Chatbots are the #1 most effective way to increase website engagement and improve customer satisfaction. So, you’re going to want to become a chatbot expert!

They are the new and improved way to automate the sales and customer support processes.

Chatbots save your company time and money, provide you with different ways to send prospects down your sales funnels, and offer solutions to solving customers pain points.

In a recent episode of Digital Conversations with Billy Bateman, the consulting manager here at ChatFunnels, Mark Bryson, shared his insights on becoming a chatbot expert. He reveals the ins and outs of conversational marketing and how to build out bots to maximize sales.

Mark helps companies implement best practices, coaches them on how to use bots most effectively, builds out bots for them, and collaborates with clients to ensure they’re synching with their other marketing and sales efforts. He truly is the chatbot expert!

If you’re new to using chat, or are interested in implementing chatbots to your marketing and sales strategies, then keep reading to learn how to get started.

Two Types Of Bots

The two main bot types to focus on when you’re getting started are chatbots that are sales oriented and bots that are devoted to customer support.

The goal of both of these types of bots is to give customers a way to engage in real time.

Ask yourself:

•Does our website have a channel for people to get support?

•Do we have help docs?

•Do we have a way for site visitors to talk to human agents and get their questions asked fast?

•Can people easily reach the information they need when they are looking to buy?

If the answers to those questions were no, then it’s time to implement chatbots. They are the most effective tool for real time engagement.

Home Page Bots

You can place chatbots on any or all pages of your website, but it is essential to have a bot fire on the home page.

However, it can be tricky to direct home page visitors down the channel they need to go. Everyone comes to the home page. You need to learn how to deflect low intent visitors, engage high intent prospects, and offer support to existing customers. And chatbots automate all of that!

Home page bots are usually sales oriented, but they need to have a customer support option as well. If it doesn’t, your sales team will see an extreme influx in support chats being routed to them. Let the sales team focus on sales, and the customer support team focus on customer support.

Your home page bot should have an alluring CTA that will capture new prospects’ attention and give them a little bit of information about your product.

However, as previously mentioned, make sure it has multiple button options to direct people down the right channel. For example, one option could say ‘click here to learn more’ and the other could say ‘connect with our support team.’

Sales and customer support are both extremely important to the success of your business. You need to make sure that your chatbots are catering to both of those needs.

Account Based Engagement Tools

One of the best practices to optimize sales is to use the account based engagement tools within the ChatFunnels product.

The chatbots track IP addresses, which means you can have specific bots fire when certain IP addresses come to your site.

This helps immensely with account based marketing. You can narrow in on certain prospects and enhance their experience on your site by tailoring it to their specific needs.

Basically, you can have a generic bot fire to every other site visitor, and then a separate bot fire to prospects you’re targeting.

Not only is this a great sales feature, but it is also useful for customer support optimization.

Again, the bot can track IP addresses. So, if you know the geographic regions of your customers, you can cater the bot options to them.

For example, if you know that the majority of your customers are in California and Oregon, when one of those IP addresses come to the website, then you should have a bot fire that caters towards customer support and makes the support channel easily accessible.

The account based engagement tools not only deflect support chats away from sales agents, but it improves customer satisfaction immensely. Your existing clients are getting the help they need in the moment they need it.

FAQ Bots

Another amazing feature that we have to highlight is the FAQ bots. They have insane benefits such as alleviating the stress of the live chat team and getting the customers and site visitors the answers they are looking for.

There are always common and predictable topics that people frequently ask about. This is why it’s so beneficial to set up an FAQ bot to take care of that.

We have seen, on average, a 50% success rate of FAQ bots resolving problems before having to pass it off to a live chat agent.

If you’re looking for a more in depth explanation of our FAQ bots, check out this article.

Quick Recap On Becoming a Chatbot Expert

As a review of everything we covered, here are the 4 main points.

1. You need to understand the difference between a bot focused on sales and a bot focused on customer support. Both are important, but require the effort of two separate teams. So, you need to make sure anyone engaging with the bot is being helped by the right team.
2. Home page bots should be geared towards sales. However, they still need to have options that those seeking customer support can click on.
3. Tailor the experience of visitors on your site to their specific needs by using our account based engagement tools. Build out separate bots depending on who you’re targeting. Set those bots up to fire when certain IP addresses enter your website. This customizable experience feature will improve customer support as well as improve your sales funnel.
4. Implement FAQ bots to take care of common queries and allow your teams to focus on more pertinent matters.

Remember, the major purposes of chatbots are to increase sales and optimize customer support. If bots are built and set up correctly, they will do just that.

Keep in mind that not every chat is going to be a sale. However, sales opportunities are so much higher with leads that come through chat.

If you follow these best practices, you will become a chatbot expert in no time!

If you’re interested in finding out what a bot can do for your website, book a demo with us today!