. All right, one of those is probably the right answer.