what is a chatbot and how to add it to my strategy?

It's clear that you've heard of chatbots, you've probably even had to deal with more than one, but the real question is, do you know what they can bring to your marketing strategy? In this post we will show you everything you need to know about chatbots and everything you need to implement them in your strategy.

what is a chatbot?

Before going to the definition of chatbot, let's first discuss why it arises, and is that inbound marketing has taught us the importance of the customer is at the base of our strategy, and not the product. So you have to provide the customer all the help that is in our hand, and above all we have to encourage communication with them, you have to make a two-way system in which we are not the only ones who provide information, if there is feedback with our customers, we all win because we can take into account their opinions and improve various aspects that are not working.

To establish communication with users there are hundreds of ways, but that is why we must know how to reinvent ourselves and create new ways that also attract our customers to initiate that communication, which is why chatbots are born.

Before defining chatbot, we have to define the term bot, a bot is an artificial intelligence software that performs a series of tasks without the help of any human being.

So a chatbot is simply an assistant integrated into the website that communicates with users through text messages. This allows the user to have a conversation in real time through a software that is integrated into a particular messaging system. It usually becomes an animated virtual companion, so it is not all so cold and impersonal, and this is dedicated to maintaining a conversation solving the doubts that the user will arise, all without a physical person has to be answering. Which is a great advantage because users can resolve their doubts instantly without having to wait for a specific time of day.

chatbots don't sleep!

In conclusion, we are facing a tool that interacts automatically with users helping them to solve their doubts and guide them to the point of performing a specific action, which means that this action is helping to convert them.

This chatbot has a surprising capacity for learning, yet another achievement of artificial intelligence, and can intuit some of the habits, tastes or preferences of users who interact with it to guide them in one way or another.

how to use it in your strategy?

The first step for this is to be clear about how it will help you within your website and what advantages it will bring to your strategy, point that we will explain below, so if you are interested, keep reading! To start using a chatbot within your strategy the first thing you have to do is to design a conversational experience, prepare the artificial intelligence software so that it knows where to take the customer within the conversation, so prepare a good script with questions that are not too general or open so that the customer follows the path that you mark without going too far down the line.

how does a chatbot work?

In order for a machine to be able to interact with humans, which is not easy, it uses several principles of natural language:

• Natural Language Processing

This is used to divide between words and sentences, it is a first stage of understanding in which factors such as the user's own emotions are also considered.

• Natural Language Understanding (NLI)

This is what helps the chatbot to understand what the user has said, this is done using tools based on algorithms and rules that help to build a dialogue, using the lexicon, synonyms, topics, etc.

• Natural Language Generation (NLG)

We need our chatbot to correctly generate natural language in order to provide the user with the best possible experience, giving them answers that appear to be generated by humans.

There are two different types of chatbots depending on the design and programming:

1. Simple chatbot: These work on the basis of a series of commands and keywords, so if the user asks a question that does not contain any of the keywords mentioned above, the chatbot will not be able to understand what is being asked and will have no choice but to respond by asking the user to rephrase the question.
2. Intelligent chatbot: These have a higher level than simple chatbots, and they are designed around artificial intelligence concepts, which means that we are not working with keywords, which offers a great variety in the dialogue and offers users a more human experience.

Advantages of using chatbots in your marketing strategy

1. Cost savings: Within your customer service staff you will need less assistance if you already have one of these virtual assistants.
2. Interaction: The customer gets a very simple and quick interaction when he/she has a problem.
3. Artificial intelligence: On the other hand, thanks to artificial intelligence, you can engage in very realistic conversations that are quite complex.
4. Many users prefer to engage in conversation with a machine rather than a manager, so more people will interact with us.
5. You create business opportunities by developing this type of software into your strategy, which is why so many companies are striving to optimise their strategy and add this type of service to their channel.
6. It deals with all the doubts that may arise to your customers or users immediately without them having to wait for customer service hours, so there is a greater chance that they will end up buying.

In short, chatbots are here to stay and if you use them well they can be your best friends, you still don't have a virtual assistant on your website? Get to work!