Tag: responsiveness

14 of the best chatbot builders for small business

With digital marketing and customer service both needing to be more real-time than ever to serve consumers, chatbots are more popular than ever.

You’ll find at least 300,000 chatbots on Facebook alone (and climbing). In fact, about 53 percent of consumers are more likely to purchase from businesses that they can message.

Essentially, a chatbot is a software (powered by artificial intelligence) that simulates conversations with users through a chat interface either on a website or on a messaging app.

Chatbots help streamline the sales process and offer better customer service because they make it easier for consumers to get answers to questions without having to search around on a website or in a search engine.

Learn more about conversational marketing, as well as eight tips to get started.

This technology is configured through a chatbot builder that uses if-then rule programming that can be customized to the common questions you experience as a business, as well as the specific answers that reflect your business. 

The good news is that you don’t have to know how to code or program to create a chatbot. Most chatbot builders are easy enough to use and install.

The following are 14 of the best chatbot builders to choose from to use for your small business.

TARS

Chatbot builder TARS allows users to create chatbots that can be used on your website and Facebook Messenger without any programming knowledge.

You can use chatbots built by TARS for an ordering or booking process, feedback collection, surveys, user onboarding, customer service, training and more.

TARS also offers chatbot templates to make it even easier to get started.

Pricing: 14-day free trial available; paid plans start at $99 per month

Botsify

Botsify is a chatbot builder that can build chatbots on your website or Facebook Messenger without any coding skills. It integrates with such services as WordPress, Shopify, Slack, Google Sheets, Alexa and more.

Botsify features a drag-and-drop interface that’s easy to use. Both Apple and Shazam use this tool.

Pricing: Free version available; paid plans start at $10 per month

Hubspot

The Hubspot Chatbot Builder is a free tool, without any coding knowledge required. It can help customers book meetings, answer common customer service questions, qualify sales leads and so on.

Hubspot’s Chatbot Builder is integrated with HubSpot’s free CRM tool, so the chatbots you build can deliver more personalized messages based on the information you have for your existing contacts.

Pricing: Free version available

MobileMonkey

Chatbot builder MobileMonkey helps you build chatbots for Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Message, SMS texting and websites. The tool also can help you grow your contact list, segment your audience and more.

The chatbots you create with MobileMonkey can make appointments, answer frequently asked questions, track purchases and so on.

MobileMonkey also features an OmniChat widget that automatically detects if the user is logged in on Facebook. When the user is logged in, a Facebook Messenger widget will appear on your website. If the user is not logged in, it will automatically change to a native website widget. 

Pricing: Free version available; paid plans start at $49 per month

Flow XO

The Flow XO chatbot builder offers several pre-built chatbot templates to make it easy to create your own. You can use their drag-and-drop editor to customize any of those templates. 

These chatbots can be used on your website and Facebook Messenger but offer minimal analytics.

Pricing: Free version available; paid plans start at $19 per month

Chatfuel

Chatfuel is another chatbot builder that helps you create chatbots on Facebook Messenger. No coding expertise is required. NFL teams, TechCrunch and Forbes use Chatfuel.

Chatfuel also offers analytics, which helps you easily improve your chatbot over time.

While there is a free version of this chatbot builder, but one of the features of the paid plans includes the ability to remove Chatfuel’s branding on your chatbot landing pages.

Pricing: Free version available; paid plans start at $15 per month

Wit.ai

Chatbot builder Wit.ai enables you to create text- or voice-based bots on a messaging platform of your choice. Wit.ai learns the human language from each interaction.

To create your Wit.ai account, log in through GitHub or Facebook.

Pricing: Free version available

ManyChat

One of the more popular chatbot builders, ManyChat is extremely easy to use. It features a visual flow builder, where you can create your chatbot within minutes.

The chatbots you create can be used on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, SMS texting and your website.

Keep in mind that the SMS channel only supports two countries.

Pricing: Free version available; paid plans start at $10 per month

Xenioo

Chatbot builder Xenioo also offers a visual flow builder that takes you through the creation process without any programming or coding knowledge.

Xenioo features a dozen channels where you can install its chatbot, including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Messenger, SMS, Slack, Google Assistant, Alexa and more.

Its best feature is how flexible those hosting channels are.

Pricing: Free version available; paid plans start at about $34 per month

Intercom

Intercom is actually the chatbot builder that other chatbot builders (such as ManyChat, Chatfuel and so on) use in their own chatbot platforms. In addition to creating chatbots, Intercom also enables you to create product tours and more.

It features an easy-to-use interface with more than 100 direct integrations.

Pricing: Paid plans start at $67 per month

Landbot

The chatbot builder Landbot focuses on the creation of chatbots for landing pages but also includes chatbots for websites, WhatsApp, Slack and Facebook Messenger.

It also features a visual flow builder when creating chatbots but has minimal analytics.

Pricing: Free version available; paid plans start at $30 per month

Tidio

Chatbot builder Tidio focuses mainly on chatbots for websites, but Facebook Messenger is also available.

You can add custom fields and tags in the easy-to-use interface, but analytics are minimal.

Pricing: 7-day free trial available; paid plans start at $18 per month

ActiveChat

What makes ActiveChat a unique chatbot builder is its eCommerce feature, where users can pay for products inside the chatbot. You can create chatbots for your website, Facebook Messenger, SMS texting and more.

It also has an advanced website widget where you can incorporate your own corporate identity and send messages based on the page the user is on.

Pricing: 14-day free trial available; paid plans start at $33 per month

Dialogflow

Last but not least, Dialogflow is powered by Google. The AI is exceptionally good, so other chatbot builders typically have integrations with Dialogflow just to access the AI.

Dialogflow supports chatbot creation for a number of channels, including your website, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Google Assistant and more. You also can match the chatbot to the branding of your website and get robust analytics.

On the other hand, the interface is a little harder for beginners to understand at first.

Pricing: Free version available as long as you remain below 180 requests per minute

In conclusion

More than anything, we recommend reviewing all available features for each chatbot builder as well as the pricing of available plans.

Depending on your goals and budget, you should be able to narrow down this list to a top few to choose from. Always feel free to take advantage of any free trials that are available so that you can test your top tools yourself.

Looking to level up your digital marketing process as you get into conversational marketing with your new chatbot? Consider DailyStory, which features automation, audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

8 ways to improve customer responsiveness

Your business can either thrive or barely survive based on your customer responsiveness in this fast-moving digital world.

How long does it take your team members to respond to a question from a customer or potential customer?

Simple answer: The longer it takes, the worse it is for your business.

Customer responsiveness is all about how quickly your business can respond to a query on any platform (social media, email and otherwise). On the flip side, it’s also about how quickly you can resolve an issue.

About 32 percent of customers expect a response from social media customer support within 30 minutes of reaching out, according to a survey, while 42 percent of consumers anticipate a response within 60 minutes.

Successful customer responsiveness leads to more sales and repeat customers who can ultimately become loyal brand ambassadors. Repeat customers are actually accountable for about 40 percent of an average business’s annual revenue. You definitely want your customers to come back.

The following are eight ways you can improve the customer responsiveness of your business.

Audit your current customer responsiveness

It’s important to assess the current state of your customer responsiveness and identify any areas in need of improvement.

You may want to test it yourself by sending an email from an anonymous account, asking an acquaintance to directly message on different social media platforms, etc.

The key is that you repeatedly test and document what is working to your expectations and what’s not.

You can’t fully improve or fix your customer responsiveness until you understand and identify the problems that need to be fixed.

Determine a customer response system

Every business is different, but it’s important to not only prioritize customer responsiveness but have a system for your team to address it.

For example, perhaps you know that most questions come through email, occasionally through your Facebook page inbox and very sparingly through your brand’s Twitter account (whether direct message or otherwise). You should then ensure that your team has time daily to respond to emails. For Facebook and Twitter, you confirm that your team receives notifications whenever there is a mention or message that needs to be addressed.

The more platforms your company is on (including Yelp and Google My Business), the more complex your customer responsiveness system may need to be. But it’s worth putting in the time and effort to think through what works best to achieve your improvement goals.

Keep in mind that the regular updating and maintenance of your knowledge base is critical to best serving your customers and keeping your team members all on the same page.

Embrace social media

Social media isn’t just a place where customers and potential customers can send your business direct messages. It’s also a place where queries can come in various types, depending on the platform.

On Facebook, for instance, a user can send you a direct message, comment on your post, tag you in another post or comment thread and even just mention you while not tagging you at all. While privacy settings may restrict what you can respond to or even see, it’s worth paying attention. Otherwise, you’re likely to miss something. 

Instagram, Twitter, YouTube—there are so many ways users could be engaging with you and asking you specific questions. For example, only 3 percent of Twitter users tag a brand to ask for help, while about 37 percent of tweets mentioning brands are customer-service related.

Of course, regular searches for your brand name (and common misspellings) on various platforms can help identify the posts where you’re not tagged.

We recommend using a social media management tool in order to pool the monitoring all into one place. Some businesses might also outsource social media in order to stay on top of all the dynamics.

Consider tech-based solutions

Customer responsiveness and service have long been considered a manpowered service, where you have to hire more and more employees to do it right as a business. But there are a number of technology-based solutions out there that could work for your brand.

These solutions can include chat software where automated responses handle the most common and basic customer questions. Find out more about chatbots.

Invest in a quality customer service team

Chatbots can’t do it all. It’s imperative to hire and invest in a responsive customer service team, even if that’s only one person.

No matter the size, you must have the right people with the right skills working for you and representing your brand. Regular training to continue to develop and improve those skills also is necessary.

Strive for:

  • Knowledge, where a customer-service representative understands your products and/or services well enough to address the questions that pop up.
  • Excellent communication, where a representative engages with any type of customer or potential customer in a positive, supportive way.
  • Patience, where a representative does not get flustered or short with the customer or potential customer no matter what.

Explore CRM programs

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. In the simplest terms, a CRM program uses your data to build a relationship with your customers.

The right CRM program will help give you useful insights about your customers and their needs, as well as streamline customer service between different teams within your business (such as sales and customer service) so that your customer gets a consistent experience with your brand. 

They’ll also often track pending and completed tasks by customer, so that you have an idea of what’s been done and what might still need to be done.

Get personal in your messaging

The further you can get from generic answers and messaging, the better. About 96 percent of marketers say that personalized messages and replies improve the brand-customer relationship.

To be more personal, use:

  • The customer’s name
  • A more informal, conversational and friendly tone
  • The customer’s native language

Strive for 24/7 customer support

This can be especially challenging for small businesses, especially if the only employee is you. (There is such a thing as work-life balance that every business owner should embrace to some degree.)

Options to be more responsive 24/7 include outsourcing your customer service, providing an easy-to-find and easy-to-understand FAQ section on your website and/or using live chatbot features that can then kick up more complex questions to a human. 

In fact, chatbots have come a long way. About 41 percent of customers now expect live chat on your website.

Dive deeper into conversational marketing and the value of engaging customers in real time.

In conclusion

Ultimately, customers want to feel important. Take the time to understand what your business is doing well and what can be improved to offer the best possible customer responsiveness. The more you can put yourself in your customer’s shoes, the better.

Looking to level up your digital marketing process as you improve your customer responsiveness? Consider DailyStory, which features automation, audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.