How Small Businesses Can Leverage Chatbots

The digital industry is on the rise and has made it possible to solve people’s problems from almost every walk of life. Moreover, chatbots make it easier for customers to connect and reach out to businesses as they would with human support representatives.

Chatbots are competent and inexpensive — they give customers recommendations based on the data collected from prior interactions and simple inquiries. On the other hand, smaller businesses have a stellar customer-relationship down pat and chatbots transform this strength from personal interactions to a digital one.

Small businesses have found ways to leverage chatbots and save them time and money giving them more time to focus on their growth and become a unicorn company in their industry.

Here are 5 effective tactics you can use to achieve your business goals:

 

1. Create a Unique Social Experience

Different brands have started reaching out to their followers and potential customers using chatbots for Facebook Messenger to create a unique experience for their customers and increase engagement.

A chatbot platform such as MobileMonkey allows your small business to understand, respond, and adapt to a simple conversation.

Quartz is changing the face of digital journalism that is built and written specifically for Facebook Messenger — their followers can chat with their chatbot to catch up on the latest news and participate in different projects that expand their horizons. Quartz is giving its followers a unique and personal experience through the utilisation of chatbots in their Facebook Messenger.

 

2. Generate Leads

One of the most significant uses of chatbots for your small business is to generate leads — and to make this possible, you should get your customers to interact with your chatbot. So how should you do that?

Using Facebook click-to-Messenger ads directs the users to your Messenger where they can exchange messages with your chatbot. Once the user responds to your bot you’ll be able to follow up with a sponsored message which helps generate leads.

Another is by using a comment guard — this is also a chatbot that you can attach to your Facebook post and anyone who comments on it will receive a message from your chatbot.

Posts that increase engagement like a contest, discounted promotions, or a webinar sign-up means you’ll have a chance to get more contacts and if a user provides his email address, you can start to build your email list.

 

3. Customer FAQ

Customer care should still be one of the top priorities even for small businesses. However, due to a limited budget, they find it difficult to hire more staff. This is where chatbots can be of huge help — by answering common questions, you can improve your customer service even further!

Chatbots allow for your business to be available to answer your customers’ questions 24/7 and they are excellent for answering customer FAQs too.

Not only will you save on money, but you’ll also save time answering the same questions from different customers over again. If a customer types the word “hours” this can trigger your chatbot’s dialogue and responds to your customers about your store hours.

Another thing about chatbots is that it can also give prices about your products and services, which is a convenient and efficient way to answer your customers’ inquiries.

 

4. Automate Sales

You can also set your chatbot as an automated sales bot because hiring salespeople can cost you a lot of money and this won’t help you grow as a small business.

Without making sales, any business could fail but this chatbot marketing tactic allows your business to have salespeople who work 24/7 because you have an automated sales bot working for you!

Your customers can make an inquiry about your products or services — let your sales bot know what they’re looking for and the sales bot will pull up that product and increase the chances of conversion.

An example is LEGO’s Ralph Gift Bot, which assists customers and helps them find the perfect LEGO gift for their little ones, friends, or family members — making the shopping stress-free for your customers.

 

5. Simplify Payments

Payment processes can be one of the most stressful and difficult parts of purchasing a product for customers, especially when a customer is redirected to a webpage to enter their personal payment information.

Chatbots can help in simplifying the payment process by having everything in the chat window so customers won’t have to go to a webpage. They won’t have to navigate through different webpages in order to purchase a product and finalize their payments.

As you can see, there are numerous growth and money-saving opportunities for small businesses that utilise chatbots. Chatbots are quite simple to create and implement which can have a huge impact on your business and help you achieve your goals.

 

About the Author

 

Larry Kim is the CEO of MobileMonkey, the World’s Best Integrated Web Chat, SMS & Facebook Messenger Bot Platform for Marketing and Customer Service. He’s also the founder of WordStream, Inc., the leading provider of Google Ads, Facebook Ads and keyword tools used by over a million marketers worldwide. The company employs over three hundred people and manages billions of dollars of ad spend on behalf of tens of thousands of customers. WordStream was acquired by Gannett for $150 million. Larry is ranked the #8 most popular author on Medium. He’s a contributor to CNBC and Inc. Magazine. Key interests include: Chatbot Marketing, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, entrepreneurship and startups. He received Marketer of the Year awards from Search Engine Land, US Search Awards, and PPC Hero.

 

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One Response

  1. Thanks for such great guidance, Larry!

    We have a client now who wants to integrate a Chatbox feature into his site. We were skeptical that they could manage it, as instant replies are necessary.

    You’ve shown a reasonable approach here with the tools and tactics to succeed.

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