In the movie ‘Her’, Theodore, a writer forms a deep relationship with an AI voice that he speaks to every day. He eventually falls in love with it. The AI here was realistic enough to make a human being develop feelings for it. Our AI technology hasn’t developed to that extent. We have applications that we can talk to, but they are limited to several thousand “dialogues”. It may not be able to adapt and reply to our every question, but it can help in some specific ways. 

Sometimes when you visit a site, on one of the corners, you may find a chat box. You could type in your queries and the automated system will try its best to give you the information you want. This is a great tool to ensure that a visitor’s queries are being answered. A happy customer will always come back for more.

NLP (Natural Language Processing) and AI (Artificial Intelligence) have contributed immensely to the development of digital assistants known as Chatbots. They have now evolved into resourceful tools that facilitate the effective automation of businesses. Chatbots can perform a  multitude of tasks including resolving customer queries and guiding prospects and customers through the sales funnel.

Who doesn’t love an instant reply that makes them feel special? Chatbots possess the advantage of being prompt in delivering personalized content through active engagement with the customers. Chatbots indulge in an informal mode of conversation. This informal tone also helps build customer loyalty along with gaining valuable insights into their behaviour and preferences. 

Chatbots have certain advantages. You do not have to leave the page to communicate with them. We’re all familiar with using a messaging service. Some of the marketing advantages and opportunities presented by chatbots are mentioned below. As AI gets stronger and more sophisticated, chatbots will continue to grow and new marketing possibilities will emerge.

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• Magnified capacity for engagement. A unique feature of chatbots is its ability to retain customers. A chatbot can attract attention and retain it for a longer time and learn from interactions. It then takes this data to send pertinent information regarding the brand and its services to the customer. Up-selling and cross-selling are facilitated in a much more personalized manner.
• Renders the brand proactive. Brands, by default, are passive communicators that wait for the customer to contact them first. However, if a chatbot is integrated into your brand’s website, social media platform or app, the bot will make the first move in communicating with the user who has landed on the platform. This positively affects the brand reputation and increases interaction. 
• A guide through the corporate funnel. Time consumption is one of the biggest challenges faced during lead nurturing. Chatbots can help your brand through effective lead nurturing by collecting data and personal information and then deploying individually customized feedback and messages to help your customers effortlessly continue on their buyer journey. 
• Maintains a brand personality. Advertisements including banners or videos are unidirectional and can state a brand identity. But the integration of chatbots can have a multidimensional effect and bring forth a brand personality that interacts in a way deemed the most appropriate by the brand. This is the peak of being relatable in the history of marketing.
• Relatively cheaper. A fully functional chatbot requires less expenditure than a cross-platform app or hiring an employee. Readymade chatbots with fully functional automated solutions are available from various providers. This also presents a chance to reduce human errors and to increase feedback and communication speed as well as seamlessly process data to make decisions.

Some of the best chatbot service providers and hosts include:

• LivePerson
• LiveChat
• botique.ai
• Amazon Lex
• Dialogflow
• IBM Watson
• Bold360

The boom in the usage of messaging apps presents a wide vista of opportunities to build your brand image and convert that into direct sales through the integration of chatbots. To sum up, the major advantages of chatbots include its full-time availability, ability to process a large amount of data or requests, better insight gaining capacity and low maintenance as well as setup costs. 

Customer service improvement through continuous learning based on analytics and data processing and flexibility in the implementable platform is what makes chatbots an inevitable consequence of AI in the digital marketing landscape. Ultimately, creating and selling personalized customer experiences can work wonders for any business. So does having a beautiful website that’s super easy to navigate. If you’re in the market for a new website or if you’re interested in revamping your existing website, talk to us. We’ve worked on websites for some of the biggest companies and projects in the world. Let’s talk!