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Enhance CX With Conversational Chatbots

Miguel — Fri, 20 May 2022 07:53:16 +0000

You need to keep one thing in mind in the business world: customers want an experience.

The customer has the power. Today, there are plenty of options of services and products to choose from. So what drives the customer to make a decision? That’s right, the experience.

Your business’s customer experience (CX) will determine why your customer should continue doing business with you. According to Forrester, 73% of customers say that the most important thing a company can do to provide good service is value their time. The customer sets the bar high; the experience needs to fulfil their needs and surpass their expectations.

Chatbots have been gaining space and notoriety in CX, and they are a great example of how automation can add value to the customer experience. As a result, the chatbot market is expected to grow a massive $9.4 billion by 2024. With artificial intelligence, chatbots can automate most of the responsibilities and manage the customer experience process and allow staff to deal with more complex needs.

So, where to start? This article will discuss how to add value to your customer experience (CX) using chatbots.

Rise of CX

The customer experience (CX) is your consumer’s perception of your business based on their interactions. It is related to customer satisfaction throughout all the stages of the customer journey, from awareness to retention.

As we first mentioned, the experience that customers get from your brand means everything. There is no room for mistakes. Around 32% of global consumers stop interacting with brands after one bad experience, and 92% would abandon the business after two or more negative interactions.

Customers don’t complain if they don’t like it, they will leave. Losing customers is costly for businesses, and the reputation is also at risk, as 13% of customers will tell over 15 people about a negative experience!

On the other hand, if customers have a positive experience and feel appreciated, they can spend up to 18% more on a product or service. Thus, a successful CX can prevent issues, retain your customers and enhance your results.

For SaaS, an outstanding customer experience will focus on customer retention and customer awareness. You want to make sure that all your customers are happy, not only the new ones! It is a way more cost-effective strategy for businesses, as customer acquisition costs up to 7 times more than retaining an existing customer. Plus, a loyal customer trusts your business, therefore, is willing to pay more or even cross-sell and up-sell when compared to a new customer.

Understanding Conversational Chatbots

If companies wish to uplevel their customer experience and stay relevant in the market space, they will need a chatbot. A total of 80% of large enterprises will need to have a “conversational-technology-focused-centre” implemented to keep up with their customer needs.

Chatbots use artificial intelligence to create online conversations between customers and businesses, and they can create different types of interactions. The best exchange will depend on your objective and what works best for your business.

The keyword bots are easy, very simple to use and one of the most common chatbots. Button bots interact by presenting a list of choices, generally called quick replies, and the flow of the conversation is driven by which one of the quick replies the user chooses. Thus, the bot will respond depending on the customer’s reply button. Button bots also can collect data such as names, email addresses, booking times etc., but overall they are very straightforward.

The NLP bots are more complex, but they are more versatile and more CX efficient, as the customer talks to the bot as they would talk to a person. Neutral language processing (NLP) turns unstructured data into structured data, allowing machines to understand text and speech and create relevant and adequate responses.

For this reason, NLP bots are more intelligent, so they can understand the intent, tone and context of the conversation and respond to the user in the best possible way. Flow XO supports NLP style interactions with plugins to two compelling, popular and free NLP systems, Google’s Dialogflow and Facebook’s Wit.ai

There are also hybrid bots, a mix of button bots and NLP bots and provide a good balance for businesses’ customer experience.

Ways that Chatbot Drives CX

Personalisation, problem-solving, proactively, and value are differentiators for outstanding customer experience (CX) performance, and they are all chatbot’s deliverables.

Here are the key areas in that chatbots add value to the customer experience journey.

Ensure a strong front-line

The customer experience starts from your first contact with your customer, so having a solid frontline is crucial.

Chatbots are the perfect way to welcome new visitors to your website by providing a friendly, effective and proactive interaction with your customers and helping them to solve their queries. Also, you are always available to help your customers if they have any issues or need any information.

It is the perfect opportunity to add value to your customers and increase your chances of driving customer retention. People prefer chatbots for their dynamic and efficient communication, and over half of consumers (62%) would prefer to talk to a bot rather than with a human agent.

Keep Customers Engaged

Chatbots provide an interactive environment to customers across all the stages of the customer experience journey, so they are great at keeping them satisfied and engaged.

Apart from being a great support channel, they can act proactively and identify issues and follow up if needed.

Customer engagement and customer experience are two different things, but they operate together. While customer experience is the customer’s view of your company, customer engagement is how a business interacts with customers.

Engaging your customers and nurturing their relationship with your business will increase their loyalty to the brand, raising the level of your customer experience.

Retention

The better your customer experience, the bigger your customer retention.

If you deliver a successful customer experience, you will increase your customer retention rates, which are more cost-effective than customer acquisition. Many businesses search to improve customer retention rates, but it is not rocket science. In fact, companies reported losing most of the customers (75%) over waiting times.

Chatbots are a great tool to overcome this challenge. By implementing bots, you can provide a 24/7 interaction with your customers, nurture connections and always be one step ahead of their needs. In addition, it drives customer loyalty, improves retention rates and, of course, customer experience.

Personalization

Today, a successful customer experience comes with personalization. Customers expect businesses to know their names, preferences, and individual needs. A personalized customer experience means that you are capable of delivering custom-built CX.

McKinsey states that customers expect a customized experience, and 76% of them become frustrated when it doesn’t happen. It also provides excellent results for companies as companies with personalization strategies drive 40% more revenue.

With chatbots, conversations with customers can be fully tailored to attend their needs. Today, chatbots can fully understand customer behavior and apply an individual approach to the overall customer experience. on a personal level – and to use this to the knowledge they receive

Value to the Journey

There is a rising customer preference for a more conversational approach to engagement. Thus, it adds value to the customer experience journey.

Chatbot implementation adds value to the customer journey, as it facilitates the interaction between businesses and customers and offers an omnichannel customer experience.

An omnichannel chatbot ensures your organisation delivers consistent and high quality messaging and interaction across your digital channels. It drives brand awareness and customer loyalty, improving your overall customer experience journey.

Your Way to a Successful Customer Experience

If you want to take your customer experience to the next level, you will need to use tools that can support you and surpass your expectations.

Chatbots are one of the most cost-effective tools available to improve your customer experience. It solves the main challenges of managing customers’ expectations and challenges and can elevate your experience level.

Flow XO provides a meaningful customer experience via chatbots. We deliver personalised and intuitive chatbots that offer a superior experience from start to finish. With Flow XO, businesses can access a complete set of data, which allows them to measure and personalise their customer experience performance. If the customer prefers, we can even transfer the conversation to a human.

Flow XO is a customer-centric chatbot builder and delivers tailored solutions for companies that want to take their customer experience to the next level.

Drive Conversations. Start today, for free.

The post Enhance CX With Conversational Chatbots appeared first on Flow XO.

Industries that are Winning with Chatbots

Miguel — Thu, 19 May 2022 09:29:24 +0000

Industries that are Winning with Chatbots

Chatbots are here to change the game. They are driving organisational success, improving the customer-company connection, and helping businesses achieve new levels of growth.

This is because bots are capable of quickly adapting to user needs. They provide enhanced and personalised communication, facilitating the engagement between customers and companies.

From an organisational perspective, chatbots are increasing conversion rates, customer satisfaction and loyalty, accelerating sales growth and reducing operational costs by up to 30% across various industries. Other stats show that 58% of businesses agree that chatbots are tools driving disruption in their respective industry.

But how can the same tool have such a significant impact in a number of different industries?

In general, the availability and accuracy in problem-solving are one of the features that are most appreciated in bots by customers. However, this article will give a more detailed view of how some of the main industries are enjoying and applying chatbots to their day-to-day operations.

E-Commerce Chatbots

We witnessed a boom in online retail during Covid-19 and massive changes in customers’ shopping habits. E-commerce grew exponentially, customers developed new needs, and the industry is now projected to reach over $7 trillion dollars in the next three years. And the way that many online retailers found to keep up with market trends whilst scaling was using chatbots!

With chatbots, web-based businesses can use chatbots to interact with customers and address inquiries 24/7 on their websites or even in their preferred social media channels, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and so on.

In ecommerce, chatbots are able to support retailers and navigate customers in all the stages of the customer journey whilst keeping an engaging and effective communication. As a result, ecommerce chatbots can make the online shopping experience run smoothly and add value to your business.

Here is how chatbots are accelerating the ecommerce industry:

Providing 24/7 availability to customers and prospects;
Personalising conversations and customer service based on data;
Delivering effective communications and high-level customer experience to all and minimising errors;
Reducing operational costs;
Acting proactively and helping customers to find what they are looking for;
Offering a platform that allows sending and receiving payments;
Optimising processes by integrating with other platforms and apps, such as CRM and email marketing.

Hospitality Chatbots

Whilst the hospitality industry struggled for the last two years, businesses across the globe are now back on track and opening up doors again. However, Deloitte’s report The future of hospitality says that hospitality businesses need to adapt to new habits and expectations and respond appropriately to customers’ behaviours and the sector’s uncertainty if they wish to recover and thrive.

Hospitality chatbots, more than simply conversational tools, work as online concierges for hotel businesses. Chatbots can be critical to improving accuracy and speed in businesses’ customer service. In the hospitality space, they can assist customers with their bookers, respond to pre and post-stay inquiries, and even provide recommendations.

If you are wondering where chatbots can fit into the hospitality industry, here are some great examples:

Staying available and automatically responding to thousands of questions and customer requests at once;
Offering personalised vouchers and discounts to nurture relationships;
Sending reminders before check-in and check-out;
Cross-selling to customers by promoting services like massages, meals and room service;
Being able to communicate with customers of a wide range of languages and cultures;
Managing guests’ stay by proactively sending updates and helpful information;
Helping with recommendations in the local area;
Reducing the workload of staff;
Capturing leads and increasing booking conversions;
Encouraging feedback and reviews and keeping in touch with customers.

Tourism Chatbots

Similar to hospitality, tourism has also been facing the transformations post-Covid-19. According to industry experts, there is a “new sense of urgency” to travel post two long years of lockdown.

The same source revealed that 65% of travellers plan to make bigger travels in the coming months. Travelling, especially big travelling, requires time and effort. Many people find it overwhelming to make so many decisions at once, representing a massive opportunity for the tourism industry to introduce a solution. Still, companies must be prepared to excel in expectations and take advantage of a promising future ahead.

For this reason, the tourism industry is one of the industries that most use chatbots, as they can ease the complexity of the travelling process. The survey also revealed that 37% would prefer to use chatbots to plan their travel, and 87% of users would interact with a travel chatbot if it was a cost-effective option.

Moreover, successful chatbot decision making guarantees customer satisfaction and builds a relationship of trust between customers and companies. Here is how:

Personalising customer experience;
Searching for booking and flights opportunities;
Assisting in making decisions and completing reservations;
Managing bookings, cancellations and inquiries on a 24/7 basis;
Offering the best options according to customer preferences;
Collecting and encouraging customer feedback;
Finding and pushing cross-sell and up-sell opportunities;
Managing thousands of customers with an equal level of quality.

Banking Chatbots

Digital Banking Report found that 75% of financial institutions considered using conversation AI, data, and analytics to determine the next best action. Data is one of the pillars of conversational chatbots, and one of the critical reasons baking chatbots drives digital transformation in the financial industry.

Banking chatbots dramatically improve the interaction between the bank and its customers. Still, they provide these organisations with an opportunity to understand their audience and make more accurate decisions based on the insightful data provided by the bots. Banking chatbots improve communication and performance and provide a more dynamic, modern and stress-free customer interaction.

Let’s list some of the benefits of the use of bots in banking:

Capacity to respond to urgent queries at any time and quickly act to any request;
Providing a compliant and secure space to manage customer data;
Using customer data and analytics to deliver a personalised customer experience;
Taking the load off bankers and increasing the productivity of banking agents;
Ability to seamlessly transfer customers to live agents to resolve more complex queries;
Automating a series of processes and reducing operational costs;
Collecting customer feedback;
Assisting customers with financial advice and other banking products, such as credit cards.

It is important to remember that security and compliance are also crucial factors for the functioning of the banking industry. Your bot must protect customers’ information and meet industry regulations. That is why financial companies must be mindful of choosing a chatbot builder with a firm privacy policy.

Events & Entertainment Chatbots

With the return of live events, events and entertainment companies are accelerated and experiencing a boom in demand. The industry has changed, and so have the attendees’ needs. Companies must be able to simultaneously manage virtual, hybrid and in-person events whilst ensuring a high-level service.

Companies can drastically improve their performance by benefiting from the automation provided by chatbots. Bots can engage audiences with their preferred events, centralise helpful information and offer more convenient and quicker communication. They can also offer personalised interactions at scale, which is linked to higher rates of consumer acquisition, retention and engagement.

Chatbots can offer value to event and entertainment companies by supporting tasks such as:

Facilitating sales dynamic by accepting and requesting payments;
Offering prompt responses almost immediately;
Notifying customers of event information, cancellations and updates;
Personalising event recommendations based on data;
Helping customers in pre, during and post-event;
Offering quick access to event information;
Improving communication with customers;
Facilitating up-selling;
Minimising operational costs;
Integrating with social media platforms to drive engagement;

Looking to Build Your First Bot?

Standing out from the competition and optimising your opportunities have never been so important. Finding quick and accurate solutions to customer needs and scaling with excellence will push organisations to the top.

Regardless of your industry, chatbots have become one of the must-have tools for a thriving business. So far, 67% of business leaders said that chatbots helped increase their sales, and 57% of companies agreed that bots deliver a considerable ROI with minimal investment.

Customers are also reaping the benefits of chatbots. More than 1.4 billion people use bots regularly because they provide a dynamic platform to quickly and efficiently solve problems. As mentioned, if a bot can’t solve a more complex query, it can transfer to a live agent that can solve it.

More than problem-solving, chatbots offer an opportunity to encourage interaction with the audience and build a mutually trusting relationship with existing and prospective customers.

The truth is that the power of chatbots can be felt in any industry. Chatbots have the potential to improve performance, reduce operational costs and increase efficiency which will lead any business to thrive. The possibilities are endless!

However, business owners must invest in a chatbot builder that understands market trends and are capable of offering the solutions needed for their industry. Flow XO is a chatbot builder that delivers an omnichannel experience and innovative chatbot solutions to get ahead of the game.

Ready to start? Start for free.

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Drive Employee Engagement with Chatbots

Miguel — Wed, 18 May 2022 14:41:16 +0000

It has never been more critical to have a solid employee engagement rate, especially after two years of the pandemic. Yet, only 36% of workers feel engaged in their workplace, and 38% feel exhausted after so many virtual meetings. Ensuring wellbeing, mental health and communications among your workers are crucial for companies, and it shows that they care and are taking action on their people’s needs.

Focusing on employee engagement equals an enhanced performance for clients and higher talent retention rates in your business.

An engaged employee understands and supports the company’s goals and purpose and contributes to making it happen. They genuinely care about seeing the organisation succeed and feel that they are part of it.

The power of employee engagement is that it benefits the business from inside and outside. For example, a highly engaged workforce increases business profitability by 21%and revenue by 4x!

Luckily, organisations can count on different tools that can facilitate the process of improving their employee engagement. One of these tools is chatbots! Chatbots not only have endless benefits from business to clients, but they have a lot to offer to the workforce as well.

This article will investigate how companies can use chatbots to drive employee engagement and why they should start now.

Employee Engagement and Why You Should Care

So what does employee engagement really mean?

Specialists say that employee engagement is not only about employee happiness or satisfaction. The reason is that someone might be happy at work or even satisfied with the company, but that does not mean that they will engage with your business, be genuinely aligned with your goals or even be productive at work.

According to Forbes, employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has to an organisation and its goals. This concept embraces the importance of employees’ happiness and satisfaction while also acknowledging why they are happy and should work towards goals. In addition, workers should feel valued and know that their performance in work makes a difference to businesses’ results. In other words, employees should feel engaged.

There are several different ways engaged employees contribute to building a more solid business. Here are some:

Employees make better decisions when engaged. They know the organisation’s purpose and can take actions more aligned with the business’ goals.
They are more productive because they feel committed to the organisation and know that their contribution makes a difference.
Engaged employees are more likely to bring out of the box ideas and proactive thinking about innovative ways of doing things, as they genuinely want the organisation to succeed.

HR Chatbots

Communication is becoming increasingly digital, both in our personal and professional lives, impacting how we communicate with employees. Still, this context brings new opportunities for the interfaces we use to interact.

A chatbot is the most remarkable example of this evolution. Conversational bots are transforming how businesses interact with customers and among employees. Bots provide a digital and intuitive interface that simulates a human conversation, provides information, and it helps to enhance productivity and satisfaction rates.

Today, more HR professionals are implementing HR chatbots in their daily operations to automate many different processes in the sector and boost employee engagement. Powered by artificial intelligence, the HR chatbot simulates conversations with candidates and employees and supports some activities such as hiring, onboarding, handling queries, providing information, and more.

The use of chatbots in HR can optimise a wide range of functions and areas of human resources. If you want to know more about HR chatbots, make sure to contact a chatbot builder that can offer the solutions for your department, such as Flow XO!

Using HR Chatbots to Improve Employee Engagement

With that in mind, let’s discuss what makes HR chatbots your number one ally to enhance your employee engagement.

Welcome New Hires

One of the best ways to keep your employees engaged is to stimulate them from the beginning. Using HR chatbots to welcome new hires and encourage conversations is a great way to motivate employees from the start, especially if they are remote workers.

The HR bot can send welcome messages, connect them with other employees, share information packs or specific resources they should know about, and offer a fun and entertaining interaction. HR bots can be a great and authentic way to introduce new employees to the company culture and keep them motivated.

Stimulate Conversations

Artificial intelligence allows chatbots to simulate human conversations, and there is a growing preference for chatbot communication. HR chatbots can encourage employees to communicate with the company, and, by building the proper flows and triggers, companies can set the bot up to ask the right questions at the right time. Moreover, these conversations can be personalised, giving extra motivation for employees to interact with your bot.

By building bots with the proper flow and the right triggers, HR chatbots can be set up to ask the right questions at the right time. For example, if you need an answer from your employee, you can set up your bot to start the interaction at the time that best suits your workers, so they are way more likely to engage.

The conversations could also be purely for entertainment and fun reasons, which also boosts engagement. Another great example is to set up your HR chatbot to send personalised happy birthday messages to your employees, and your staff will feel valued and cared for.

Measure and Provide Data Insights

One of the most outstanding features of chatbots is their ability to turn interactions into data. Further, if you want to explore a particular topic, you can use your chatbot to send surveys to collect responses, making the process more dynamic than traditional surveys. You can also make the surveys anonymous, making the environment more comfortable for employees to share their genuine opinions.

The greatest thing about this ability is that you can measure your employee engagement as you turn this reliable data into actionable insights and guide decision-making. You can measure employee satisfaction, alignment with the company strategy, well-being and work-life balance, and relationship with colleagues and team leaders.

By relying on data, your organisations can make more informed and accurate decisions about your employee engagement. According to PwC, data-driven companies can outperform competitors by 5% in productivity.

24/7 Support and Availability

By using chatbots, businesses can stay available for their employees 24/7, enhancing employee access and convenience. It offers the staff the opportunity to interact with the company or ask for information at any time, and the bot can solve the query almost instantly.

Of course, some people still prefer to speak to humans, and chatbots can quickly transfer the management of the interaction to a human agent. It gives the employee a choice to talk in a more comfortable way for them.

The 24/7 support offered by chatbots can also help improve employee wellbeing and mental health. Many people prefer to talk with chatbots when it comes to more sensitive and personal issues at work. A global survey found that 64% of employees trust chatbots more than their managers.

There is an opportunity for HR to use chatbots to measure the mental health of their team and use those insights to prioritise employee wellbeing in the company’s culture. Thus, employees will develop a relationship of trust with the business, be more willing to engage and participate, and feel more valued.

Improve Employee Retention

Chatbot’s features drive employee retention in organisations, and the keyword is engagement. Chatbots can give employees a voice and provide a consistent engagement interface. It allows employees to communicate with the organisation constantly. This way, you are always on top of what your employees need or what they are feeling.

This constant communication becomes even more critical if you manage a remote workforce. By taking proactive action, you are more likely to retain your staff.

Personalisation also makes a huge difference to employee engagement. Your conversations can be highly personalised with chatbots, so your business can offer customised benefits and individual learning and development programs.

Employee Engagement: Taking Action

HR chatbots can be great allies in reinforcing company culture and driving employee engagement by delivering a more consistent, personalised and valuable interaction between business and their teams.

It also allows businesses to look at their employees with analytical eyes and use data generated from chatbots to take proactive steps towards a more productive and pleasing work environment.

Flow XO supports organisations in building HR chatbots that will consistently and effectively drive engagement. Flow XO offers a superior user experience that makes chatbot interaction more intuitive, available in desktops and mobile devices, and it provides businesses with an analytical approach to employee engagement.

Plus, you can integrate your Flow XO bot with various apps and platforms that are already familiar to your employees, such as Trello, Microsoft Office and more!

Engage now. Start for free.

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Chatbot and Email Marketing: The Integration You Didn’t Know You Needed

Miguel — Wed, 18 May 2022 14:34:17 +0000

Since the advance of digital, there are many opportunities for marketers and business owners to promote their business and nurture their relationships with customers. Yet, all these new channels should not underestimate our traditional online means of communication: email.

It turns out that email marketing is still one of the most effective digital marketing strategies today.

More recently, chatbots emerged to facilitate customer communication and provide high-level customer service. Today, the possibilities of chatbots are almost endless. They can send personalised messages, send and receive payments, and gather information, among many other features.

Of course, email has advanced a lot since it was first created. Among many features, email marketing can now integrate with chatbots. Can you imagine all the possibilities of chatbot and email marketing together? It is truly an upgrade!

The combination of chatbot and email marketing will make a big difference in your marketing efforts. The results will be fruitful in your communication, engagement, messaging and sales!

This article will understand how email marketing can integrate with your chatbot to skyrocket your results.

Why Email Marketing Matters

Whilst many people might think that email is dead and doubt that email marketing is worth their investment, the numbers tell us otherwise.

Around 4 billion people worldwide use email every day, and the number is set to rise to 4,6 in only three years. That represents more than half of the world’s population!

In Marketing, around 89% of marketers have email as their primary channel of lead generation and 92% use email channels for distributing content. Furthermore, 29% of marketing professionals consider email marketing the most effective marketing channel. Email marketing is indeed loved by marketers, but also by customers! 72% of customers prefer to use email to communicate with businesses.

The high rates of email usage by people are one reason why email marketing is so important, but there is more. Email marketing is fantastic for digital strategies as it can be used for both inbound and outbound marketing. Data shows that email can generate up to 4,200% in ROI!

Inbound emails create valuable content and tailor the customer experience—for example, personalised newsletters to email subscribers and discount codes for customers. Outbound emails aim to maximise your awareness and reach out to prospects who still haven’t engaged with your business.

For SaaS businesses, email marketing can be helpful and valuable through every step of the customer journey, driving conversions and facilitating engagement. For example, onboarding new customers, nurturing relationships, generating leads and retaining existing customers.

Email marketing is one tool that has the potential to drive a variety of results at different stages of your Marketing and Sales funnel. There are many email platforms, such as Mailer Lite, Active Campaign and HubSpot. One of the significant advantages of email marketing is its affordability. MailChimp, for example, is an email marketing platform that allows you to start your journey for free!

The Possibilities of Chatbots

Like email, the chatbot is also an accessible and cost-effective tool that can guide businesses throughout all the stages of the buyer’s journey, from attraction to retention.

Today, chatbots are the fastest growing brand communication channel. For consumers, chatbots work because they provide quick problem solutions and 24 /7 availability and support. For companies, chatbots are great allies, especially if you want your business to scale. They can cut costs and resources whilst delivering outstanding customer service and generating leads.

Another great deal of bots is personalisation, which enhances the customer experience. Customers feel more valuable, the interaction flows more naturally, and it can also represent a valuable additional source of customer data.

Chatbots evolved to be a crucial part of inbound marketing strategies. Chatbots can attract prospects, take proactive steps to stimulate conversations and turn visitors into leads. Then, nurture these leads and send actions to turn them into customers. Finally, entertain and engage these customers until they become advocates of your business.

Chatbots are set to be an essential component of future digital strategies. Still, it is imperative to choose your chatbot builder carefully. You need a platform that is accessible, intuitive, and that can unlock the advantages of chatbots, such as FlowXO.

Chatbot and Email Marketing: The Power of Integration

After reading all the goods that chatbots and email marketing can offer separately, can you imagine the power of this combination? It can’t go wrong.

Let’s understand how this integration accelerates results and drives performance.

Customer Support and Integration

Both customers and prospects might need some support when visiting your website, landing page or social media.

For example, if visitors are not familiar with your product and service and find issues navigating your website that cannot be solved at that moment, they are unlikely to convert.

Integrating chatbots in your channels can quickly resolve problems and make communication and conversion more efficient. For example, you can incorporate email marketing by simply taking prospects’ emails at this stage. Then, you can send personalised offers and emails to encourage your new leads to become customers.

Leads Generation and Nurturing

Chatbots and email marketing together can do a lot for your lead generation and nurturing strategy.

Chatbots help identify at which stage of the customer journey your user is, so you can precisely know the proper email communication to send. For example, if they are top-of-funnel, you can send email marketing messages to encourage them to convert, such as exclusive offers.

Integrating a chatbot with email marketing can smoothly move visitors down to the sales funnel. Chatbots are straightforward to interact with and can feel like a human conversation, making the user more likely to share their information with you. In addition, if they have a positive experience, they will be more likely to open your email.

Existing customers also benefit from this integration. For example, they can reach a chatbot to find a piece of particular information. The chatbot can help find what they need and gather this data to send personalised email marketing messages with tailored content to engage the customer.

Segmentation

One of the most impactful strategies is segmentation and targeting, as they can increase revenue by 760%.

Customer interaction must provide value, so generic emails and messages will not be as effective as customised ones. By segmenting your contacts, you can clarify your target and what type of messages to send, depending on your campaign and overall business objectives.

There are many ways to segment your customers, for example, by demographics, location, buying behaviour, stage in the customer journey, and many more.

Chatbots are excellent for segmentation and targeting. For example, the data gathered from customer interaction can provide critical information, and, further, businesses can also build personalised flows to ask specific questions.

The combination of chatbot and email can provide a more tailored view of your customer base and help to develop a segmented and more accurate marketing strategy.

Personalisation

As we know, segmentation and personalisation are impactful for both customers and businesses.

The right management of data can help you target your customers, provide customised messages and offers and stay one step ahead of your customers needs. By using email marketing tools, you send personalised emails to your contacts. With chatbots, you can deliver customised responses and personalised interactions.

When together, the personalisation provided by both tools can encourage customers to interact with your business even more. For example, the insights provided by chatbots can be used to later send personalised emails. Moreover, you can also add a link to your chatbot in your email. You can embed your bot, which redirects the user to your website or to a specific landing page.

Considering the usage of emails and the preference for chatbot’s communication, personalised messages can help you engage your audience and drive conversions on both channels.

Automation

Business automation increases the efficiency of tasks, reduces business costs and accelerates results. For example, according to statistics, 63% of companies that adopted marketing automation outperformed competitors!

Chatbots allow organisations to automate interactions based on predetermined triggers and actions. You can build your flows with triggers, so action is taken every time a trigger is activated.

So how can email marketing and chatbot be automated? First, you set up your chatbot to automatically send an email once the trigger is activated. For example, if a user signs up, you can automatically send a thank you message to your customer and even send an automated email to your team.

Chatbot and Email Marketing: The Best of Both Worlds

Chatbot and email marketing are fantastic tools, but they are even better together. Whilst chatbots can facilitate conversations and understand customer needs, the email marketing allows you to tailor your message and deliver exactly what they are looking for.

Businesses can leverage this combo results with a chatbot builder with email features. Flow XO is a customer-centric chatbot builder that offers integrations with email marketing providers.

Ready to start? Start for free.

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Telegram or WhatsApp: What should I use for my business?

Miguel — Thu, 12 May 2022 08:59:48 +0000

How do you engage your customers?

Customer engagement begins when businesses first interact with their customer, and from then, it becomes an ongoing process.

Customer engagement is one of those buzzwords in business that never goes out of style. By engaging customers, you create a stronger connection with them and add value to the overall business experience.

And the truth is: the more engaged your customers are, the more likely they are to become loyal customers! It will help your business generate and nurture leads and drive conversion rates.

Chatbots are great allies to achieving successful customer engagement. They automate traditional customer engagement activities by automating tasks and eliminating repetitive, costly and time-consuming tasks.

Of course, there is a strategy behind customer engagement. First, you need to understand your customer base and the preferred channel of your clients.

Telegram and Whatsapp are revolutionising traditional conversations, and today they are among the most popular messaging tools used by businesses to engage their customers. They offer a range of functionalities and bot capabilities to help enterprises optimise and make the best out of their online interactions.

More than simply texting, these tools can take customer engagement to the next level and offer a range of functionalities that can elevate businesses’ communications.

This article will explore both tools and what they have to offer and find out which one works best for your business.

Meet the WhatsApp Chatbot

You probably already use WhatsApp or most definitely know someone that uses WhatsApp on a regular basis. There are currently 2 billion WhatsApp users worldwide, in more than 180 countries, and the app delivers about 100 billion messages daily. In 2021 WhatsApp had an estimated 40% increase in usage.

The scenario is not different for businesses. The WhatsApp Business allows large organisations of all sizes to send messages to customers at scale. WhatsApp is a familiar and user-friendly platform, and the WhatsApp bot will enable organisations to offer a rich customer experience to users and drive customer engagement.

How Does the WhatsApp Chatbot Work?

WhatsApp chatbot is an automated software that uses AI or pre-configured conversational flows to manage conversations with humans on WhatsApp. It runs on an encrypted WhatsApp platform, and users can communicate with a chatbot the same way they would speak to a human, in the form of text or even voice.

There are two types of WhatsApp available for businesses: WhatsApp for Business App and WhatsApp API.

WhatsApp Business App is a free app that companies can install and chat with their customers, and small businesses mostly use it. It gives them a platform to engage with customers and take control of their communication. Still, it is harder to scale, as the WhatsApp Business App allows organisations to send canned responses, but it does not allow automated flows.

On the other hand, the WhatsApp Application Programming Interface (API) is not an app but software that allows you to fully automate flows by connecting to a CRM or chatbot platform. It simulates an entire conversation, just like talking to a real person. The WhatsApp API also lets you transfer the conversation to a human agent if needed, but it can fully operate and drive multiple conversations without human interaction. Therefore, WhatsApp API is much easier to handle multiple chats simultaneously. Flow XO uses the Sandbox account to create and test the WhatsApp bot quickly.

WhatsApp Chatbot Features

Let’s find out some of the main benefits that WhatsApp has to offer:

24/7 Customer Support: Just like any chatbot, you can define your bot’s availability or even set up your Whatsapp bot to have 24/7 Customer Support. Your bot is always ready to engage, initiate interactions and act on customers’ needs.
Send Media & Template Messages: More than only regular text messages, the WhatsApp bot can send images, videos, audios, documents and even stickers to users. It makes the interaction more dynamic and gives the bot more personality.
Send Template Messages: Template messages refers to interactive elements in your flow that allow users, for example, to send pre-defined messages to users (Quick Reply) or to, send a link to an URL or initiate a phone call (Call to Action)
Groups: The WhatsApp bot can enter group chats to interact with different members and also send notifications.
Cost savings: The WhatsApp bot can fully handle a conversation and solve problems without human interaction. You can manage thousands of messages without the cost of an agent, so it is a crucial feature for companies looking to scale
Security: WhatsApp values privacy and security, and the bot operates with end-to-end encryption, so no third party has access to your messages.

Things to Consider

The main limitation of the WhatsApp bot is that it cannot be used for marketing purposes and promotional notifications. The primary use of the WhatsApp bot is customer service and non-promotional engagement and notifications. Some industries have further restrictions, you can check them in the WhatsApp E-Commerce Policy.

Meet the Telegram Chatbot

Telegram is gaining popularity and notoriety in the tech market rapidly. At least 1.5 million people sign up to Telegram every day to engage with the platform since the view rate reaches 20%! Telegram also has an impressive annual growth rate of 50% and an expectation of getting 1 billion users.

Telegram is a cloud-based messaging platform, and it can operate bots on all types of mobile and desktops. In addition, Telegram offers a user -friendly and safe interface that allows users to send all kinds of messages, from images to polls, to make the customer engagement more interactive.

How Does Telegram Chatbot Work?

Like WhatsApp bots, Telegram chabot is a program you embed in your Telegram or public channels. They are designed to stimulate conversation and interaction. They can also integrate with other services, and it gives them many possibilities like searching and broadcasting.

Telegram bots use a bot API, a third-party application through Telegram. Flow XO uses BotFather to create the bots and quickly integrate them into Telegram. Essentially, you need only four steps. It can take as little as 5 minutes to build a bot in Telegram!

First, the users need to create an account with BotFather. Second, they need to create a username and a name to get a token. The token is required to control the bot and send it to the bot API, so you must keep it secure. Third, use your token to connect your bot to Flow XO. Lastly, test and distribute your bot. This step is key to reviewing inconsistencies, identifying the opportunities for improvement, and making sure your flow is engaging and makes sense.

Telegram Chatbots Features

Here are some of the features that a Telegram Chatbot can offer:

24/7 Customer Support: Just like WhatsApp, you can personalise your bot’s availability or even offer 24/7 customer support. This way, whenever your customer has a query, you can always respond and keep the engagement going.
Send Different Types of Messages: With Telegram, you can send a wide variety of types of messages, such as files, videos, voice notes and gifs. There is no limit to file-sharing! The platform also allows you to send your users, in groups or individually, a poll or a quiz, with up to 10 answers. They are excellent for engaging Telegram Groups or Telegram Channels.
Groups: Telegram has excellent service when it comes to groups. The platform allows you to create large groups of up to 200,000 people!
Advanced Messages: Unlike other messaging platforms, Telegram has unique features that can make your bot more dynamic and interactive. One of the most remarkable features is the custom keyboards.
User Participation: Telegram chatbot has the function Ask a Question to send users a message with quick reply options, encouraging them to interact with your bot.

Things to Consider

An important note to consider when using a Telegram bot is that it is limited to 100 messages per second to avoid spam. So, depending on what you want to do, you might need to send your message gradually to users.

What is the best fit?

So what bot is the best fit for your customers: Telegram or WhatsApp?

Both channels offer similar features and can up your customer engagement game. However, before choosing and launching your chatbot, we recommend that you take time to understand the purpose of your bot and which features you need to prioritise to fit your customers’ demands.

A customer analysis is also essential to understand how your customers like to communicate and what platform they use the most. For example, suppose your users are mainly on WhatsApp. In that case, it is improbable that they will move to Telegram to interact with your bot, so you must be mindful of setting up your chatbot on a familiar platform. Your chatbot must deliver a solution and facilitates the interaction.

Flow XO is a chatbot builder that offers a user-friendly and intuitive interface that makes it simple and easy to build your chatbot on WhatsApp and Telegram. With Flow XO, you have full support to better use chatbots and improve your decision-making in all stages of your customer journey.

Ready to try? Start for free

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Everything You Need to Know About Chatbot Marketing

Miguel — Thu, 05 May 2022 08:51:22 +0000

There are many ways to do marketing today. With the evolution of online channels, social media and e-mail, digital marketing is taking over. Traditional marketing is still relevant, but online marketing allows organisations to be more versatile in terms of content and be more accurate when engaging the right people at the right time.

In this context, the concept of chatbot marketing enters the scene. A chatbot is a disruptive tool for customer engagement with tremendous marketing potential, as 60% of people have recently engaged with a chatbot, and most organisations plan to implement them in the coming months.

So what is chatbot marketing, and how does it work? First, let’s understand why these concepts can help your business thrive and stand out in terms of marketing practices.

What is Chatbot Marketing

As the name suggests, chatbot marketing is the strategic use of chatbots to promote your business’s products and services.

Chatbot marketing allows your business to have a proactive approach to customer communication and make marketing more dynamic. Since you can simulate a human conversation with your bot, chatbot marketing can make marketing communications more natural and less salesy.

Further, organisations can set up flows in a way to automatically promote a particular product or service in strategic points of the conversation. Therefore, it doubles your chances of up-selling and cross-selling!

Organisations can implement chatbot marketing in their preferred channel. For example, you can employ marketing chatbots on your website, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram or even SMS!

The chatbot is a versatile and interactive tool, so there are many possibilities for adopting a chatbot marketing strategy.

The Benefits of Chatbot Marketing

Chatbots are the masters of automating and driving relevant conversations to business in the online space. And we all know how good communication is at the forefront of good marketing and good sales results!

Let’s deep dive into some of the main positive attributes of implementing chatbot marketing to your strategy:

- Automate the Marketing Process: The marketing chatbot can streamline the marketing funnel into an automated and natural conversation that adds value to your business. It makes your marketing journey more interactive and engaging. Marketing bots can convert customers at scale and offer real-time support in all steps of the marketing funnel.

Increase Marketing Conversations: A chatbot marketing strategy helps to stay one step ahead of your customers’ needs. You can create an interactive experience and build flows that include marketing-related conversations. You can accompany your customer in all marketing process steps and help them navigate and convert more effectively.

- Qualify and Nurture Leads: According to research published by Harvard Business Review, organisations are seven times more likely to qualify leads if they answer customers promptly within an hour of receiving a query. With chatbots, your business can respond to customers almost instantaneously. This way, your bot’s availability can help you to generate and qualify leads more effectively.
- Personalisation: The volume of data generated by a chatbot can facilitate personalisation. You can use your customer data to personalise the conversation and send customised marketing messages. Customers like to feel unique, and they are more likely to be interested in a product or service that feels tailored for them.

Increase Your Reach: With bots, you can handle thousands of conversations at the same time and ensure the quality stays on a certain level. Not only saves you operational costs of having hundreds of human agents, but it increases your capacity and you can reach way more customers than traditional forms of conversation.

Drive Conversations with Prospects: On top of qualifying your existing customer relationships, businesses are always looking for prospects to increase their revenue and drive conversions. Marketing bots are perfect for scaling the outbound outreach and reaching new audiences through cold conversation starters. Once the prospect responds to your initial interaction you can take the user down to your typical marketing funnel.
Segmentation: Chatbot helps with traffic segmentation, and it helps to identify who is more likely to become a warm lead, in other words, more likely to convert. In this case, the bot can provide all the necessary details and send the right marketing message.

Best Practices for Chatbot Marketing Implementation

Chatbots can give you infinite possibilities to improve your business performance. Your business will indeed have a top-notch marketing strategy by driving engaging conversations and building trust with your audience via chatbot.

However, if you wish to implement chatbot marketing in your business, there are some best practices you should keep in mind when managing your chatbot marketing.

Do your research: You need to have a clear understanding of your objectives when it comes to marketing and how they fit into your overall business goals. Conduct an audience analysis, reflect on your messaging and positioning, set your objectives, and define the most relevant metrics you need to measure. For example, the number of leads, conversion rate and engagement rate.

Test and refine your strategy: A company never releases a product without testing, right? The same applies to bots and chatbot marketing. When you set up your bot, especially if you have never done it before, the chances of having to make some adjustments in your flow are high. Take time to test your bot and to test the strategy with yourself. If it was you talking to your bot, would you be engaged?

Use appropriate language: Define your language and approach by having a clear understanding of your audience. For example, if you were selling toys, you probably could have a more outgoing and fun approach than selling software. But, of course, it all depends on who your audience is and what are you trying to achieve. Still, having a bot with personality increases your chances of success, as your audience can have more sympathy with your bot and easily engage with it.

Make sure to use triggers at the right time: If you are sending a promotional message, avoid an overselling approach. There are many ways to sell and do marketing without being too salesy. Forbes gives some great tips that will surely be valuable and help build effective chatbot marketing.

Have a human that can handle the conversation: A lot of queries and marketing efforts can be automated with a chatbot, but having a human agent available to handle more complex interactions sure will make your audience happy. Not everyone interacts with technology the same way, so make sure you have available options.

Chatbot newsletters: We all know about newsletters on e-mail marketing, but did you know you can also send a newsletter using your chatbot? It is an excellent way to market your business! You can send short updates and include anything that can be relevant to your customers, such as products on sales, offers and news.

Use a chatbot builder: It is more accessible and straightforward to use a chatbot platform than trying to build a chatbot in-house. Choose a chatbot builder that can set up your bot in your preferred channel and can provide support in all steps of the journey.

Use data in your favour: Successful companies use the power of data to guide their marketing decisions and achieve better results. Data-driven marketing increases ROI, and about 3 out of every four marketing leaders base their conclusions using data analytics. Further, data is the key ingredient behind personalisation, which allows enterprises to deliver a tailored marketing experience and make it as relevant as possible. By monitoring your data, you can also have a more accurate view of your chatbot marketing and identify improvement points.

Conclusion

Chatbot marketing is a strategy to promote your business’s services or products by using a chatbot. This technique automates the marketing of your business, saves you time and resources, helps you collect leads and generate sales, and all that by connecting with your audience in their preferred channel. Marketing chatbots can boost your conversion rates, create a more meaningful connection with your customers and allow your business to be available 24/7.

Still, having a solid chatbot builder is key to making all these incredible benefits to your business come true.

Flow XO offers an interactive and intuitive chatbot building platform that can expand your marketing capabilities. We offer support throughout the process and a wide range of features that can take your engagement to the next level, closing the gap between a visitor and a customer.

What are your thoughts on chatbot marketing? Would you like to give it a try?

We totally recommend it! And we invite you to try for free today.

The post Everything You Need to Know About Chatbot Marketing appeared first on Flow XO.

Explore Flow XO New Chatbot Features and Updates!

Miguel — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 07:42:16 +0000

At Flow XO we are always looking for ways to improve our service, so we can provide only the best for our customers… and we have exciting news to share with you!

Flow XO has a range of brand new chatbot features available to enhance your performance across different platforms: Telegram, WhatsApp, Web Messengers and more.

In this blog post, we’ll cover everything you need to know about new updates announcements in our platform. Let’s dive deep in!

New Messaging Tools

Flow XO is an omnichannel chatbot tool: it offers a seamless high-quality customer experience across different platforms. With Flow XO, you can design your chatbot only once and it is effortless to deliver them across all your messaging channels effortlessly, without having to design individual flows.

Still, there is always room for improvement. To make the platform even more user friendly, we announced new integrations to FlowXO: Telegram Actions, Messenger Actions, Web Actions and HTTP Bot Integration.

Telegram Actions

- Messaging: Send Message, Send Photo, Send Sticker, Send Audio, Send Document, Send Video, Send Animation, Send Voice, Send Video Note, Send Location, Send Venue, Send Contact, Send Poll, Send Dice
- Editing Messages: Edit Message Text, Edit Message Caption, Edit Message Media, Edit Message Keyboard, Edit Message Live Location, Stop Message Live Location, Delete Message, Stop Poll
- Payments: Send Invoice, Answer Shipping Query
- Misc: Get Chat Info, Answer Inline Query, Pin Chat Message, Unpin Chat Message, Unpin All Chat Messages

Messenger Actions

- Messaging: Send a Message, Send an Attachment, Send Button Template, Send Generic Template, Send Media Template
- One Time Notifications: Send One Time Notification Request
- Handover Protocol: Send to Inbox, Give Thread Control, Take Thread Control, Get Thread Owner

Web Actions

- Methods: Execute Javascript, Set Configuration, Close Chat Window, Navigate to URL

With these three integrations, you can access the most popular features of these channels completely code-free.

HTTP Bot Integration

Extend Flow XO to any messaging channel by providing an HTTP endpoint that can receive and respond to messages.

New Chatbot Commands

We also have new commands. If you are new to the chatbot world, a “command” is a certain word or phrase that usually starts with a “/”. It matches the user input and it usually performs a specific task, such as moving to live chat. An “argument” is any text after the command name and is when you want the user to specify additional information when they run the command.

To improve the commands function on our platform, we now split out the name and arguments and we offer an optional user handle reference into metadata that can now be used in your trigger filters. You can also write a single handler flow for a command and easily get access to the argument and be sure that the flow only triggers when the specific command is exactly matched.

If you are not familiar with commands and need more information, make sure to check the information available on our Support page or contact us!

New Platform Updates

We have brand new chatbot features available across different platforms. Let’s explore the new things you can do with Flow XO.

Telegram is a cross-platform messaging service with high-level encryption and privacy features, and it is one of the most popular platforms in Flow XO. Here are some of the updates available for Telegram users:

- Telegram Files URLs no longer expire: When users send files via Telegram, they receive a special URL to download the file. Before, these URLs used to expire, making it difficult to retrieve uploaded files. Now, Flow XO has a special URL for uploaded Telegram files that do not expire, so users can safely store the URLs in a database and access them at any time.
- Ability to respond to Telegram Group membership changes: When new users are added or removed, Flow XO will now receive a message that triggers a greeting when a user joins or leaves a group. You can filter on these special messages in a catch-all or New Message trigger to send customised messages. Great way to encourage interaction and to offer personalised conversation to users.

More Telegram attachments: More than file and location types, we now allow you to process contacts, payment confirmations, non-anonymous poll responses and inline queries. The payment messages are particularly significant because when combined with the new Send Invoice method exposed in our Telegram Actions integration will allow you to fully implement Telegram Payments, including shipping queries.

Telegram Inline Query Support (Advanced): This feature allows Flow XO to support inline queries in Telegram, but is only for developers or customers with access to a developer, as it requires a simple custom service to be developed to answer the inline queries.

Here are some of the new things you can do with your WhatsApp chatbot:

Flow XO is now compatible with Twilio for WhatsApp: You can now host your Flow XO bot on WhatsApp by selecting a WhatsApp enabled phone number when configuring your Twilio integration. Make sure to double check the limitations of Twilio Whatsapp!

WhatsApp now fully available: We partnered with WATI to provide full support for the WhatsApp business API in Flow XO. This integration is fully launched and if you can not find it in your account, send us a message at support@flowxo.com

Web Messenger

If you are using chatbot with web messenger, here are some new updates for you:

New Embedding & Customisation Options: You can now embed as overlay, inline or sidebar as well as customise the location of the widget (left or right of page). You can also embed multiple bots on a single page and embed it inside a webpage without losing access to the API
Ability to embed live chat in your own website for your client

Ability to deactivate the welcome menu for a bot for unhandled messages

Experiment with the New Features Today!

Flow XO is an omnichannel chatbot builder that is always looking to improve and deliver the best set of features to customers.

The new set of chatbot features allows organisations to take the best out of the messaging channels and make sure your chatbot offers a complete customer experience across different channels: effortlessly and seamlessly!

If you are already a Flow XO user, you can check our support page for more advanced information. If you want to join the club and try the new features, start for free today!

The post Explore Flow XO New Chatbot Features and Updates! appeared first on Flow XO.

Business Automation & Chatbots

Miguel — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 09:18:18 +0000

Today, implementing business automation is a must for organisations to thrive in the digital age. In the long term, manual processes can cause organisations a number of delays and errors, which costs resources.

That is why companies that adopt automation are more agile. Automating business processes can streamline operations and optimise time whilst reducing job tasks and increasing productivity.

If you are thinking about how to implement automation, we can definitely say that a chatbot is a great ally. In this article, we will talk about why chatbots are the perfect tool to automate your business.

Inside Business Automation

So what is business automation?

According to IBM, business automation is a term used to describe the use of technology that performs repetitive tasks, and it allows employees to focus on more strategic roles.

Over the decades, business automation has evolved and became more accessible. It has impacted almost every industry and companies of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises. By replacing human labour with machines, automation boosts efficiency and scalability in manual tasks and pushes human intelligence to more complex responsibilities.

Since it is performed by computers, automation excels in repeatable processes that do not change frequently. Not all processes require automation and organisations must be mindful of implementing automation that creates value to the business.

Some examples of types of business automations available today are:

Basic automation: Use little to no coding and aims to digitise repetitive tasks.
Process automation: Aims for uniformity and transparency and it is often handled by software.
Intelligent automation: Driven by AI, where machines automatise decision-making.
Advanced automation: Combines unstructured data coupled with advanced technology, such as machine learning, natural language processing and data analysis.

What Processes Can You Automate with Chatbots?

And how do chatbots fit into the story?

Chatbots are an effective way for organisations to automate their customer interactions based on predetermined triggers and actions. However, this communication automation generated by chatbots can benefit a variety of business processes. Let’s review some of them!

Customer Service: Chatbots can automate conversations to provide quicker solutions to customer inquiries and more efficient customer support. A business can opt to use chatbots, live chats with human agents, or hybrid options according to customers’ needs.
Lead Generation: Bots automatically capture and analyse data from users that interact with your bot. This ability drives lead generation and is especially useful when your bot is linked to your CRM and lead management systems.
Payment Services: Organisations can automate the paying process using a chatbot by offering a seamless interface to safely receive and send payments.
Onboarding Process: Chatbots can automate your onboarding process, as they are an effective tool to provide and initiate internal and external tasks. The chatbot can guide you through the necessary steps and be available 24/7 to answer any questions. Plus, with chatbots, the onboarding automation process can be personalised!

Flow XO: The Power of Chatbots and Automation

Business automation drives business growth. Automating processes can increase the efficiency of your workflow, reduce business costs, increase your revenue and add more value to your team.

If you wonder how you can start automating your business, chatbots can be the perfect answer. Flow XO is a chatbot builder and automation platform that allows businesses to easily create flows that connect things that happen (triggers) with things you want to do (actions).

Integrate and automate – Start now!

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How a Chatbot can Scale Your Small Business

Miguel — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 09:03:38 +0000

Small businesses are the backbone of the economy. In the U.S., small enterprises generate around 44% of the economic activity and are responsible for about two-thirds of new jobs in the market. They play a pivotal role in driving innovation, generating job opportunities and contributing to the GDP.

However, there are some challenges that small businesses are likely to face. Starting a business is a victory, but maintaining it is the real deal. Fortunately, there are many technologies available to help small business owners overcome these difficulties, such as chatbots!

Here we will tell you why an enterprise AI chatbot service may be the solution you are looking for to scale your small business.

The Challenges for Small Businesses

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, about 20% of small businesses fail by the end of their first year. By the end of their fifth year, 50% go under; and by the tenth year, that number rises to 80%

Surely, maintaining the business is the hardest part, and sometimes you may even need to take a step back and change your strategy. However, being aware of the possible challenges you might face is the first step of being fully prepared to overcome them. Plus, many of the most common problems can actually be solved.

Let’s dig in some of the most common issues faced by small businesses owners today:

Limited Capacity: Small businesses operate with small teams. Managing a whole company with limited staff means that your employees may have to perform several different roles simultaneously and, most importantly, must be in synch to achieve your business goals. One of the most significant challenges faced by small businesses is labour quality. According to a study by CNBC, 52% of small businesses said that their main problem is finding the right talent.

Lack of Funding: Small enterprises are often in a less stable situation than larger companies. Many small companies rely on one client to drive the business’ revenue, and many small business owners still need another source of income to keep the business running.
Improving Online Presence: Adapting to digital transformation can be an issue for small businesses. While large companies have specialised staff to manage digital marketing activities, small businesses have limited capacity and resources to grow their online presence, such as optimising their website or investing in paid campaigns for social media.
Providing Top-Notch Customer Experience: A top-notch customer experience is when you surpass customer’s expectations. For example, when a business’ customer service has a personalised approach and is able to solve problems whilst being proactive to customer needs. Happy customers come back for additional purchases, engage with your business and drive word-of-mouth. However, having a proper customer service strategy can be challenging and even costly for small enterprises due to the lack of capacity.

About Chatbots

A chatbot is a computer-generated application that automates communication between a business and its customers. They provide an interactive and user-friendly interface where users can ask questions, send information and even manage payment operations.

Today, chatbots are the fastest growing brand communication channel. Consumers prefer talking to a chatbot because it provides quick answers to their queries, and the main benefit of this technology is offering 24/7 availability and support.

Using Chatbots To Scale Your Small Business

But can chatbots operate well for small businesses?

Even though there are challenges on the way, many of the problems faced by small business owners can be fixable with chatbots. Chatbots are one of the most cost-effective tools that small enterprises can acquire. It can reduce a significant amount of work from their employees, cut expenses, boost customer satisfaction rates, and drive your small business to scale.

Let’s take a look at how chatbots can help small businesses to overcome their main challenges:

Customer Experience

With enterprise AI chatbot service, businesses can enhance customer experience by providing prompt and personalised communication in all customer journey stages. Chatbots are also available 24/7 and, unlike human agents, they can deliver the same quality of service to all customers, which is one of the reasons why they are so helpful for companies that want to scale.

Cut Costs

Implementing chatbots can reduce costs by up to 30%. Bots can reduce the operational expenses related to customer service, communication, sales and lead generation. Further, chatbots lessen the need of hiring large teams and save maintenance business costs. For small businesses, chatbots are an investment, as they can manage and solve several problems with no extra charges.

Lead Generation

Without leads, small businesses’ customer acquisition can slow down, which might affect the health and growth of your business. Chatbots can be a solid way to boost small companies’ lead generation efforts. Their interactive and automated interface helps connect with potential customers quickly and nurture existing relationships. Also, every interaction with a bot generates customer data, which helps companies gather valuable information.

Access to Customer Data

As mentioned above, chatbots generate an analytical view of your customer base. By analysing your bot’s data, you have a clear vision of the user’s buying behaviours, needs, and purchase concerns. Moreover, data allows organisations to provide personalised interaction. According to Epsilon, 80% of users are more likely to complete a purchase with a personalised customer experience.

Automate Sales

Chatbots are more than a conversation tool. They optimise and automate every step of the sales process. Bots can capture, qualify and nurture leads, process customer data, send and receive payments and offer 24/7 customer support and engagement.

A chatbot can be the greatest ally for small enterprises. Enterprise chatbot services come with features that allow small businesses to thrive and enhance their performance in all areas, from marketing to sales.

The best advice for small business owners is to look for a chatbot builder, such as FlowXO, that understands the needs of smaller organisations and can provide a beginner-friendly interface and cost-effective service that can boost business growth.

With Flow XO, you can start building your first chatbot for free.

Contact us today!

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Chatbots and Predictive Analytics: The Combination You Need to Know

Miguel — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 12:34:46 +0000

Data has never been so crucial for businesses. Not only does it allow organisations to know more about their customers, data now enables them to predict what comes next. The ability to forecast using data is called predictive analytics, and it can benefit many sides of an organisation. So let’s discuss how organisations can leverage predictive analytics in chatbots.

What is Predictive Analytics?

Predicting the future and forecasting trends are essential components of many companies utilising and mastering data analytics. Predictive analytics can anticipate events and measure the likelihood of a situation occurring through data.

The exponential growth of data opened a range of possibilities for companies. People produce around 1.7MB of data per second, so there is a lot of valuable information that can guide companies to understand their customer base and take the right step.

76% of companies now have data as part of their business strategies, and 97% use data analytics to improve business opportunities. data has become one of the driving forces of businesses’ strategic decision-making and is shaping organisations’ present and future.

Predictive analytics transforms this complex web of data into predictions that can support businesses to enhance their decision-making processes, improve performance and build a long-lasting relationship with customers. Moreover, it helps organisations prepare for challenges, stay in tune with customer needs, and anticipate possible outcomes.

Chatbot Analytics & Sentiment Analysis

Chatbots have the ability to generate and retain customer data. The chatbot analytics tracks the activity of your bot, and this data provides insights that can identify growth opportunities and areas of improvement.

It also helps businesses to understand their customers. Chatbot data collection facilitates the visualisation of the customer journey and measures how your customer responds to your bot. For example, in chatbot analytics, sentiment analysis allows the chatbot to identify keywords and evaluate the tone of the conversation.

Therefore, companies need to get a supportive chatbot builder with an advanced set of analytics, such as FlowXO. Mastering bot analytics will provide you with the tools that you need to improve your bot and your business performance.

Chatbot & Predictive Analytics: The perfect combo!

Can you imagine having the power of chatbots combined with the accuracy of predictive analytics? What impact could they have on your business?

This integration is called predictive chatbots. Predictive bots are much more sophisticated and interactive than traditional chatbots. These bots can apply predictive intelligence and analytics to deliver a more personalised customer experience and forecast customer behaviour based on data.

The efficient use of predictive analytics techniques in chatbots allows organisations to forecast customer behaviour in earlier stages of the customer journey and act proactively towards customer needs throughout the conversation. As a result, it will enable organisations always to have the best outcome for customers, boosting satisfaction rates and taking business strategy to the next level.

Conclusion

If you want your chatbot to thrive, you must ensure that you have a chatbot builder that provides an analytical vision of your performance. Flow XO offers a complete analytics tool kit capable of delivering a personalised customer experience and generating strategic insights to make your strategy more data-driven and put your business at the forefront.

You can start for free today. Want to know how? Contact us today!

The post Chatbots and Predictive Analytics: The Combination You Need to Know appeared first on Flow XO.

Flow XO

Enhance CX With Conversational Chatbots

Rise of CX

Understanding Conversational Chatbots

Ways that Chatbot Drives CX

Ensure a strong front-line

Keep Customers Engaged

Retention

Personalization

Value to the Journey

Your Way to a Successful Customer Experience

Industries that are Winning with Chatbots

Industries that are Winning with Chatbots

E-Commerce Chatbots

Hospitality Chatbots

Tourism Chatbots

Banking Chatbots

Events & Entertainment Chatbots

Looking to Build Your First Bot?

Drive Employee Engagement with Chatbots

HR Chatbots

Using HR Chatbots to Improve Employee Engagement

Welcome New Hires

Stimulate Conversations

Measure and Provide Data Insights

24/7 Support and Availability

Improve Employee Retention

Employee Engagement: Taking Action

Chatbot and Email Marketing: The Integration You Didn’t Know You Needed

Why Email Marketing Matters

The Possibilities of Chatbots

Chatbot and Email Marketing: The Power of Integration

Customer Support and Integration

Leads Generation and Nurturing

Segmentation

Personalisation

Automation

Chatbot and Email Marketing: The Best of Both Worlds

Telegram or WhatsApp: What should I use for my business?

Meet the WhatsApp Chatbot

How Does the WhatsApp Chatbot Work?

WhatsApp Chatbot Features

Things to Consider

Meet the Telegram Chatbot

How Does Telegram Chatbot Work?

Telegram Chatbots Features

Things to Consider

What is the best fit?

Everything You Need to Know About Chatbot Marketing

What is Chatbot Marketing

The Benefits of Chatbot Marketing

Best Practices for Chatbot Marketing Implementation

​Conclusion

Explore Flow XO New Chatbot Features and Updates!

New Messaging Tools

New Chatbot Commands

New Platform Updates

Telegram

WhatsApp

Experiment with the New Features Today!

Business Automation & Chatbots

Inside Business Automation

What Processes Can You Automate with Chatbots?

Flow XO: The Power of Chatbots and Automation

How a Chatbot can Scale Your Small Business

The Challenges for Small Businesses

About Chatbots

Using Chatbots To Scale Your Small Business

Customer Experience

Cut Costs

Lead Generation

Access to Customer Data

Automate Sales

Chatbots and Predictive Analytics: The Combination You Need to Know

What is Predictive Analytics?

Chatbot Analytics & Sentiment Analysis

Conclusion