Chatbots are here and they’re here to stay! In the last five years, chatbots have risen to prominence on websites and apps all over the globe. There are several good reasons for this. Chatbots help bridge the communication gap when a human agent isn’t available. They also signal to your customers that you want to communicate with them and that you care about their experience. This is why so many websites and apps implement chatbots. You’re probably familiar with how it works. You land on a website and you’re immediately greeted with a popup chat box asking if there’s anything they can help you with. This is to let you know that when you’re ready to take action, you’ll be guided through the steps.
Chatbots now play a huge role in customer service operations everywhere. However, the use cases of chatbots aren’t just limited to customer service. Chatbots are also a great sales tool when used correctly. Today we’re going to be looking at the benefits of chatbots and tell you how you can automate your sales funnel.
Some people have had bad experiences with chatbots who fail to understand what they want or constantly return the wrong answers. Unfortunately, the sentiment that chatbots are ineffective was commonplace in the past and this has carried through to the modern-day in the minds of some people. The truth is, the chatbots back then were pretty bad. The technology was in its infancy and chatbots were a little awkward at best, or downright unintelligible at their worst.
Those days are now firmly in the past. In the past five years alone, we’ve made gigantic leaps forward in chatbot technology thanks to one thing: data! Data science is booming. In the past, our data used to sit idly in databases providing very little use to anyone. Today with machine learning, AI, deep learning, neural networks, data mining, data labeling and more, we’re able to analyze and process data like never before. Computing power has also rapidly advanced during this time meaning bots can now process conversations and deliver meaningful answers in a matter of seconds. The chatbots of 2020 appear humanlike and can carry a coherent conversation without having to be reminded of any details. This wasn’t true in the past where chatbots would frequently “forget” the context of the conversation.
There’s no doubt that chatbots are becoming more prominent everywhere. Facebook has more than 10,000 bots running in its Messenger app already. One report also found that 96% of companies believe that chatbots are here to stay. It’s clear that companies are seeing the value in chatbots and are continuing to invest in them.
So, everyone’s using them, but do they actually work? The simple answer is yes. You want your customers to move through the sales funnel and take action. Websites are designed and carefully crafted around getting consumers to the end of the sales funnel. Chatbots are an effective addition to this process. In many cases, chatbots will be the reason that the customer moved all the way through the sales funnel and took the desired action.
Chatbots can prompt the user to move to the next part of the sales funnel. For those not familiar with this term, a sales funnel is a consumer-focused marketing model that illustrates the journey consumers take as they move towards purchasing a product or service. There are different models of the sales funnel, but the most popular one illustrates this journey as four distinct parts. These are:
This is the part where the consumer becomes aware that your product or service exists. A chatbot can be used to quickly grab their attention on the website, app, or popular messaging service and increase the consumer’s knowledge of the product. You want consumers to be aware of your product, but you also want them to be aware of the correct information surrounding your product. Although you would hope this would never happen, a consumer may land on your website and make an incorrect snap judgment about your product or service. They might think “hmm I don’t think this product will offer everything I need; I’m going to look elsewhere”. Many of those people will hit the back button straight away. However, others may decide to ask the chatbots some questions to further clarify whether the product is a good fit for them.
This is the part where a chatbot is extremely useful! In this part, the consumer is interested in your product and will start to look for more information to help them make a decision. By having a chatbot ready to greet the consumer straight away, they will know that any questions they have will be answered.
This is the part where the consumer decides whether they will make a purchase or not. You can tailor your sales chatbot to say the right things at the right time and convince them to make a purchase.
Action is where the consumer follows through with their decision. Sometimes we make a decision but then something gets in the way of following through. Maybe the website crashes, maybe we get distracted by something else, or maybe we decide to come back to the task later on when we have more free time (only we forget to come back). Chatbots can prompt a user to complete the action.
First, you need to decide what the end goal of your sales funnel is. What action do you want the consumer to take? If you want them to buy your product or service, then you need to tailor your website or app to get them there. So, how do you do this?
There you go! You now have everything you need to create the perfect automated sales funnel and take the jump to use sales chatbots. Websites and apps are powerful digital tools for bringing in new customers. There’s a science to getting your website or app right and mastering this science requires deliberate focus. Focus on tightening your sales funnel and providing as much value to your customers as possible. It’s 2020 and today we don’t just sell products, we sell experiences. Make sure your customers have a great experience when interacting with your brand on your website or app.