Four ways to use a chatbot on Instagram
Alexander Wijninga
| 4 min
Brands and businesses all over the world are flocking to Instagram where their customers are leaving comments on Instagram Ads, placing orders in the Instagram Shop or asking questions via Instagram DM. It’s important to customers, and thus also to the business’ bottom line, to be just as active on Instagram as WhatsApp and Facebook. But how can you ensure communications with customers on Instagram go smoothly?
Customers want answers faster than ever before. Waiting two hours for an answer is really too long. Contact on Instagram has to be fast, personal and effective. It’s up to you to check all of these boxes as a business when you start participating on the channel.
A chatbot can help you check these boxes. A chatbot allows you to respond to Instagram DM’s quickly and with a personal touch. The chatbot can respond directly, or refer a customer to the correct information or appropriate teammate. This saves your team a ton of time and ensures the customer gets a response as quickly as possible.
This blog shares four ways to use a chatbot on Instagram:
For product sales
For customer service to handle questions even easier
For recruitment to source candidates in a unique kind of way
Continue reading to get inspired! 🙌
1. Product sales
Instagram offers companies a number of ways to sell products on the app. You can advertise in the feed and in Stories, as well as merchandise your items on Instagram Shop. When you use these features, you’re going to automatically get more sales-related questions in comments and as Direct Messages. You’ll be better prepared to take these on if you have a well-trained chatbot.
Imagine the following situation: You get an Instagram DM as a response to one of your ads. The potential customer saw a nice sofa and is curious if you still have them. A chatbot can answer this question quite quickly and help the customer place the order during the chat.
This conversation between the chatbot and the customer might look like this:
The conversation above is a simple example of how your Instagram chatbot can stimulate sales. You can build the chatbot to suit whatever conversation flow you might need. Another pro tip: is the product the customer is looking for actually out of stock? Integrate your chatbot such that you can recommend a similar product. Shots not taken are always missed! 🎯
The advantages of a chatbot for sales
Stimulate revenue generation.
Improve the overall customer experience.
2. Customer service to handle questions easily
If customers have questions, they want to be helped as quickly as possible. There’s nothing quicker than sending a DM since you’re already scrolling on Instagram. That’s why more and more often customers are reaching out to brands and companies here as opposed to more ‘traditional’ methods like emails or phone calls.
These questions can be entrusted to a chatbot. The chatbot interprets the customer’s question, responds immediately and with accurate information. If the chatbot isn’t able to answer, the conversation is transferred to a real-life employee.
A conversation on Instagram with a customer service chatbot might look like this:
A chatbot can inform customers of details like delivery times, shipping costs, return policies and store hours. If you notice a spike in questions on a different topic, your chatbot can learn to answer these questions, making it that much smarter over time as it chats with customers.
The advantages of a chatbot for customer service
Answer questions from customers more quickly.
Improve customer satisfaction ratings.
Read how Kitcentrum uses a chatbot for their customer service.
3. Recruitment to source candidates
Instagram is a popular recruitment tool. Open opportunities are often shared by employees and companies advertise roles as well. Still - it’s not common that a prospective hire applies to the position immediately after seeing the ad. Why? That person still has a few questions, perhaps about the salary range, whether it’s a contract job or permanent hire, or whether the job is remote, hybrid or on-site.
Luckily a chatbot can lend a helping hand by answering questions, sharing information about the role and the company and even process a candidate’s application.
A conversation with a chatbot for recruitment might look like this:
In the example above, the chatbot is simply asking for contact details and triggers an email when there is more information about the vacancy. This isn’t entirely necessary as you can also have the customer fill out the application in its entirety by collecting answers via the chat. For some roles, this is even easier and will encourage a prospect to complete the application versus potentially abandoning the process.
The advantages of a chatbot for recruitment
Questions from potential candidates and prospective hires are answered right away.
The barrier to submitting an application is lower.
4. Marketing and lead generation
You can also use a chatbot on Instagram to achieve marketing goals. How does it work? In exchange for contact details, the chatbot provides links to exclusive content such as e-books or coupon codes. This could be considered lead generation, or a unique way to activate the audience of customers that are messaging with you on Instagram. The chatbot saves the details and can enrich the sales and marketing team with a high quality list of (potential) customers.
A conversation with a marketing chatbot might play out like this:
This approach allows you to share out a lot more content than you may be sharing today, in exchange for customer details. Think about vouchers, coupon codes or a special VIP invitation. You can easily ask your customer for additional input as well. A question like “What caught your eye about our eBook?” can provide interesting insights into your customer’s needs. Your team can use this information to prepare a sales call or learn more about their prospective customers overall. 😉
The advantages of a chatbot for marketing
You can ask for customer details in a conversational way.
You can easily generate and collect leads.
Get started with your own chatbot for Instagram
Are you super enthusiastic about chatbots after reading this article? Yay - us too! We might be able to collaborate in a demo about ways you can build your own chatbot for instagram. Request a free demo here!
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