Chatbot Playbook

What are chatbots? In fact, what are bots? What is a bot and what does it do?

A bot is essentially a program that completes automated tasks, whereas a chatbot is a program that’s designed to chat with a human. Some chatbots are intended to mimic human behavior (they’re intended to act as though they are real), while others are just curiosities.

One of the first bots out there was the Eliza program, which essentially started the chatbot playbook. Eliza pretended to be a therapist and prompted users to enter information about themselves. By repeatedly asking users to disclose information, Eliza could appear convincingly human. But the illusion broke down quickly.

Today, chatbots can be extremely compelling. They use artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms to speak convincingly like people. They often don’t meet the classic bot definition; because they aren’t “hard-coded,” they can produce unexpected behavior. But they are still bots, and they are still ultimately under the control of their programming.

Many businesses, both B2C and B2B, use chatbots to perform live functions. Chatbots can provide basic customer support and connect users to information, while also routing users to the appropriate humans to take their call. Thus, marketers and advertisers are expanding the chat bot meaning every day, with progressively more advanced solutions.

The most basic chatbots definition or chatbots meaning is that chatbots are methods for automatically using website chat to communicate with the users of the site. With bots, this communication is “canned,” or pre-programmed, rather than coming from live agents. However, there is much more to a chatbot online platform than this. Now, platforms provide businesses with options for customer identification, message customization, and more. Because of this, people who discuss this technology may be thinking of a different chatbot meaning than each other once the details are considered. One may be thinking of a basic bot for a small site, while another may be thinking of a full-featured sales suite that just happens to include a chat widget for website.

Notably, there are multiple terms that can be used to refer to this concept. It is sometimes known as conversational marketing, website chat, live chat, or other terms that include the word or the concept of online chat.

As with any other sales aid, it helps to have a playbook in place when you deploy a website chatbot. Your chatbot playbook covers things like scripts to use, whether or not to offer the ability for customers to switch from the bot to a live agent, where on your site to add B2B chatbots, and more.

The playbook for chatbots will depend on the purpose of your bots. You’ll want different scripts and prompts for bots meant for sales than you would use for those meant to provide customer support. Conversational marketing playbooks often call for bots to pop up on pages that are of interest to those interested in buying your products. Meanwhile, support bots often don’t appear unless a customer goes to the “support” page.

It’s worth it to take some time to think of details as you devise your chatbot builder playbook. A good playbook for chatbot selling can help greatly to improve your chatbot conversion rate, while a top-notch bot playbook for support can decrease customer frustration and reduce the need for customers to switch to live agents.

Chat Playbook

The easiest way to understand the “chat playbook” is to look at examples of bots. What are bots on Instagram? Often, they are bots meant to simulate comments. They post interesting comments and try to provoke people to look at their links and follow their accounts. In so doing, they’re able to automate social media interaction. What is a bot on Twitter? Usually, a bot that re-tweets and likes. What is a bot on YouTube? Often a bot used to boost the engagement on videos.

What is a bot on social media for? Usually, to increase engagement. Bots can post things at regular intervals, re-tweet things that meet the right keywords, and like comments that are associated with their account. It makes it easier to manage the social media system. Of course, there are darker examples. As an example, there are bot malware examples, which share malicious programs.

So, what is a bot in computer terms? It’s any program that performs automatic behaviors. What are bots on social media? They’re going to be bots that are trying to replicate human interaction — a lot like chatbots. If people want to know what are chatbots on Samsung or what are chatbots Android, they may have already talked to them. They may have just been very convincing.

The chat technology you use will be one of the defining factors in what your chat playbook will look like. Some chatbots must be pre programmed in their entirety, while other providers offer AI chat technology that allows for some of the live chat software responses to be generated on the fly. The latter have come a long way from Cleverbot, an early AI chatbot that simply conversed with website visitors for entertainment purposes. Modern, business-oriented bots are less likely to make nonsensical responses, likely because the context of the conversations is limited.

While we cannot provide an exhaustive list of chatbots here, we will mention some of the most popular live chat app providers. When you look at this industry, you can expect to see chatbot software offered by Terminus, Drift, Pure Chat, Tidio, Olark, Olark Chatting, Olark Live Chat Software, HubSpot Live Chat, Mitsuku Chatbot, Leadformly Chatbot, Chatbot Streamlabs, and more. You can even get an anime chatbot!

All of these chatbot providers have products that are at least a little unique from each other, and some are more than a little different. Therefore, your playbook should take the specifics of your chatbot technology into account. For example, if you’re using Olark live chat, you’ll be able to do a lot more than you could with a novelty-grade anime chatbot app. For business, it’s best to look for full-featured conversational marketing tools.

Drift Playbook

Let’s take a look at the Drift playbook. First, there’s a couple of different things you could be referring to when you say Drift. There’s Drift games, Drift Scent, Drift Fortnite, and even Formula Drift. But what we’re looking at with this Drift meaning is the Drift chatbot. Get a Drift login, and you can create a B2B or B2C chatbot that you can place on your website and use for live customer chat and support.

According to Drift GlassDoor ratings, it’s a good company to work for —and one that is expanding rapidly. Drift is a company that specializes in AI-driven chatbot technology. Chatbots can help marketing and sales teams secure leads, can help customer service representatives appropriately channel communications, and can provide a first-touch contact with customers interested in products and services.

There are numerous advantages to using chatbots on sites. Chatbots can give customers basic information, open help desk tickets, and perform basic triage. They can run 24/7 and they can make it so that sales teams and CSRs are more effective at their own jobs.

But Drift isn’t the only product out there, either. There are a number of chatbot solutions, including both Intercom (another leading chatbot service) and Terminus (an all-in-one sales platform). Chatbots can be well-integrated with sales platforms and customer relationship management suites, so all customer-based information, journeys, and touch points can be appropriately aggregated and analyzed.

While the first online chat system was actually created in 1973 at a university, Drift is said to be the creator of the conversational marketing category. In fact, this company even wrote a conversational marketing book as well as many Drift playbooks.

As you might expect, you can get far more than the Drift app from this company. They also offer Drift resources to help you be successful. These include Drift playbook examples and Drift playbook templates, a Drift chat playbook, Drift chatbot playbook, a course that gives you conversational marketing certification, Drift chatbot examples, other Drift bot examples, Drift playbook certification, and really good chatbot examples Drift. These will definitely answer questions like “what is Drift chat,” “what is Drift chatbot,” and “what is conversational marketing Drift.”

You will gain access to most of these resources once you enter your Drift login into your Drift app and get the Drift welcome message. Once at your Drift dashboard, you’ll also be able to use Drift analytics, get Drift support, create personalized playbooks Drift, decide Drift playbook priority, and more. Drift playbook options and other materials will be different if you use Drift for support than if you use it for sales, so be sure to look around.

As this shows, Drift isn’t just a company that makes a product and then ignores it. Many Drift careers are centered on providing information about conversational marketing, devising examples of Drift technology in use, and providing Drift support. The company constantly works to stay ahead of changes, so their information for conversational marketing 2020 will be different from both prior and future years. Because of this, it’s worth it to keep checking the Drift blog and all of their other resources so that you keep up with the latest recommendations and Drift chatbot developments.

Chatbot Conversation Examples

What are some chatbot conversation examples? Let’s take a look at Chatbox. Chatbox is one of the leading chat solutions; there’s a Chatbox Facebook page you can visit for more information (including the Chatbox definition and technical specifications). Many people look for chatbox OBS (a chat you can use for OBS Studio), chatbox HTML (customization codes), or other chat box or chatbox software. But when you refer to the We Are Chatbox campaign, you’re referring to Chatbox conversation technology.

The Chatbox Chat Bot can be experienced online. Chat Box Online is a feature that is meant to seem as human as possible, using artificially intelligent algorithms. The Chat Box app was founded in 2014 and has been raising investor funding since. It is not a publicly traded company.

Based in Seattle, the Chatbox solution generates about 1.8 million in sales every year. Competitors include Drift and Intercom. It has 13 employees and appears to be a company that is generally positive to work for. Those who are interested in the chatbot technology can connect with the company for a demo, or look at general chatbots examples.

In general, chatbot conversation examples will be obviously non-human; they will be designed to be friendly and direct. But they can be programmed to be very human, or they can seamlessly transfer individuals to people if the communication has to be escalated.

Many people find it worthwhile to study chatbot examples before they create their own. Fortunately, there are many ways to find chatbot conversation examples. One of the best is to look at actual implementations on live websites. Amazon live chat and live chat PlayStation can be seen on their support pages. They have excellent, working examples to observe. For B2B chatbot examples, try looking at websites with chatbots that belong to the major players in your industry or check out some HubSpot chatbot examples.

It’s also a good idea to check out a variety of chatbot types. Most still present themselves in the standard “box on your website” format, but there are also bots that come with human-looking avatars, such as Chatbot Evie. You may find that the best chatbot for website purposes is one of these more-advanced models.

The purpose of your chatbot and the focus of your business will also play big parts in determining which option you think is the best live chat and the best chatbots for you to use. Because of this, it’s hard for anyone who doesn’t know these things to categorically call a single option “best.” What is good for a sales-oriented game company isn’t the same as what will be good for a team providing support for industrial equipment.

Once you see some examples of conversational marketing, you’re sure to find that you prefer some over others. Follow up on these to find out which providers are behind them and get one for your own company.

B2B Chatbot Case Study

As marketers review chatbot design examples, they should consider how these chatbots can be used for B2B sales. A B2B chatbot case study can show the core benefits of having a chatbot accessible to potential clients.

In chatbot examples, you can see that chatbots provide a first contact point. It can qualify leads for the organization, by determining what stage of the buyer’s journey the individual is in. In B2B sales, this is even more important; B2B clients tend to spend a large amount of time in the buyer’s journey compared to B2C customers.

A bot account can also be used to provide better customer service. What is a bot account? It’s a single chatbot account that then forwards inquiries to the applicable departments. Some great chatbot tips include: having a chatbot escalate customer service requests, having a chatbot forward the best-qualified leads, and having a chatbot provide explainer videos and other in-depth information.

By looking at B2B case studies in your industry, you can further identify the benefits of chatbots for your organization. Chatbots can be connected to infobases and can provide in-depth answers to common questions, thereby reducing the need for customer service personnel. When chatbots are able to resolve customer service issues on their own, they can greatly reduce customer service costs.

Further, the right chatbot can provide a positive experience for the user; positive experiences are instrumental to engagement and to commitment.

Reading chatbot case studies can also give you ideas about implementation in various scenarios. You can find a B2B case study, and sometimes several, at the sites of the various B2B chatbot providers. B2B chatbot use cases will describe the problems that users wished to solve, how they implemented their chatbots, and the results that were obtained.

Some of these studies are available at companies that also offer a website chatbot free, but you can typically find more information on sites that charge. However, some providers offer one level of chatbot free, and then charge for their other tiers. These companies also have good levels of information available.

One of the reasons for this is that purely free chatbots aren’t meant for serious use scenarios. Instead, those that you can use to add chatbot to website free are very basic, and in some cases, are even advertised as being for fun. Since they aren’t trying to meet business needs with their product, it doesn’t make sense for them to offer support materials for companies, either.

Enterprise-grade chatbot companies are able to afford not only the dedicated coding team, but the staff needed to generate resources, pay attention to conversational marketing trends, and generate a conversational marketing PDF whenever there is enough new information to put out new material. They can also create and maintain a repository of information, such as a B2B chatbot case study, chatbot playbooks, and more.

Chatbot Scripts

One of the first things you’ll need to look into when looking at chatbots is how to build a chatbot. Chatbots are created through bot programming. What is bot programming? A combination of chatbot scripts and machine learning AI.

First, the chatbot scripts outline the basic behavior of the chatbot; what it should say and when. But there’s also artificial intelligence. There are two types of intelligence: Narrow AI and General AI. What are chatbots in AI? Hopefully narrow. Narrow AI is used for specific, mundane, routine tasks. General AI is intended to (eventually) be self aware.

You can look at a What are Chatbots PDF for more of an overview. A basic commercial chatbot will be a blend of built-in scripting and artificial intelligence. The AI system is intended to identify what the customer wants and respond appropriately. But all remarks are scripted, because the company needs to maintain control over what the chatbot says.

This differs from recreational AIs and scientific AIs. For those who are developing cutting-edge recreational AI technology, it’s more likely that the chatbot’s own artificial intelligence will be in control of the chatbot’s responses. For obvious reasons, that’s not always desirable when it comes to business and sales.

Chatbot scripts are the meat of all chatbot implementations. The chatbot conversation design will direct what the bot will say, when, and to whom. Even live chat follows scripts, though for them, sales and support teams are trained in what to say instead of being programmed. The basic underlying principle is the same either way.

Many people use a chatbot conversation template as the starting point for their chatbot conversation script. This makes it easier to see which points should be made, and in which order. You can see a chatbot conversation flow template or view chatbot scripts examples at many chatbot platform companies.

It is common for a chat company to offer a chatbot builder wizard, and when they do, it’s even easier to set your bot up so that it can handle a chatbot conversation. Many even offer ways to customize conversations, and in some cases, personalize them for specific visitors to your site.

Live chat often overlaps bot-driven chat, though in some cases, you might want a live-only solution. Either way, live chat customer support and sales both follow scripts. Chat teams are trained in these scripts, so they always know what to say when a site visitor activates the live chat website plugin. Live chat service providers often have script examples available for study. They also tend to offer chatbots as well, and may advertise how easy it is for a visitor to switch from the bot to live help.

As with bot chat, it can be difficult to find an option for getting live chat on website free. However, some may offer a very basic version for free and then charge for the tiers that are robust enough for serious business. Then, the free version can be good for testing the waters or just seeing what it takes to get the live chat bot active on your site. Free trials of more robust live support chat offerings are more popular, and for the majority of users, more useful.

There are many options available with live chat. For example, some will let users see a message like “live chat typing” when an agent is typing, and this can reduce abandonment rates. Other popular offerings include customization, user identification, methods for automating live chat, and help with live chat integration.

What Are Chatbots Used For

Just what are chatbots used for? You might be surprised to discover how many chatbots there actually are out there and what the major chatbot design principles or chatbot design patterns are.

The most advanced chatbot design framework occurs in recreational technology. These are chatbot conversation design tools that are built to actually seem like people. Some of them are used for malicious purposes, such as scams. But others are just used to produce a type of robotic companionship.

Other chatbots are used for commercial purposes. For businesses, chatbot designing tips are very different. An efficient chatbot designing project for a company is going to be more or less based on pushing leads toward commitment and further engagement, rather than just holding a conversation.

While companies can look into how to design a chatbot in Python from scratch, it’s usually better to purchase a platform. A platform can be integrated into a customer relationship management suite and can make it easier for the organization to hit the ground running.

Design Chatbot Conversation Flow

To start using a chatbot, organizations must first design chatbot conversation flow. From there, the chatbot is able to fit into an overall B2B marketing strategy. Let’s look at an example, which could fit in with any list of chatbots.

First, the chatbot will ask the user for their basic information, including their email. So, even if the user abandons the chat, the business will know who they are and will have leads. Developing leads is one of the major benefits of chatbots and part of the core chatbot marketing strategy.

Then, the chatbot is going to ask a user what they need help with. Depending on what the user asks for, the chatbot may refer them to an infobase article, may try to get more information, may try to escalate, or may even try to help them. A great example: the chatbot on most major eCommerce sites can initiate refunds, help people make purchases, create help tickets, schedule demos, and more.

To get started, companies can get a chat bots download and integrate it with their site and their CRM solution. Solutions such as Terminus already have chatbots built in to help a business get started.