Until recently, chatbots were somehow reserved for big businesses because they were considered too technical and costly. This meant that the benefits of chatbots were only limited to established businesses.
This is no longer the case. You can now enjoy the benefits of chatbots on nearly any platform including your WordPress website.
Chatbots have become an essential part of customer interactions enhancements, and their purpose is only unfolding. With 95% of all customer experiences anticipated to be powered by artificial intelligence by 2025, adopting chatbots into your marketing has never been more critical.
Not only do chatbots streamline and enhance interactions with visitors to your website, but they also automate them.
Before looking into how you can integrate a chatbot into your WordPress website, let’s have a slight overview of what chatbots are.
An overview of chatbots
A chatbot merely is a computer algorithm that stimulates a conversation with a human being automatically. It sends automatic responses to the inquiries and queries posed by your clients.
The best thing about chatbots is the fact that you can use them technically in any sector.
Whether you are running e-commerce, travel and hospitality agency, banking, fitness and nutrition, health and medical care, or even pharmaceuticals, chatbots can be extremely beneficial.
Below is an example of a chatbot-simulated conversation.
Understanding Chatbot technologies
The technology used in developing and designing a chatbot is crucial in influencing its cost and power to serve your customers. Chatbots can either be command-based or AI-powered.
Learn more about our chatbot development services
Command-based chatbots, on the one hand, consist of a hardcoded database of responses and replies for particular cases and contexts. They are developed to respond in certain ways depending on the context and instances of the question put forward by a user.
With hardcoded responses, command-based AI can be competent with grammar and conversation flow, especially when a user’s queries are within the context of its coded responses.
On their downside, command-based chatbots can have two fundamental limitations.
- They can respond to a limited set of inquiries depending on the databank of heuristics
- They can never function past their code especially when a user has unique questions
AI-powered chatbots, on the other hand, use machine learning to respond to queries. They can respond to any question brought forth by the user regardless of its ambiguity.
Unlike command-based bots, the machine learning chatbots create conversations on their own with the help of natural language processing (NLP). The machine learning capabilities of these chatbots mean they get smarter with time as they are used more frequently.
Chatbots on your WordPress website
At their inception, chatbots were too technical that having one on a typical WordPress website was only a wish. This has changed, and you can have a chatbot on your WordPress website.
Having a chatbot on your website can benefit you in the following ways.
Lead generation and sales boosting. Whether you are providing a service or selling products, chatbots can be handy in generating your leads. With chatbots, you can ensure that your customers do not leave behind their carts.
Customer experience enhancement. There is nothing that can put you out of business today than poor customer experience. In the same fashion, there is nothing that can skyrocket your business than good customer experience. If you are looking for more personalization for your customers, chatbots could be an answer.
Automating core services. Modern businesses have become extra competitive. It has now become a survival for the fittest entrepreneurs. Automating your core processes can give you significant leverage and time for countering market competition.
Save your money and time. Let’s face it. Recurrent demands to handle inquiries and questions from your customers can be time-consuming. In some case, you may have to hire freelance customer care to treat these queries, some of which are too basic to cost you money. Chatbots eliminate this hassle through the automation, ensuring you have more time to do other business-related functions.
How do you integrate a chatbot into your website?
When it comes to integrating a chatbot in your WordPress powered website, you have two ways to choose.
Custom chatbot coding
This option is entirely technical. It involves programming the chatbot algorithm on top of your existing website. You do not want to think of this option if you are not a good computer programmer.
This option becomes very handy especially when you are interested in using custom software with your programming language of choice other than buying software from third-party vendors, which is the other option.
Not only is this option technical, but it can also be costly to get a skilled developer for the same besides taking too long a time before you launch the feature.
Third party chatbot vendors
As with most features on WordPress, chatbot integration can be available as a third party service through premium plugins or source code.
Unlike custom coding, this option is relatively cheaper and time-saving. However, this does not eliminate your need for integration skills.
One advantage of these plugins is that you can have your chatbot configured and properly functioning in under two weeks. This will depend on the functionality you need from the chatbot and the size of your website.
Whether your goal is to direct your website visitors, collect their information, or even trigger sales, a chatbot on WordPress can do that for you.
For instance, if you’re running an e-commerce website for selling mobile phones, a chatbot can help your visitors through quick search and reducing the number of abandoned carts.
What do you need?
You need a website and the desire to serve your customers better. If you are a technical person and you have the time, you can do all the installation and the customizations on your own.
This means configuring your plugin to the pages where you are targeting your customers, the products you want to appear where, in addition to coding the responses for the particular contexts.
If you are not a technical person, or you do not have the time, you may hire an IT company to chip in and do all the installations and configuration, including coding the responses that capture your services and products entirely.
Luckily, Convenience Designs can do the work seamlessly to ensure that your products and services reach your customers most optimally.
Our installation services are not limited to WordPress only. We can also help you in automating your Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Gmail, WeChat, and WhatsApp.
