How A Service Based Business Could Use Chatbots

On today's episode we are discussing how a service based business could use chatbots:

What is a chatbot? A chatbot is a computer program or an artificial intelligence which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods.

1. Answer questions quickly. If you are constantly asked the same questions, adding a chatbot can save you time and also make your customers happier.
2. Create proactive conversations. Most businesses are passive with their conversations, meaning they only respond to customers when they talk to them first. Chatbots allow you to start conversations with customers and be more proactive.

If you want to talk to us about chatbots schedule a 15 minute consultation. Click this link!

3. This may be a little advanced, but eventually, once you felt good about your bot and the conversation it would have with your customers you could easily allow your bot to accept payment and guide in the buying process.
4. If you have a TON of requests, they can respond to all of them and take care of your customers faster. We all can handle the one-off message every 3-4 days, but what about the 15 messages within 10 minutes from customers who want answers now.

If you're ready to get started with chatbots make sure to check out ManyChat and ChatFuel.

Christian: Today we're talking about how you know service based businesses could use these chatbots on...on Facebook Messenger.

Narrator: This is The Marketing Natives, providing actual ways to grow, improve, and succeed in your business and now your hosts -- Christian and Aaron.

Christian: Hello welcome to another episode. Today we are talking about how a service based business could use chatbots. Before we get into it thank you so much for listening to our show. We do appreciate it so much. Actually we're going to do before the end of this episode. So you remember we're telling you multiple times throughout the show to leave us a review if you are using the Apple podcast app. It's pretty easy to do that there. If not you can definitely go to our Facebook page at Bit Branding or even Google. Just leave us a review and let us know that :"Hey, y'all are doing a great job with your podcast."

Aaron:Yeah.

Christian: Sounds good. Awesome. All right let's get into this. You're wondering what is exactly a chatbot. A chatbot is a computer program something pretty simple actually or artificial intelligence which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods meaning that this computer program lives inside of Messenger. I think that's what we're talking about, right? Strictly Facebook Messenger.

Aaron: Yeah, we're talking strictly through social media. We couldn't just put that in a title because it be really long.

Christian: Now that I'm just thinking out loud, are chat bots available? Can you use them? Like are there any other places to use them besides Facebook Messenger? Maybe WhatsApp? I dunno.

Aaron: Yeah, they have them on WhatsApp and there are bots available for other places but you can check out some places or some websites that we're going to recommend later. They're going to be a little bit more customer yes and specific to that platform but something on the Messenger is something that literally every business owner could do.

Christian: Yeah. So a lot of big brands obviously are using chat butts-- chatbots -- including Starbucks, Spotify, MasterCard, One Hundred Flowers. But I mean we're always talking about how you know service based businesses can use these chat bots on on Facebook Messenger which is going to help you a lot. The number one thing is you know, you can answer, or the chatbot can answer questions very quickly. I would say almost instantaneously without you having to you know actually do that physically and start typing and answering questions. So you're constantly getting asked the same questions like: "What are your hours?" or "Are you open on Sundays?" or things like that. Adding a chatbot to your Facebook Messenger can save you time and just automatically take care of the customer.

Aaron: Yeah. Another way to think about that is that the chatbot not only is on Facebook but you can now add a chatbot onto your website through Messenger and it's a messenger bot and all the same features are going to carry over that you create on Facebook to your website. So it's not just taking care of your customers on Facebook but also your website and other places that you can install Messenger.

Christian: Mmhmm...yeah.

Aaron: All right. Number two is that you can create proactive conversations. You can raise your hand if you're running or you're in your pod - if you're a podcast host right now. Christian had raised his hand. But if you're running or in your car you can raise your hand if you are one of these business owners that doesn't talk to their customers over Messenger except for when the customers have questions. We are probably guilty of this as well. And I think that's something that we're missing is that we only answer questions or we only talk to our customers when we need something or they need something could just be sparking conversation where: "Hey did you know that there's an update going on with Instagram?" "Here is a quick message thought you'd like this article" or "Hey we just wrote a blog about how design is better for your website". That's a real blog by the way. You should check it out. But just sending that kind of those kind of updates that's going to be valuable. Chatbot can do that for you automatically and starts a proactive conversation just really helps you nurture relationship with your customer.

Christian: I think a bigger example of that a long time ago. Actually I don't think -- I quit doing that because it was just almost annoying. But at some point I think it was either CNN or Fox News or something. I signed up on their Facebook page and they would send me via Messenger like the top news of the day or things like that. Or "Hey, Christian, here's an article that might interest you." And it was pretty cool. I mean it was kind of weird I guess at the time because it was like very early on but they were doing exactly this thing which is you know creating those conversations and starting giving you the content. If you're subscribed to their messenger which is pretty cool.

Aaron: Yeah I think it was one of the first Messenger bots because we were following it for a while at that point and we were like 'Wow. CNN sending out messages via Messenger bot?" Like we were at that time in 2016, we were like this is going to be huge.

Christian: Yeah.

Aaron: It's still huge it's still very new which is why we're talking about it now. You know. All right so if you are new to the Marketing Natives we want to thank you again like Christian said. This is our spot in the middle where we kind of kind of we do talk a little bit about who we are and we are a marketing agency in Allen Texas. We're focused on creative unique designs to help businesses grow through effective marketing. So what does that mean? That's anything from building your website to an ad campaign to a logo. We do all of that in-house. And what I want to talk to you about today is we are recording this in August almost September right now and businesses really start to gear up for October. Really try to think about their budgets for 2019. And if you are in the market for a website, it has not been updated and it's not mobile friendly. It does not look like it's driving any customers or you know it's not driving any customers. That's a good time to schedule a free call with us. Christian is going to put a link in this show. It's just a 15 minute phone call with us and we'll just do an audit of your website. Answer any questions you have if you do business with us, great. If not at least you know what you need to do and you need to make happen in 2019 to bring your business to that next level with a new website.

Christian: Awesome, adding notes here so I remember to put that phone number. Let's see here -- phone number.

Aaron: Yeah, or it could be a Calendly link. Whatever. Yeah, you do Calendly link.

Christian: Gotcha.

Aaron: All right. And number three, while Christians writing that.

Christian: Got it.

Aaron: This may be a little advanced, it's not advanced, it's probably just not the first thing that you're going to implement but something that you could add afterwards which is the buying process. You can actually set up bots and it starts to learn your customers and you could guide them through the whole process of purchasing something. So if we're selling stress balls which is what I hand and what I've been playing with right now and a customer's interested and they're like: "Hey do you have this in blue?" The chatbot could respond and say: "Yeah we have it blue. We actually have a discount right now. Would you like to purchase it now?" And you say "Yes" and they say: "Put in your number." Great. They accept the payment. They give you the shipping and tracking information or a receipt. All there inside a Messenger and they ask for e-mail or whatever else and the rest of that information is sent to you but in about two to three minutes you purchased something in all you had to do was talk to a bot the whole time.

Christian: Yeah. I mean it's really really really powerful. With what you can do with that. I don't think I've seen a lot of it. I've seen a few people and a few companies do this. But yeah, I mean you can combine this with all the other things too. Like for example. number two is being proactive with conversation so if you have new arrivals or you have a new stress ball that's a unicorn color glitter awesomeness and is brand new that you can be proactive and send that out and write there from Messenger. You know to take care payment and everything basically which is extremely powerful.

Aaron: Yes. And I feel like it's kind of like people are not used to it yet. But if you get it now, people will start to warm up with it and you'll be way ahead of the curve. So this is still very early on.

Christian: Yeah I feel like there's a huge learning curve for the customers. I don't think anyone really realizes that they can do this right now. Bespeaking both businesses and customers alike. So there's. I mean yeah this is just starting. And we've been talking about chatbots 2016 but it is technically just still starting a lot of people still don't know about it. We've done some testing. I mean now people are actually getting into the groove of like: "OK, you know this is an automated thing" like this whole shopping experience with the Messenger. It's definitely something very very new.

Aaron: Yes. All right. So the last one we have here is if you have a ton of requests. Say for example. I mean say for example you're on your computer or you have a team member who's monitoring it 24 hours a day. But it's just one person. If you're a business that gets a lot of requests or maybe it's one particular time of the year for example it wouldn't make sense for you to hire somebody just for that just for Christmas and have to pay them a decent salary to answer all the requests for customer service that are coming through if they're all pretty redundant and even if they weren't redundant the bot can learn with it or learn with your customers but a chatbot is available and can answer multiple questions at one time. So if Christian and I had like 20 requests in the next 10 minutes a chatbot could get them in queue to know what the problem is. We don't have to go through the same verbiage of like: "Oh so you need a return" or "You're looking to redeem a coupon". You know everything that's going to happen and either the bot is handling it and closed the case or it's a lot farther down in the pipeline to where it's just a really quick conversation to make something happen and your customers are a lot happier because they get taken care of a lot quicker.

Christian: Yeah. So I think that's it for our show here. We are going to mention a few chatbot tools out there that you can use to you know start creating some chatbots if you're interested in doing that. I know the first thing that comes to mind is ManyChat you can find that at manychat.com -- M-A-N-Y-C-H-A-T dot com. They do have a free plan. Yes, they do have a free plan has not like a free trial. It's actually a free plan so you can actually get started start playing around create a simple chat but and to be honest if you're kind of scared about creating these it's pretty simple. I mean it's it's almost like a it is a visual drag and drop builder. So you know you have your images. You have a piece of text you have sound you have an attachment you have videos and you can all just kind of drag and drop it and go through the funnel. I mean if you are making a simple one is probably going to be something like a frequently asked questions, you can take care of that very very easily. What's the name of the other big.

Aaron: I just wrote it on our show and it's called Chatfuel which is one of the ones that I actually tried last year. And I think it was early part of last year that we used and it did really well. It was for an oil change company that gave away coupons. And while we were sleeping people were talking to the bot and getting coupons delivered to them. It asked for an e-mail and it sent it to them via e-mail as well. So it worked really well. And I think that like anything like mini chatter chatter fuel is that the more complex you get the more questions you're going to have. Probably but from what we talked about today, it's something that yes literally any business owner just going through there will be able to handle very easily. All right. So that is the end of this episode. How a service based business could use chatbots. We hope you guys got a lot out of this. And as Christian mentioned earlier if you are a first time listener or somebody who has not given a review we would really appreciate it if you would just go to iTunes or your favorite podcast app and leave a rating or review to let us know how we can be better at what we do and more content that you guys are interested in. So that really helps us out and if you mention, this shoot us a direct message on Instagram. The offer is still available for free T-shirt if you leave us a review.

Christian: Awesome.

Aaron: All right let's talk to you guys next week.