A chatbot on your website
Alexander Wijninga
| 4 min
Chatbots can be found on more and more websites. They take on a number of useful roles both on stage and behind the scenes, contributing to a number of organisational goals. Chatbot technology is part of our daily lives, but what is a chatbot actually? How does it work, and how can you implement a chatbot on your own website?
What is a chatbot?
First, an answer to the question above - what is a chatbot? The meaning of the word chatbot comes from a combination of the words ‘chat’ and ‘robot’. Think of it like an automated conversation partner. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the chatbot can understand the question and match it to the correct answer. With help from machine learning, the chatbot learns additional variations to a question, so the bot knows the answer more often. The chatbot can be implemented on websites and social media channels for a variety of purposes. Do you want to know more about chatbots? Click here.
Why would I use a chatbot on my website?
When you encounter a chatbot on a website, it may be there for a number of reasons. Why you’d implement a chatbot on your own website depends on the goal of the chatbot. While the functionality of the chatbot is often the same - namely having conversations with website visitors, the reason behind those conversations happening may vary widely.
Customer service
This was probably the first chatbot goal that came to mind, a chatbot for customer service. You’ve probably used a chatbot for customer service yourself in the recent past. Customer service chatbots are implemented to lead you to information you’re looking for, or to offer alternatives for certain products or services.
Lead generation
You can also use a chatbot to generate leads. Depending on the bot’s functionality, you can use the chatbot to build an email list or further enrich your current list. Your chatbot can also act as a virtual assistant for customers. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the chatbot can recommend complementary products or services, or suggest alternatives. Imagine your customer is looking for red shoes, and has a question about one of the items you sell online.
When the answer isn’t exactly what the customer was looking for, the chatbot can then suggest other styles of red shoes you have in your webshop. This means you can offer extra helpful and very responsive service, and keep your potential customers on your website for longer.
Internal communication
A number of our clients use a chatbot to support internal communications. A chatbot can support an HR team with questions about company policy, for example. When employees ask the chatbot a question, the bot provides the correct answer immediately. This means less time spent by HR employees answering frequently asked questions.
How do you build a chatbot on your website?
First, it’s important to have in mind where on your website you want your chatbot to appear. This can be a website widget, but you can also give the chatbot a more prominent space, like we’ve done on our own website. This technique is what’s known as ‘conversational design’. The customer doesn’t need to click around the website, but rather can be led to what they’re looking for directly from the home page.
Next, it’s time to decide who’s going to work with the chatbot, and how you want to approach building the chatbot. Will you do this yourself using a chatbot platform? Or do you outsource the work and go for a custom-built chatbot? How do you want your chatbot to collaborate with the rest of your team? Depending on these choices, you’ll determine how you’d go about building a chatbot for your website.
Examples of chatbots on websites
AMP Group
Have you met chatbot Max yet, from the AMP Group? Chatbot Max works on the website to help visitors find the answers they’re looking for. Thanks to Max, hold times on the phone are shorter: 62% of all digital customer inquiries are handled by the chatbot. This is approximately 25% of incoming customer contact. Max has become a key member and top performer in the customer service department.
PureLou
The chatbot from hair salon PureLou is a real sales specialist. Chatbot Vilou gets lots of questions about the products sold by the salon: hair care products made especially for people with curls. Vilou knows everything about curly hair, and after a short conversation she recommends products she thinks would be a good fit for PureLou clients. More than 85% of all customers say they’ve been satisfied with help they got from Vilou, and the chatbot has boosted conversion for the hair salon overall.
Still curious?
Do you want to build a chatbot on your website, too? Schedule a demo with a member of our team! They’ll give you a tour of our chatbot platform, so you’ll have everything you need to get started yourself!
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