Customers want to engage with you on phone, SMS, website, google and social media. An online chatbot is a part of a comprehensive solution.
Eight out of 10 businesses are expected to implement a chatbot by 2022. Why? Top reasons include reducing operational costs, providing 24/7 response to customers and to capture more highly qualified leads through deeper customer engagement.
As more and more businesses adopt AI, the number of options available can seem overwhelming, especially for the SMB. We’ll break down what the different types of chatbots are and how to best assess what type makes the most sense for your business.
Coding Required
If you have a larger company requiring sophisticated customer routing and you also have engineering resources on hand, some of the more sophisticated chatbot tools may be the right fit for you. Designed for enterprise clients, open source chatbot tools for developers tend to have a myriad of CRM and other SAAS integration points and can treat highly complicated conversations quite well.
Your developer team will require training on the tool before getting started and the pricing will be on the higher range using a per seat or per interaction model.
No Coding Required
Designed to be “easy,” no-code build-your-own chatbot tools require a fair amount of planning, strategizing and implementing. First, you will have to think through the types of users that come to your website (first-timers, repeat, specific use cases, etc.) and map out how you want to treat each of them. This entails mapping out your messaging, customer engagement options, potential user reactions and how you want the bot to respond to them.
This is all very cool for the power user who enjoys playing engineer, but there are out-of-the-box solutions that can do all of this for you, significantly reducing setup time and without the need to think like a programmer. Pricing for build-your-own bots is typically per seat.
Pre-built Chatbots
Pre-built chatbots are built to support specific use cases.
For example, some bots are designed specifically for lead generation when a prospect visits a website. You’ve seen them – the chatbot window pops up and asks for your name and contact information with a promise that the business will respond to you.
Designed to supplement the Contact Us page and cater to customers who are shopping after hours or simply don’t like to place a call, the ease of use for the customer is certainly there but, unfortunately, the simple contact form can result in quite a bit of spam for the business.
Without pre-qualifying conversational engagement, the lead quality from these bots is quite low and the customer experience matches. You may or may not be able to integrate into additional channels such as your business Facebook page or SMS and the cost will be comparatively high for what is a basic solution with limited customization.
Customer Engagement Solutions
Purpose-built for the SMB, customer engagement solutions such as Agentz digital receptionist, are a no-code, easy, out-of-the-box experience that does not require an engineer and can be set up in minutes. With built-in engaging conversation flows and pre-trained knowledge base by industry designed to handle routine customer questions, the AI-power of a multi-channel digital receptionist is leap years ahead of the standard lead gen chatbot.
Allowing for customization of the chatbot conversational experience, the digital receptionist also includes industry-leading features such as missed call handling, seamless chat-to-SMS conversations as well as social media integration, ensuring that the business never misses a customer again.
For the small business owner who needs 24/7 automated support using an experience their customers will love, the Agentz digital receptionist provides the ideal solution at a very affordable, all-inclusive price.
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Learn more about how the no-code customer engagement Agentz Digital Receptionist compares to chatbot solutions and how it can help your small business capture more customers across multiple channels and provide a better overall experience.
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