Using chatbots in your business – part 2

This article is part two of our posts on using chatbots in business. Check out part one here!

Automation has changed our society and our economy. So many things used to take human workforce to do, but now we can efficiently accomplish those actions with systems and computers.

A lot of people think this is bad because those jobs go away. For example, I have a friend who will not use the self-checkouts at stores because it replaced people.

Whether or not you think it is terrible, it is what is happening. People can be retrained, and that is going on all over the world.

We as business owners appreciate the use of automation. Internet entrepreneurs have started using services such as IFTTT and Zapier to help automate various tasks to be more efficient in our workflow.

Companies spend thousands of dollars each year on various software-as-a-service tools, like MainWP, to help streamline our business processes. This saves companies, even more, time and money.

Automation may cause Project Management jobs to become scarce.

How can a small business afford to hire two or three people to do customer service for their WordPress agency? Often, it is not very cost efficient.

But, what if they can take advantage of artificial intelligence to deploy chatbots? Now that can make a difference.

With chatbots, you have your own customer support and inbound sales support with minimal expense.

Recap

In the last article, we talked about some reasons to use chatbots, and we talked about two of three different types of chatbots.

When we spoke of the reasons, we discussed an article by Master of Code’s Dariia Vinogradina. Vinogradina discussed five various reasons to use chatbots.

The reasons that she mentioned include the 24/7 availability of chatbots, a simple location where the chatbots are already being made for popular application platforms, the ability for companies to give a quick reply, useful subscriptions to keep users up to date, and finally some sense of small talk.

Two of the types of chatbots we discussed in our previous article include Facebook and Twitter.

In today’s article, we will conclude with three other types of chatbots including Slack bots, Specific chatbots, and website chatbots.

Other chatbot types

Slack bot

Slack bots make using Slack, the chat platform, work more efficiently.

According to Slack:

“Slackbot is your very own friendly, built-in bot — part-time programmer and full-time assistant — here to help you keep things in order.”

Users can either create their own slack bots or use one of the many that have already been created.

Slack and Giphy have teamed to add giphys to your Slack chatroom. It is awesome. See my response below.

Two examples

Oskar is a bot that helps gauge happiness, and he looks like a cute, cuddly squirrel. Oskar will check with team members and see where they stand with their work.

Weather Slack bot is a bot that will give you simple weather conditions in any city. You can learn more about the bot here.

Learn more about Slack Bots:

https://slackhq.com/a-beginner-s-guide-to-your-first-bot-97e5b0b7843d#.zeel1i4ht

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/14-best-automated-bots-you-need-for-your-slack-channel/

https://www.producthunt.com/e/slackbots-and-integrations

https://medium.com/stats-and-bots/12-slack-bots-to-superpower-your-team-e022a9692174#.ngsptrr9o

https://www.sitepoint.com/getting-started-slack-bots/

Personal Assistant Chatbots

Microsoft’s Zo

Zo is new to the chatbot family. Microsofts new AI bot was designed for the Kik message app.

Zo is the successor to Tay the AI chatbot for Twitter that Microsoft launched earlier this year. Tay became a disaster, as you may have heard, when people taught her “disruptive” language.

You can find Zo Kik at https://kik.me/zo.ai

Siri

Apple’s famous personal assistant app has been around for years now. Siri has been a very successful chatbot that has been deployed in various Apple products since 2011 (Wikipedia)

The most famous voices over for Siri is Susan Bennett.

Siri has been so popular that she appeared in the Big Bang Theory as a virtual crush by Dr. Rajesh Koothrappali. Raj even goes so far as to meet Siri (not Susan Bennett) in a dream.

Cortana

Apple has Siri, but Windows has Cortana.

According to Microsoft:

“Cortana is your digital agent. She’ll help you get things done.

The more you use Cortana, the more personalized your experience will be.”
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17214/windows-10-what-is

Cortana was created for various Microsoft products including the Windows Phone. A long, long time ago, I had a Windows Phone, and Cortana was delightful.

Cortana is also part of the Windows 10 family and Xbox. Windows also developed Cortana to work with iOS (Apple) and Android.

Cortana is named for a character with the same name in the game Halo.

Other personal assistants include Alexa (Amazon), Google Assistant, and Viv a new one developed for the Samsung Galaxy 8.

Website bots – for chatting on your website

When it comes to using a chatbot for your business, having one installed on your website is your best solution.

Adding a chatbot to your website for the purpose of catching visitors who might have questions for you about your services or products is a fantastic use.

A chatbot lets you answer questions from current customers and potential leads alike, and you can capture the leads by asking for their email address.

It allows you to chat to them as well answering any questions they may have.

With the email address, you can follow up with an email later and begin nurturing that lead.

There are several chatbots available for WordPress websites, but I am going to go over just a few.

Freshchat

Freshcat is one that I recently signed up to use. I admit, I like the user interface, and it didn’t cost me anything to give it a try.

Additionally, with Freschat, you can integrate with the Freshsales CRM if you are already using that tool. The same company is behind both products as well as Freshdesk.

I like the ability to customize your message based on a variety of different contexts.

You can also customize your default greeting and add your logo to the chat icon.

Check it out https://www.freshchat.io/

Drift

Drift is a live chat app that you can integrate with your website.

You can integrate Drift with multiple platforms including WordPress.

I spoke with Amy from their team while on their website using their chat feature(see, it works!), and she answered my questions very quickly.

LiveChat 24/7

Live chat + chatbot by LiveChat 24/7 is a plugin in the WordPress repository that allows you to chat with users on your website.

They have what looks like a good product. I chatted with the bot on their website which quickly gave me answers to my question

All of these companies are Artifical Intelligence companies. They a have many more products for other platforms.

A website chatbot is a fantastic way to get started using chatbots as personal assistants.

Over to you

I think we all dream of the day that many of our everyday tasks are being accomplished by some kind of robot or, at least, automation.

The thing is, a lot of them already exist.

Chatbots are a fantastic way for businesses to try their hand at utilizing bots for customer service.

It can be as simple as adding a chatbot to our WordPress websites or building or using an existing bot for another platform.

What kind of bots do you use? Do you use chatbots on your website?

What are some of the benefits you have seen with using a chatbot? Let us know below or comment on the Facebook Group page.