If you use any popular platforms on the internet such as Facebook for lead generation, you have probably heard about how chatbots can help you drive more sales – on your own website, blog, Facebook page or a landing page you link to from your emails (or places like Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or a messaging app like WhatsApp).
And the people telling you to explore ways you can use chatbots to grow sales are right.
If you are a small business, every little help. Everything that can help you with sales, especially tools that can help you automate part of the sales process, should be tested – and used regularly.
Note: This post contains affiliate links. When you click on something I recommend and purchase it, I will receive a commission for the sale – at no extra cost to you.
In this post, I am going to tell you about how you can hire freelancers to help you create chatbots and add them to your:
- website
- blogs
- online shop
- Facebook Messenger / Facebook page
Live chat vs chatbots
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There are tools that can help you with both of these things from one plugin or extension. And there are tools / service providers that only offer either of these.
The main difference between live chat software and chatbots is that with live chat customers can get to talk to a real person in real-time.
So, they will probably go to your site, see that your agents are online, click the chat window and then say hello. On the other end, one of your customer support people will see the message and type hello and ask how they can be of assistance.
Live chat allows you talk to customers in real-time. When no one is manning your live chat software (for example after business hours) your customers will not be able to talk to you (or your team in real time).
Chatbots on the other hand mimic the experience a customer would get when chatting live with a customer support personnel. Businesses usually use them to:
- pre-qualify leads. So, asking them what they are interested in and giving them the answers they need / guiding them along to the right pages on your website
- answer frequently asked questions in a way that seems like they are talking to a real person when it is just a robot doing all the work
With chatbots, once you figure out the top questions people ask / top pages people visit on your site / product related queries that keep coming up, you can map out a plan that can help prospects move along towards the checkout page.
Once you create a chatbot it will just do its work even when you are sleeping. So, for all the questions that require simple answers, to help customers decide on what to buy, you can save yourself or your customer support team a lot of hours by using chatbots.
The benefits of installing & using chatbots on your Facebook page, website or blog
- The chatbot can do all the work replying to all the simple questions you get as a business, leaving you lots of time to attend to queries that require more attention (which you can reply to via email, live chat or phone)
- The interactivity of it, if it is shown to a customer on a web page, will probably help you drive more conversions (and time on page). And when a customer stays longer in your page, they will probably check more than one page or two, get to learn more about your products / services and get closer to clicking the Buy button.
- Chatbots can help customers who are undecided about the various services you are offering decide on one (without your intervention) and buy. For example, if you are offering two tiers for a product (two different plans for a service) the chatbot can help the customer narrow down on one (using different criteria such as features or pricing).
- Chatbots, if implemented well on a website or page, can be an effective way to engage prospects and funnel then to your email lists.
- They are a great way to capture the attention of people visiting your website or social media profiles. And usually you can quickly get their contact information and get in touch with them later via email to ask them what kind of assistance you can offer them.
Mapping out a strategy for your chat system. So, understanding how the customer would think before buying something from you – and then coming up with content in the form of questions and answers (mimicking what a conversation would be like if you were talking with the customers in real-time via live chat).
Generally just logically thinking about the steps someone would go through before buying and figuring out the answers they’d need to click the buy button. So, when mapping out a strategy, the freelancer you hire should be able to come up with great questions(and answers) that can be fed to your bot.
Coming up with the content to be used on your chat windows. So, hiring someone to help you come up with content that will engage your prospects and result in more conversions.
With your permission, a freelancer can mine the content from your customer emails, check your analytics accounts to figure out what they can learn from your best performing pages while they are working on launching a chatbot for your site.
Finding the best chatbot service. If you don’t want to use Facebook’s bots, there are other services you can use. A freelancer you hire should be able to help you narrow in on a great alternative.
In fact I see some businesses just invest in live chat tools that also have a chatbot feature right out of the box. So, you can hire someone to help you figure out the best service you should go with depending on your budget and other factors.
Adding the chatbot as a feature to your page or website. So, integrating the service to your website via API or by installing an extension or plugin.
Writing some of the content on your website that you will link to from your chatbot. For example if an answer that a customer is looking for can’t fit in the chat window, a freelance writer can create a detailed blog post and publish it in your website.
You can then, through your bot, provide a short answer to a customer’s question and provide a link to your detailed blog post if they need a more in-depth answer.
Other pages that can be created and linked to from your chatbot include: the About page, the Contact Us page, product description pages, documentation pages, sales pages, email opt-in pages, free email course pages, discount & coupons pages, tools & resources pages, Start Here / Welcome pages among others.