There may come a time in the not-too-distant future where it is common place for all of us to have robots and artificial intelligences on our staff. Today though, it is still quite a novel phenomenon, but more and mores successful entrepreneurs are using them.
That’s why it’s such an interesting but also confusing option for many businesses to consider using a chatbot.
A chatbot is an example of “weak AI,” meaning that it is an AI designed to do just one thing. In this case, that means respond to conversation via a chat box or directly through Facebook Messenger. This can be an extremely powerful tool for businesses, and in this post we’re going to break down why that is and how you can get started.
Using a chatbot
The most obvious way to use a bot is to handle customer queries that you might otherwise not have been able to answer.
If you have a business with a prominent brand as well as a Facebook page, then you might well be familiar with just how difficult it can be to answer all of the questions that come through this way. You may not even have looked at your inbox on Facebook for a while!
This does two things:
- It means ignoring very warm leads that are highly engaged and extremely likely to buy from you
- It means upsetting your customers
The latter point is a serious one. Because customers aren’t hearing back from you, they feel ignored. They also feel as though your business is “faceless” and that if they pay you and have any problems, you’ll be equally likely to get hold of. None of this is good!
A chat bot can thus come to the rescue by answering those questions for you. This will follow a basic flow-chart system to answer set questions that will be prompted to the user. This way, you can explain that your team are busy but that their custom is valuable to you – and then help guide them to the next step.
That might mean inviting your visitors to get in touch with you directly if the FAQ can’t help them and they might want to buy. It might mean answering a question on your behalf so that you can focus on the things you do best.
Either way, your customers are catered to and your Facebook page becomes a highly effective sales funnel that will generate income passively, even when you’re sleeping!
More uses and features
But the typical chatbot has many more features that this even! Chatbots let you add them to your website for example, which can help to improve conversions and lower bounce rates. By immediately asking customers if they need help and guiding them to the right place on the site, you can avoid confusion.
At the same time, chat bots can even do things like automatically messaging people who comment on your Facebook posts. This can grow your Messenger list exponentially… also while you sleep!
And that is why learning how to use bots in my own business is one of my priorities for the next few days.
Contact me today.
Well, that was the first post on how to write and publish your own Ebook as a way to generate an extra online revenuestream as part of you new ‘revenuemodel’.
If you have any question or request, please do not hesitate to call me on Skype on tony.de.bree or email me here.
Kind regards,
Tony de Bree
p.s.
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