A chatbot is a piece of software that stimulates human conversations or also known as “conversational agents”. It allows a form of interaction between human and a machine via auditory or textual methods. A chatbot is programmed to work independently from a human operator. It can answer questions formulated to it in a natural language and respond like a real person. It provides responses based on a combination of predefined scripts and machine learning applications.

Today, chatbots are most commonly used in customer service space, assuming roles that are traditionally performed by living, breathing human beings. When a question is asked, the chatbot will automatically respond based on the knowledge database available to it during that time. If the conversation introduces a concept that is not programmed to understand, it will either deflect the conversation or potentially pass the communication to a human operator. Either way, it will also learn from that interaction as well as from future interactions. Thus the chatbot will gradually grow in scope and gain relevance.

Facebook Messenger’s chatbot

In our modern times, the largest social media site/app, Facebook already has its chatbot that connects businesses and consumers through its messenger app. Around 87% or 2.52 billion smartphone owners across the globe use mobile messaging apps. According to Facebook, there is about 20 billion exchange of messages on FB messenger between businesses and people each month, which makes Facebook second only to WhatsApp. A Facebook-owned platform that boasts 1.6 billion monthly users.

Facebook Messenger Chatbot has been continuously gaining popularity since its launch in 2016. It helped brands scale their way of interacting with customers and made it easier to provide one-to-one service. Chatbots should be used in conjunction with other advertising efforts to complement them instead of having them as a replacement for other advertising formats.

Businesses can benefit from Facebook chatbot to increase their conversions through the following ways:

Improve Customer Service

By using automated messaging, you are guaranteed to provide your potential customers an immediate response to their concerns. Providing superb customer service is crucial to increase the business’ conversion rate. Upon building a chatbot, you have to take into consideration the FAQs received and provide a means through which people can quickly get answers to each of them. The best action for this is to offer multiple-choice responses that will gradually be narrowing it down to a specific question.

Potential customers can easily and quickly decide if they wish to purchase products or services by ensuring that you provide them high-quality answers. By also giving an immediate response to the questions will help reduce the chances of people looking for an alternative to what your business offers which has a faster response rate.

By using a bot to assist you to request information from customers, you are pre-qualifying them before spending long hours on getting the details needed.

Build brand awareness

You can use your bot by spreading awareness to people on what your business specifically offers, particularly to those people who have recently entered your brands’ sphere of influence. This is a good way to capture someone’s interest that will project your brand which will make your target audience engage in your product.

Encourage people to visit your page

Once you have made improvements on your customer experience and/or build brand awareness, you can already start directing them to your product page, just make sure that it will be conversational instead of making it sound like a sales talk. Adding a shop button on the menu can be a good alternative if you opt not to direct people on your product page, but a good conversation with your customer tend to work well most of the time.

Send broadcasts to your subscribers to increase the customer lifetime value

Sending broadcasts to your subscribers has many useful ways to draw attention to your brand, which increases your customer lifetime value and the chances of future conversations with them. It can also be used in spreading the news about your business that your audience will find interesting and useful. Through broadcast, you can engage your customers into a conversation instead of feeding them with too much information about your brand.

Consider using augmented reality

A well-known celebrity and entrepreneur Victoria Beckham maximized the ability of chatbot which has shown impressive results. Her chatbot allows users to use their camera phones to try on her collection of glasses to see how well it will look on a customer when tried on, this has encouraged conversions from her leads. A semi actual product test will encourage consumers more to patronize your brand

To better utilize Facebook Messenger Chatbot, here are some strategies that will help your brand keep up with the competition:

Look for the right chatbot builder for your company and stay involved

Evaluate carefully a handful of chatbot creators to see which one meets your standards and your team feels comfortable working with. After you’ve made your selection, your involvement should be intense, testing your chatbot repeatedly of possible technical glitches that may arise. But if you are only expecting your users for a routine interaction or day-to-day tasks, you probably won’t need too involved programming.

Dedicate team member to answer non-bot concerns

Chatbots will encounter questions every now and then that it is incapable of handling complicated questions and needs human interaction to address properly the concern of the customer. Should any of your team members are not available 24/7, a badge on your FB messenger that says, “Usually replies within few hours”, this will earn you some leeway.

Put a chatbot support plan in place for your brand evolution

When you move past the starting phase, expectations of consumers also tend to escalate. You can use your chatbot to remind visitors and buyers that you have a small team that checks daily messages, it can provide clear communication so that no one is blindsided because of the possible inability to work faster compared to your competitor.

A chatbot can solve issues, but if the concern is too complicated for it to handle, it passes the concern to an individual who can handle questions more effectively. Leads do not necessarily notice or feel that they are being passed around in this type of environment. Given than the chatbot is written correctly and with responsiveness in mind, the final result will be positive.

Move consistently toward the most natural language possible

A good way to start is to program your chatbot with words and colloquialism. Consider how your audience communicates, if you are serving a global audience that uses the same language, remember that English is spoken differently depending on their place of origin, this will help you come up with your prompt responses.

Opt for a more useful instead of a pushy tone on your bot. If your chatbot comes across as abrasive or focused on hard-selling, users will have a high tendency of unsubscribing.

Facebook Messenger bot isn’t just a leads only tool

You can leverage on Facebook Messenger bot as a tool to help you develop and collect leads in the early stages of your brand. But chatbot can also work with existing customers that will drive them effortlessly through a repurchase. It can also conduct impromptu surveys to keep in contact with warm or hot prospects.

Drafting messages sent by your Facebook Messenger chatbot to your customers will also affect its overall performance, read ahead to learn how to approach your market effectively:

Limit your number of text

Your message should contain questions or response options with a maximum of three messages in a row, it should appear conversational that will give both you and your lead to exchange messages that will keep them interested in knowing more about your brand.

Use emoticons

Chatbots are meant to be less formal than other forms of communication. Emoticons give a much more fun and friendlier environment for a conversation that doesn’t require much-needed explanations.

Use breaks between messages

 Avoid using large blocks of text or swamping with multiple messages immediately one after the other. A two to three-second breaks in between messages will look much more conversational.

Include images or GIFs

Including photos and other images will definitely make the conversation more authentic and interesting. A carefully used humor should be practiced since people find different things funny.

Provide an option to unsubscribe

Make sure to give people the option to unsubscribe anytime they wish to, this will also avoid people resenting about your brand because of the unwanted messages they are getting and the no assurance on how to get rid of it. You may add an unsubscribe button on the bot settings option on the menu for easy access.

Collect data from your subscribers for future use

You can maximize the answers and information people submitted on your bot by creating subgroups and tagging them. It will enable you to send broadcasts to certain people that have opted in and also to target people who have shown interest in a certain topic that will heighten your chances of conversations later on.

Fuelling a lead-generation buzz may be challenging for startups. With the help of Facebook Messenger chatbot, it can provide the perfect mixture of functionality and personalization to grease your wheels for incoming prospects. Grab the current opportunity of the low competition and its high returns. 

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