Are Chatbots changing the game of Marketing & Revenue Generation?
Who wants a Chatbot?
A survey by Oracle showed that 80% of businesses want to have a Chatbot in operation by 2020 as they look to reap all the benefits they bring. Many of us probably use Chatbots every day. The best ones are those where we don’t even realise it’s a Bot we’re talking to.
Unless you have been hidden away for the last few years, you would’ve heard all the buzz around Chatbots. Experts say they are going to replace traditional forms of marketing, entire customer service teams, and make mobile apps irrelevant. As well as doing all of this, they will cut costs while increasing revenue. Better yet, they will do it on their own without you or any other people having to lift a finger.
Chatbots can be used on a business websites, Texting platforms, Email platforms and Social Media Platforms such as Facebook. In this article, we will look at Facebook Messenger Chatbots and discuss how it has quickly become the favorite AI tool for millions of business due to its ability to literally change the game of Digital Marketing.
What is a Chatbot?
Before we continue, let’s quickly clarify what we mean by AI and Chatbots. Ultimately, a Chatbot is an artificially intelligent automated messaging software. It can converse with people by answering questions and completing tasks without them needing to open an App, call somebody or visit a webpage. The software is founded on applications of AI known as machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP). While we won’t go into technical detail of the terms in this article, ML and NLP work behind the scenes of a Chatbot interface to turn language into data. This returns a conversational and contextual response that is human friendly.
If you already have a well-staffed customer service department, you may think that building a Bot is a pointless endeavour but if your bot has been trained effectively, there is no reason why you cannot achieve all the benefits we outlined at the start of this article. In bot terms, training means loading it with the right data so that it’s experienced enough to answer customer queries. For example, if you get 100 phone calls per day asking about the price of a product, the bot can be programmed to handle the request, saving time and cost of a human agent doing it.
Every time a conversation is held on the Chatbot, it learns from that experience. This means that while you might start by giving it 50 questions that it can answer, over time it will learn another 50, and another and so on until it can support your business as well as, or even more efficiently than a customer service team.
The Facebook Messenger Bot has become the most popular platform for developing Chatbots, especially when it comes to dealing with consumers.
What is a Facebook Messenger Bot?
A Facebook Messenger bot is a ChatBot that uses the Facebook Messenger platform. As of May 2019, around 1.3 billion people use Facebook Messenger as well as 40 million businesses being on it (source: expandedramblings.com). This means that straight away, if your business is using Facebook for Marketing, there is instant access to developing the Messenger Bot. Your followers and subscribers won’t have to visit a different site or download anything new, it is right there in front of them to use.
The Facebook Messenger Bot is built using Facebook’s Wit.ai Bot Engine. This powerful deployment can turn language into structured data (this goes to back what we mentioned around ML and NLP earlier in this article). In short, the Facebook Messenger Bot can both parse conversational language and learn from it at the same time. Every interaction that hits a Facebook Messenger Bot makes it smarter. It is working just like a human brain.
You might be aware that most Bot engines work in this way and in the main, you are right. However, what sets Facebook apart from the competition is the ease of use and sheer reach of the platform. The fact that users can search for companies with the Facebook Messenger app, you can invest in Facebook Ads, create Facebook Pages and join Groups means that there is a clear journey for your customers. Other ChatBot apps cannot provide this and you must join the pieces together yourself.
Facebook has made it easier for businesses to develop a ChatBot and therefore businesses are flocking to it. We are going to have a look at some of the ways as to how businesses can benefit from a Facebook Messenger Bot implementation. In fact, Facebook say you can build a basic bot flow within just 7 minutes!
Lead Generation & Lead Nurturing
A Facebook Messenger Bot is perfect for lead generation and nurturing as it makes life easier for the customer. Whilst you can deploy the Bot on your own website for customers to interact with, the best revenue and lead generating stream tends to be via Facebook Marketing. Facebook Ads, combined with Facebook Messenger, enable direct “Call-to-Action” buttons where the customers get instant support and gratification, all in one place.
If you consider that 90% of people on Facebook use mobile devices, having a journey that is easy and responsive is of the utmost importance. Messenger can create support without forcing customers to leave the page. In terms of generation, a customer might see a “Send Message”, “Call Now” or “Learn More” button that automatically triggers the Messenger Bot and gets them interacting on a conversational level straight away.
If you are looking at Facebook Messenger Bots, you probably already do Marketing on the platform using Facebook Ads. For a customer, there aren’t many things more frustrating than clicking on a Facebook Ad and being redirected somewhere else to fill in a generic form. Given that businesses have spent a lot of money on their advertising, you don’t want those customers to slip through the funnel without converting.
Imagine a customer clicks on your ad and in turn, the Bot is activated instantly. The Bot can then ask personalised questions about the specific responses that customer gives you. Upon completion, the Bot provides the perfect result for the customer ensuring they convert. The benefit here is that businesses can achieve quality leads who are really interested in their services.
A more simplified method of generating leads could be through using Facebook Ads that force a customer opt-in via the Messenger Bot, collecting details like phone number of email addresses. In using the Bot, customers are willing to give a single piece of information which could have huge future marketing value and loyalty
Improving Customer Retention and Loyalty
Customers receive communications from businesses every day, trying to sell them products and services. In many cases, once they eventually decide to buy, they never hear from that businesses again. It is very easy for a business to focus a lot of attention in acquiring customers, forgetting that retaining them is equally or more important. If you scroll through the Facebook Ads on your mobile now, the vast majority will be new customer offers rather than any form of existing customer nurturing.
After a customer has opted in to Facebook Messenger, it gives you the opportunity to create an automated lifecycle and truly nurture their loyalty. For example, you can send them a message on their birthday. Given that everything is connected via Facebook and then customer has authorised you to use their data, this sort of information is available. You can do similar messaging if they haven’t spoken to you or visited your page for a while.
As the Messenger Bot learns, it can send personalised offers and promotions to customer at the precise time they are likely to want them. These offers could be sent via Facebook Ads to allow the customer to click directly through and talk to you about it.
24 Hour Customer Service
Arguably the most poignant benefit of a Facebook Messenger Bot is the ability to offer customers a 24/7 service. Whilst every business would love to have endless streams of equity to hire staff who can work around the clock, it simply isn’t feasible. It can be hard to find volunteers for the 3am shift! A Facebook Messenger Bot is available 24/7 which is ideal for a business operating across the globe to be able to serve all.
Besides being available all the time, a Messenger Bot is faster and more accurate than a human counterpart. Let’s say a customer wants to ask questions about a product. A customer service representative on the other end of a phone call will have to look through documents or maybe ask somebody else to get the right answer.
A Facebook Messenger Bot can be loaded with your frequently asked questions or product specifications. As soon as a customer asks a question, natural language processing matches the data to a response and provides an answer instantly. No time wasted on a phone call for the customer or for the business.
Cost Savings from Messenger Bots
There are multiple ways that a Facebook Messenger Bot can help a business save money. We’ve already spoken about how ChatBots can deliver a 24/7 service, but it is the type of service they offer which helps reduce costs.
Customer service teams spend countless hours helping their customers to track orders or change delivery times and addresses. If a customer can do all of this via a Facebook Messenger Bot, as well as being convenient, it saves the cost and time of a call centre agent handling the query.
As well as requiring less resources, those that are employed tend to be highly skilled. As the bot is trained to answer lower level questions, employees become expert knowledge workers and are highly valued. Valued employees are more motivated and happier in their roles. With this, we get lower employee attrition rates which is a huge win given the Human Resource Institute estimation of it taking $10k to $15k to replace one front line employee.
Autodesk, a global leader in 3D computer-aided design, saw a 99% improvement in response times, cutting query resolution down from 38 hour to just 5.4 minutes after implementing their Bot (AVA). To put this into perspective, instead of costing $15 to $200 per query for a human agent, a virtual agent came in at only $1. The virtual agent was able to handle over 30,000 support queries per month.
Across all industries in 2019, the average cost per click on Facebook Ads is $1.72. A problem arises if you are spending that money but not converting customers. In linking Facebook Ads to a Messenger Bot, marketers can target their advertising better and ensure a lower cost per acquisition as conversion rates increase. This can be achieved through the direct calls to action that we discussed earlier in this article as well as the improved nurturing techniques and loyalty offerings.
Increasing Sales & Revenue using a Messenger Bot
As well as reducing costs, a Facebook Messenger Bot helps improve sales and revenue. Firstly, as a ChatBot can assist customers while they are in a sales process, it acts as an aid to conversion. Where the majority of Messenger users are doing so via mobile, they need something quick and simple. Facebook Messenger Bots can answer this sense of urgency.
As ChatBots learn about the customer, they can offer more tailored content. Given that a Facebook Messenger Bot is directly linked to the social media platform, they tend to do this better than other platforms. Personalisation is a must have in today’s digital world if you are expecting a customer to purchase from you. If you consider something like Netflix, 80% of shows their subscribers watch have been recommended to them. Consumers want to be told what they need and don’t want choice. A Facebook Messenger Bot can help you do exactly that.
The ChatBot could even be used as a recommender style platform. For example, if Customer A purchases some red shoes and you find that 90% of all other customers who bought red shoes also buy a black dress, your ChatBot can promote the black dress straight away. ChatBots can deliver messages based on how a person talks to them. It can talk about and recommend the things that every individual customer is interested in.
Facebook Messenger Bot – use cases
Whole Foods
The Whole Foods Bot acts as a customer concierge service by helping them discover recipes based on a set of ingredients. Customers can narrow down their search by the type of dish they like or by specific dietary requirements. To keep up with 21st century demand, users can even search by emoji.
Swedbank
The bank has introduced a ChatBot called Nina, designed so agents can spend their time on only the most useful types of call. The bot is able to resolve 78% of queries during the first contact meaning representatives are able to help the customers who really need it. As 75% of Swebank customers prefer to use a mobile app, this has turned out to be the perfect solution for them.
Bud Light
In 2017, Bud Light created a personalised Bot that could order and deliver a case of beer to those who opted in within an hour on NFL game days. It used geo-targeting to do this and became aware of customer locations. Furthermore, if customers did subscribe to the service, the Bot prompted them to order on future game days. Engagement rate was at 83% with the introduction of the Bot.
Should I build a Facebook Messenger Bot?
As digital technology grows exponentially, customers are favouring ChatBots more and more over traditional communication methods. In 2019, the usage of messaging apps has outpaced that of social media platforms and we are continually seeing new use cases. With those new use cases comes new types of customer behaviour. A few years ago, WhatsApp didn’t even exist but has now become something of a standard for all generations. It is thought that where these apps can target key emotions and conversational topics, marketers can set up relevant content exactly when users need it, building stronger brand associations. For a business, encouraging emotional and transactional interactions is tantamount to success in the digital era.
In 2018, the four largest mobile messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Viber) held 4.1 billion combined users against 3.4 billion on the four largest social media apps. Whilst the 2019 stats have not been released yet, it is thought that the gap is continuing to grow as businesses take advantage of the immense benefits. A report from AdWeek (sponsored by Facebook) showed that 68% of consumers say messaging is the most convenient way for them to stay in touch with a business.
Companies who fail to invest in some kind of ChatBot platform look set to fall behind the competition. The usage and reach of Facebook Messenger make it an incredibly desirable solution for businesses. It is important to understand where your customers are and the type of channels they prefer using before finalising your decision but a Facebook Messenger plan should be part of your business strategy.
Here at QAS, we are focused on putting the right tools in the hands of our customers to help them increase net revenue, improve customer satisfaction and reduce operating costs to mention a few. Reach out to us for your FREE AI strategy consultation;
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