Social media has changed the way we communicate. We rely on social media for everything from staying connected to friends and family to getting advice about our relationships, jobs, and more. With over 1 billion active users per day, Instagram is one of the most popular social media networks with a fast-growing chatbot platform. Chatbots are virtual assistants that use artificial intelligence (AI) to offer customer service or answer questions. With these ten expert-approved tips, you can build an Instagram chatbot that’s effective and will help you grow your business.
1 – Miłosz Krasiński, Chilli Fruit Web Consulting
Test the effectiveness of your bot with A/B testing:
Chatbots can have various functions in your company. In my opinion, the best way to build a chatbot that will be used and bring value is to check what kind of services it can do in the first place. A/B testing or surveys might provide you with the expectations from customers concerning this matter. It may turn out that you were thinking about a support chatbot, while customers expect you to create one for taking orders or answering questions about products.
The second group you should ask for an opinion on are your employees who work directly with customers. They will tell you what are the most common, simple issues customers turn to them, and you can decide if these might be performed by the chatbot. Doing research among customers and employees upfront will provide you with valuable data about expectations and features your chatbot should have to be used and help your business instead of being an unnecessary cost.
2 – Justin Herring, YEAH! Local
Create the Right Personality:
Building a successful chatbot requires the right personality. You need to understand who your customers are and what they want. You have to tailor your chatbot to their specific needs, so they want to interact with it.
For example, if you build a chatbot for 18-25-year-old females, you should create a charming and witty chatbot. If you want to reach an older demographic, like 55+, you should construct a more serious and informative chatbot. A successful chatbot should have a personality that matches your audience’s interests and expectations.
3 – Chris Castillo, Propel Digital Media Solutions
Consider the language and culture of your audience:
If you are not fluent in the language of your audience, it can not be easy to understand their needs. This is why it is important to think about the language and culture of your audience when building a chatbot. You can’t always know what they will say, but if you consider the type of questions they might ask and design your chatbot to meet those needs, you can make it more effective. For example, if your target audience speaks Arabic, you can build a chatbot that recognizes and responds in Arabic.
4 – Ryan Sartre, Fast Partitions
Structure Chatbot Questions to Decipher Stage Your Leads are At:
Chatbots are a perfect way to leverage automation to not only qualify leads but to determine what stage of the customer journey they are on. With a client like Fast Partitions, leads are likely to be researching the product for the first time, so they need a lot of information on the ordering process. But customers familiar with the industry don’t need or want the same hand-holding. When we realized this and revamped our Instagram chatbot, we could successfully ID the stage leads are at with just a few simple questions. The result was a reduction in expenditures while simultaneously enhancing customer experience.
5 – Michael Batalha, Emercury
Don’t forget to add a customer service email for the people who need help or want to contact you:
One of the most important aspects of building an Instagram chatbot is providing customer service. You want to make sure that people can easily contact you to get help or answer questions. Your chatbot should have a link to your email address, phone number, or other contact information for customer service.
Don’t forget that people might need help on your bot even if they only want to browse through your content. And if you don’t offer any way for them to communicate with you, you risk losing potential customers who are unhappy with the experience on your bot.
6 – Antonio Wells, NAMYNOT Inc.
Put in security measures to protect your chatbot from hacking:
It’s important that you spend time ensuring your chatbot is safe from hackers by including security measures. These are the primary areas to focus on when it comes to security:
– Password Protection
– Login Protection
– Search Engine Optimization
Password protection is necessary for chatbots to protect themselves from being hacked. You should also have an option for login protection so that only authorized users can access the chatbot. And lastly, SEO is important because it makes your chatbot more accessible to the public. With these three things, you’ll be able to ensure your chatbot is safe and secure from hacking attacks.
7 – Vidyarthi Ram, Rank Care
Don’t Overshare in Messages:
One of the many benefits of using a chatbot is that it can be programmed to answer specific questions. When you’re replying to a message, don’t overshare. Chatbots are not at a level where they can provide advice or empathy; they can only offer simple responses based on their programming, which means you should only give them information to respond with which is not complex.
If someone asks your chatbot how they should handle a disagreement with their boss, don’t tell them about how you handled disagreements in the past. Instead, have your chatbot refer them to an article about handling disagreements at work or have it say that this is not something that they cover and direct the person who wrote the message to another chatbot that may help them.
Another reason why you shouldn’t overshare in messages is because it’s going against what people typically expect from customer service. If someone writes a long paragraph asking for advice and your bot immediately responds with “It sounds like you’re angry,” it won’t go over well. People expect customer service reps to be empathetic and understanding, so if your chatbot doesn’t seem either of those things, people will think there’s something wrong with your company and end up leaving frustrated.
8 – Dima Suponau, Number For Live Person
Connect to other platforms like Facebook Messenger or Telegram:
There are many ways to connect to other platforms like Facebook Messenger or Telegram. You can use a bot and connect your chatbot with your Facebook business page. This allows you to reply to messages on both platforms and manage all customer relationships in one place. This way, you’ll never miss a message. Alternatively, you can also use a web chat app that connects with your Facebook account and then redirects users who want to talk to you on Facebook Messenger. If your website is with WordPress CMS, you can use a chat plugin with multiple platforms including Instagram, to make it more convenient .
9 – Jack Żmudziński, Future Processing
Don’t Use Simple Templates already available in the Market:
The center of every AI-based software, whether it is a chatbot, simple website tool, or complicated app, is its engine and the code it uses. Building your chatbot on the simplest template possible and common code used by everyone in the Market will not make you unique. Your chatbot will not be something that will make you look professional and experienced.
Devoting more time and resources to create a more advanced and intuitive chatbot that solves your customers’ issues faster and more efficiently will increase the brand awareness of your company as a professional and with top-class customer service. Creating advanced chatbots that can solve more complex problems can be costly, but in the long run, it spares your customer service department resources by giving them more time to respond to the most challenging issues. Use surveys to check your customers’ satisfaction with using the chatbot and try to systematically improve it according to the things your customers underline for you.
10 – Mike Sadowski, Brand24
Customize chatbot with your Brand Values:
Every part of your brand, its services and websites should be branded and using a simple chatbot from the template might not be branded enough for customers to recognize it and connect in their subconscious with your company.
Your chatbot, apart from matching color to your website, should have a name connected with the brand, logos, small branding accents, and the way your chatbot is responding. You can naturally implement the brand’s reputation into your chatbot responses to make it more personalized.
On a Final Note
Now that you know all of the tips, it’s time to get to work on your chatbot! You will need to work with a developer in order to ensure that your chatbot is up-to-date with the latest changes in the industry. Building a successful chatbot is a team effort, so make sure you have a team behind you.
Building a chatbot is not without challenges, but the payoff can be huge. If your chatbot is innovative and solves a real problem for your customers, it will be an invaluable asset to your company.
