We all know now that a well-designed chatbot can delight your customers, increase your sales, and save you time. You know that your competitors are using chatbots to create personalized customer experiences. You know that your customers love using chatbots. And you know your team appreciates that chatbots can take on their mundane responsibilities.
With so much content out there, we decided to really simplify chatbot best practices. Chatbots don’t need to be complicated. Including them in your marketing strategy is easy when you have the right chatbot guides.
There are five important questions to ask yourself when adding website chatbots to your marketing strategy.
These chatbot design best practices will help you create useful chatbots which will meet your customers’ needs.
“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”
~Albert Einstein
We sometimes forget how important it is to define a problem before coming up with a solution. Instead we have a great idea, and try to custom fit it into a solution to a presumed problem. We do this often with no clear idea of the problem we’re trying to solve.
Why is it so important to define a problem before you try to find the solution? As Einstein said, the more time you spend understanding the problem, the more effective the solution will be.
Beware of starting with an idea for a great solution (that came to you suddenly) and then working backwards to find the problem.
What kind of problems might you be trying to solve with chatbots?
You should be able to write a single sentence for each problem you’re trying to solve with chatbots. Here are some examples of typical problems you may be trying to solve.
Chatbot best practice tip: Define your problem before thinking about the solution.
If you’ve defined your problem well, it should be easy to say what success looks like when you’ve solved that problem. In fact, if you can’t define what success looks like, then you probably haven’t defined the problem.
At this point we’re not talking about chatbot goals. You’re not even sure that you need chatbots yet. What you’re doing is defining the business problem that needs to be solved, and what it would like if you did solve it.
Here are a couple of examples.
Remember, there are no right and wrong answers here. It all depends on your business and what you’re trying to achieve. You won’t find magic answers to these kinds of problems anywhere on the internet. If someone tries to give you one, they’re lying. You’re the person that knows your business best, and you know what’s best for your business.
Chatbot best practice tip: Don’t think about chatbots, yet. You are still thinking about the problem, and what it would look like if you solved that problem.
Now, you’ve defined the problem you’re trying to solve. You’ve defined how you will measure success. It’s time to think about whether chatbots are the right solution. A chatbot can do many things but it’s not a magic tool that solves every problem with your business or your website. In fact, sometimes a chatbot is the wrong tool to use on your website. This is why it’s important to go through the first two steps, before you make this decision.
Here are a couple of unrealistic chatbot goals.
Here are some realistic chatbot goals.
Chatbot best practice tip: Remember a chatbot isn’t a magic tool to solve all your business or website problems. Use them wisely to accelerate your customer journey and other marketing efforts.
First things first, you can (and should) have many different chatbots throughout your website. You could have different chatbots for different pages or audiences, but each chatbot must have one clear goal.
You could have multiple outcomes for each of your chatbots. For example, a qualified lead might be invited to schedule a meeting, but a non-qualified lead is offered a webinar link. However, each chatbot should have one main, primary goal.
So before you start building your chatbots, think through these questions:
You’re at the point where you’re ready to start building your chatbots! You know your problem, you know what success looks like, and you know your goals and audiences. So now, how can you reach those chatbot goals in the fewest steps?
We’ve all experienced badly designed chatbots. The ones that ask too many questions or don’t give sensible answers. You can avoid those mistakes by thinking and planning before you start building.
You don’t need any special tools to plan a chatbot conversation because it shouldn’t be long or complicated. This is how simple it is to do. Two steps...
Chatbot best practice tip: You should have multiple chatbots on your website, but each one must have a single primary goal.
Even if you have a clear goal and plan for each chatbot, you need to make sure they’re engaging and easy to use. Otherwise, no one will use them…
Here are a few things to keep in mind when building your chatbots.
Chatbot best practice tip: Create an engaging, easy-to-use chatbot to accelerate the experience for customers on your website.
Creating useful chatbots really can be simple. All you need to do is take a step back. Look at your problems, and what life could look like if you solved them. Consider realistic primary goals for each of your chatbots, and some secondary outcomes. After that, building useful chatbots, and making them engaging is the fun and easy part.
Check out our playbook, The Essential Guide to Getting Started with Chatbots for some tips, tricks, and inspiration.