With the increased interest in chatbots and digital customer service, the need for chatbot solutions has increased manifold – including website chatbot. A chatbot is a conversational software that acts as an intermediary between a user and a business, allowing users to interact with businesses through artificial digital agents.
The primary objective of designing a chatbot is to automate routine or clerical tasks so customers can complete them from within the organization. While there are many advantages of having chatbots over human agents, there are also certain challenges.
In this blog post, we will discuss various challenges when it comes to creating a website chatbot, along with strategies to overcome them.
What is a Website Chatbot?
A website chatbot is a virtual assistant that can operate via conversations on a website. Unlike bots for messenger platforms, it can reside inside any e-commerce website and deliver customer assistance and support through conversational interfaces.
Chatbots on websites can respond to simple questions and control complex business processes such as buying, booking, paying, and managing inventory. Chatbot platforms are available for integration with the most popular business software and e-commerce systems. Some of these platforms enable developers to easily create different types of bots, customize their responses, and integrate with multiple systems.
However, the most attractive features of these platforms are their pricing plans and the other features they offer.
How does Website Chatbot work?
A website chatbot is basically a piece of software that learns from conversations. Once you ask it a question, it reads your response and decides what to say next. As you continue to interact with it, it gets smarter and learns your preferences, needs, and habits. The bot reads through your website and collects information about your customers and their behavior. Based on this information, it creates a persona for each customer and uses it to interact with you. The bot also uses algorithms to understand user intent and the intent behind repeated questions. For example, if someone asks you to send a newsletter, you don’t need to answer it again. The bot understands it as an “intent behind the repeated question.”
Features of Website Chatbot
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Automated Customer Support
A website chatbot is primarily designed to provide automated customer service and assistance. It can respond to simple questions, perform certain tasks, and handle requests for information. It can also provide 24/7 assistance to customers by responding to their questions and solving problems.
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Inventory tracking and payment management
The bot can be used to track inventory, manage customers’ payments and refunds, manage customers’ check-in and check-out for events, manage customers’ wishlists, and many more.
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Niche specific
It is good to remember that a chatbot on a website is a ‘virtual robot’ designed to address and analyze the customer’s needs and understand what they want from you. They are good with improving the experience a customer has with your organization. If a food service seller uses a chatbot designed for a bank, it will be of no use.
The conversation with a website chatbot will have to be pertinent to your niche and industry. Taking the same example as above, if you are in the food industry and the customer asks the bot about hotel room decor, the bot will be unable to provide accurate answers.
But unlike a simple bot, an AI-powered bot is adept at spotting trends, learning new things, predicting intents, and using that knowledge to provide you with excellent service.
What is the role of AI in Website bots?
The primary objective of designing a chatbot is to automate routine or clerical tasks so that customers can complete them from within the organization. Website chatbots have been found to be a great tool for automating customer service and support tasks. They can be deployed within an organization’s website and use information stored in the bot’s database to respond to customer questions.
Some of the key advantages of having website bots include the following –
- They are cheaper and easier to set up than a call center.
- They can be deployed on websites, which means they don’t require any additional hardware or software.
- The setup process is easy, and everyone in the organization can use them.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) is the key to making bots more effective.
- They are more reliable than human agents, as there are no issues with memory, mood swings, or other things that affect human agents.
- Bots can perform a range of tasks and can serve as practical answers to a variety of customer questions.
- The bot can be programmed to track, manage, and control a range of processes, such as sign-up for a service, managing a customer’s check-in and check-out at an event, managing a customer’s wishlist, tracking inventory, and many more.
- Bots can help businesses grow as they can use this technology to attract more customers by providing them with relevant information, solving their problems, and managing multiple transactions.
- They also help businesses reduce costs by automating customer service and support tasks.
Website chatbots examples—Some Top Brands
Hyundai
Hyundai’s AI Chatbot called “Hi Hyundai” is made for existing as well as targeted client bases.
What will Hyundai Website Chatbot do?
It makes purchasing Hyundai vehicles easier in these times of pandemic.
Benefits:
It has intent recognition capability, which helps to leverage the Hyundai platform. It segments persona and can analyze sentiments.
Potential customers may use this Chatbot to:
- Check out different Hyundai vehicles
- Locate nearby dealers
- Check out offers
- Book a test drive
- Book a new vehicle
Existing customers can use the Chatbot for:
- Service scheduling
- Checking warranty information
Working with Hi Hyundai Chatbot offers a seamless experience for intuitive virtual assistance for all customer queries.
Unilever
“Bella the Bot” by consumer product giant Unilever is quoted as a highly effective Chatbot this year.
What will Unilever Website Chatbot do?
It helps the shoppers to start a chat using their smartphone camera to scan a Facebook messenger code on a store shelf or website.
Benefits:
- It helps to provide product guidance in thinly staffed drugstores.
- The bot enables customers to search an assortment of company products before making a purchase.
- It bridges the gap between offline and online shopping experiences.
LG
LG CNS’S VPA Chatbot service is a platform that supports internal company task processes and customer inquiry handling.
What will LG Website Chatbot do?
A SaaS-based B2E business chatbot, it helps in supporting the handling of various business inquiries. Its VPA not only helps in improving individual work efficiency, but also the partners, agencies, and sales representatives can guide themselves while receiving support for handling their work.
Benefits:
- It outperforms with its Legacy Compatibility standards and Knowhow, with instance recycling features and trial and error minimization.
- It has prebuilt UX and convenient features with optimized question-answer templates. This shortens development time and provides optimal convenient functions.
- It has expandable SaaS-type services which are based on LG CNS’s AI Platform. This gives easy expansion of service contents and scope.
- It supports Multi-bot where more bots can be added as per the work purpose.
- It supports web and mobile front UI channels, where channels can be applied selectively.
- It provides efficient learning management services for chatbots that are becoming smarter.
Whirlpool
“Applicate” won Whirlpool’s next-gen SFA project. One of the world’s largest manufacturers of home appliances, Whirlpool, decided to move to the next level of automation. This moving ahead from just transaction automation would now significantly impact revenue and execution too.
What will ApplicateAI do?
It helps in accomplishing all logical and repeatable tasks in Sales, Marketing, and After Sales with “AI Sales BOT.” The basic aim of creating ApplicateAI is to reduce human inefficiencies in sales.
Benefits:
- Helps in driving revenue and increasing sales, rather than just automating transactions
- It can be integrated with any database or existing sales automation system used by the company
Thus ApplicateAI gives a completely new dimension to the sales automation process at Whirlpool.
Related: Top 10 website chatbot examples of 2023
Summing up website chatbot
Website bots are a great way for businesses to provide automated, efficient customer service. These bots on websites can be used to respond to questions, perform certain tasks, and provide 24/7 assistance to customers by responding to their questions and solving problems. They can also be deployed on websites instantly without any hassles if you’re using Chat360 web builder. The most attractive features of these bots are their pricing plans and the other features they offer.