What Are Chatbots? How Do I use Them?

It's no secret that chatbots are becoming more and more popular, but what exactly can they do for your inbound marketing? Chatbots are computer programs that simulate human conversation. They can be used to improve customer service, lead generation, and even sales. How can chatbots help with inbound marketing? 

For one thing, chatbots can take on some of the repetitive tasks that your customer-facing teams have to deal with. This can free up your team's time so that they can focus on more complex tasks. Chatbots can also help to generate leads and even make sales.

If you're looking for ways to improve your inbound marketing operations, chatbots are definitely worth considering.

HubSpot's live chat software enables real-time conversations with customers and prospects, making it easy to provide prompt and efficient customer service. The software also allows you to collect customer information and track conversation histories, so you can follow up with customers after the chat is over. This allows businesses to better understand their customers and create more personalised experiences.

This article will explore several ways bots can enhance your inbound marketing and customer service teams' ability to serve prospects and customers. 

3 Use Cases for A Chatbot

Technology has drastically changed the way we live and consume information - we want things quickly and easily, without any hassle. This need for immediacy also translates over to when people are looking for answers from businesses - they expect to find what they're looking for as soon as they land on your site, or they'll go elsewhere. If you want to keep those valuable prospects, it's important to meet their expectations and provide them with the answers they need right away.

Chatbots are artificial intelligence (AI) technology that can be used to provide prospects with fast access to the information they need. Chatbots can be used to answer questions, provide customer service, or even sell products. By using natural language processing (NLP), chatbots can understand the intent of a customer's question and respond accordingly. This technology is becoming increasingly popular as it can provide a more humanlike interaction than traditional methods such as phone or email.

Here's 3 instances of how chatbots can produce leads and provide prospects and clients with the best experience.

1 Scale Up Customer Experience

Customers today expect a high level of service and support, and chatbots can help businesses scale up their customer experience to meet these demands. Chatbots can provide prompt and personalised responses to customer queries, and can even handle complex transactions and tasks. By automating customer service, businesses can free up their staff to focus on more important tasks and can provide an improved experience for their customers.

HubSpot's chatbot builder makes it easy to create automated conversations between customers and employees. This can help streamline customer service by providing quick answers to common questions. Chatbots can also help qualify leads and book appointments. Overall, chatbots can help save your team time and provide a much better experience for your customers.

Consider this, A customer asks you for technical assistance - your salespeople might not be the perfect team to help. Your services team might not be geared up to handle incoming sales requests, so it's important to have a plan for who will handle what types of customer requests.

HubSpot provides a fantastic service that allows you to set up your chatbots so they will automatically route client queries to your support team and forward leads onto the sales agent who possesses that relationship. This is extremely beneficial as it helps to manage expectations with customers, and prevents any one person from being 'on' 24/7. You can also set your office hours on HubSpot and deliver different responses to questions asked outside of that timeframe. This is a great way to manage your time and make sure that you are getting the most out of your chatbots.

2 Streamline The Buyer's Journey for Prospects

Chatbots can streamline the buyer's journey for prospects by providing a personalised and convenient experience. By understanding the buyer's needs and preferences, chatbots can provide relevant information and recommendations at each stage of the buyer's journey. This can help prospects make informed decisions and ultimately convert into customers.

While the chatbot functionality described above makes it easy for website visitors to book sales meetings, there are other potential applications for chatbots in the sales process as well. Both your prospects and your pipeline will benefit from anything that speeds up and simplifies your sales process. Relevance is important when it comes to your messaging.

If you're anything like most people, you probably don't want to have to answer a bunch of questions before getting the help you need - especially if those questions aren't even relevant to your specific situation.

For example, if a customer visits your pricing page, it's a signal that they're interested in buying what you're selling. They'll probably want to talk about the different options and potential packages to see if it's a good fit for what they need. A site-wide templated chatbot response probably won't work well in this situation.

HubSpot's chatbot builder, however, lets you customise messages based on prospects' or customers' current pages, allowing you to align questions based on prospects' or customers' stages.

3 Engage Your Customers at Every Touchpoint

As famous Confederate General Robert E. Lee once said, "There is nothing in this world sweeter to a man's ears than the sound of his name." And chatbots have taken this advice to heart. By making the chatbot sound familiar, it can emulate a real person on the other end of the keyboard and create a more personal experience for the user. 

People usually know when they're speaking with a chatbot, but as long as the conversation covers their unique circumstances and pain points, it's not a big deal.

The HubSpot chatbot builder integrates seamlessly with the CRM, making it easy to personalise messages for your contacts using tokens like 'Name' and 'Company'. Plus, if you have a multi-lingual website, even the Atlantic can't stop you from interacting with your customers in their language. 

Unfamiliar with Coding! Not A Problem

There is a lot to learn about chatbots. The HubSpot chatbot builder makes it easy to set up chatbots without coding knowledge. Think carefully before jumping in 

  • Create a chatbot and decide what action you want users to take. Are you interested in having them book a meeting, search the knowledge base, submit a help ticket, or speak live to someone? You can only access some bot types after subscribing to certain plans.
  • You can either display your chatbot as genuine or make it clear that it is a robot (we recommend opting for the latter!)
  • Choose where on your website the chatbot should appear
  • If your bot is available 24/7, and when it needs to change its message outside normal business hours

Having done this, you can go to the 'Chatflows' section of HubSpot (under 'Conversations') and start creating your workflow. There's nothing complicated about it. Lastly, HubSpot provides a fantastic overview if you need a guide

 Automating Your Facebook Messenger Chats…

People use Facebook Messenger not just to chat, but to connect with businesses too. By connecting your company's Facebook Messenger account to HubSpot, you can enable a default instant reply feature. This allows you to set greeting messages in the tone of voice that fits your brand. You can also allocate conversations to specified people and teams. It is important to keep in mind that you have seven days to respond to an inquiry. 

Make HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Chatbots Work for You

Chatbots offer a seemingly endless range of business benefits. Automating repetitive tasks can free up employees' time to focus on more strategic tasks.

They can likewise help to enhance customer service by delivering fast and appropriate answers to client queries. Additionally, chatbots can help to boost sales by providing recommendations and upselling opportunities to customers. They can also help to collect customer feedback and data, which can be used to improve business operations.

If you're looking for ways to generate leads and provide better customer service with fewer resources, then HubSpot's chatbots may be a good option for you. HubSpot’s chatbots are powered by artificial intelligence and can be used to answer common questions, schedule appointments, and provide support.

Chatbots can free up your team's time so they can focus on more complex tasks, and they can also help you keep your customers happy by providing quick and efficient service.

For example, you can set up a workflow to automatically send an email on Monday morning to any leads generated by your chatbot over the weekend, thanking them for their patience and letting them know that you'll be in touch this week. This can help keep your leads warm and engaged until you're able to follow up with them.

Get in touch today to learn how automation can help you unlock HubSpot's full potential and generate leads that convert using HubSpot's chatbots.

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Mark Hullin

Closing the HubSpot Adoption Gap #HubSpotIsNotaStrategy