Taking advantage of the fact that I talk about managing expectations, we will differentiate between the management of the bot’s user expectations, and the management of the expectations of the companies that consider the development of a bot (what technology do I need? What is this about AI? )

Management of the expectations of the user or end customer

The first thing to keep in mind to put a chatbot in the market is the management of expectations of the end customer, that is, of that person who will interact with the chatbot.

A bot, from the moment you throw it, becomes the visible face of a brand. Many companies start with a very broad idea of what to do with a bot, which is usually phased out, so that they start an initial development with a smaller scope. This is very normal, however, in the world of chatbots is where the management of expectations comes into play.

If your chatbot has limited functionality, you have to be transparent with the client and explain in what specific areas the bot will be able to help you, that is, you have to avoid at all costs about selling the bot’s capabilities, and then frustrate the user of the same. By the way, if you use Artificial Intelligence in a bot, do not worry if you find the type of user who wants to break the bot … some have already defined it as the “smart “user profile.

Chatbots and business expectations management

Let us now enter into another type of expectations management, that of companies that want to develop a chatbot: what can a chatbot do? The truth is that there are capabilities and technology to do almost everything, but depending on the scope of the project, development will take more or less time (nothing new, right?), And the use of certain capabilities, such as AI tools commercial, has a cost – in most cases in SaaS model.

Again, the same question as in my previous post, is any chatbot good? It shouldn’t, just as not any website is good, or not every app is worth it… In short, not just any chatbot is a good chatbot or it will improve the way you do something today.

So, what to do? Define the functional scope of the bot, what do you want it to be able to do, in which channels do you want it to be able to do it, and design how to do it, this will help you understand the technological dependencies. A bot is a new front, which in addition to having its logic, will need for some use cases to integrate with other systems to respond dynamically, in other cases no.

In those cases in which we have a certain type of technological dependence on another system and / or another different team, these are some of the questions we can ask ourselves: do we need that integration? What does this integration entail? Are we sure that functionality is such a priority from the beginning? Do we technically already have a web service / API that we can reuse?

The million-dollar question: artificial intelligence yes or no?

Well it depends on the bot. The use of artificial intelligence in a bot is something to evaluate in detail in the design phase.

A priori, if your bot has a much defined functionality, and has a limited number of possibilities, it doesn’t seem like a bad decision to guide the conversation following a tree logic. Perhaps it makes sense to develop a chatbot via Facebook using buttons without allowing the user to enter free text, but what if the bot’s scope is completely different?

Imagine the case we were commenting before transferring a FAQ of frequent questions to a bot , here the use of Artificial Intelligence is more obvious, because if not, we would not be capitalizing on improvements in terms of the user experience that the bot pursues, that is , that knows me to give the answer that I am looking for. In those cases where the possibilities of the bot are broader, the use of AI will be more justified, but it doesn’t always have to be that way.

The importance of the chatbot design phase

What is important is to design a dialogue that allows the conversation to be directed towards the objective of your bot.

If you want a customer to choose between two cities: Toronto and Montreal, why not enable buttons so you simply have to click? It seems obvious, those users with whom we have tried, thank you for making it easier to choose between the options available instead of having to type it. Now, if you have to choose between 100 different cities, and I have to select one of the last ones, it seems that the most appropriate is to combine the button option with the most frequent answers and enable free text for the rest of the case, that is, a mixed model of buttons and AI.

All these types of issues, have to be assessed in a pre-development design phase, there are cases where Artificial Intelligence is justified and others not, will depend on the scope and concrete design of the bot. Also, the cost of developing a bot that integrates artificial intelligence is different from that of a bot with a logic based on the use of quick replies.

Clarify the purpose of your Chatbot

I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve been talking with a client or a fellow designer about what they want to achieve with their chatbot to finally end up listening to a lot of different ideas.

For example, recently I was talking with a designer about a chatbot that I wanted to build to promote a vegan lifestyle. He wanted his chatbot to do all kinds of things, including offering recipe tips, providing nutritional information, listing upcoming events in the area, selling vegan products (through Amazon) and educating users about the benefits of becoming vegan.

That was when I asked: “What is the Happy Way?”

After further discussions, I discovered that this person was self-financing his chatbot and that they needed it to earn some money to make the chatbot worthwhile. Therefore, the Happy Way for this chatbot was identified as “the use of affiliate links to sell Amazon vegan products.”

Again, your vegan chatbot can and will surely serve all the other functions listed above, but the most desirable (or “happiest”) route for this particular compilation was that in which the user clicks on one of the links and just buy something from Amazon. That income would pay your time to add other features such as a recipe database.

The undisputed advantages of chatbot are causing different departments of the same company to be interested in introducing them. As a result we can see internal bots that boost communications between departments, assistant conversations that serve the final consumer and others that help in the process of attracting new customers. However, for a few months we are seeing how bots in Human Resources are beginning to take relevance.

Talent acquisition

The job search process is usually long and tedious. From the time the offer is published until the company opts for the final candidate, there are several steps in which teams lose a great deal of time. To this are added other functions that also depend on the department, such as holiday management or bureaucratic procedures. In fact, according to the study carried out by Monsters and G2V Careers, recruiters spend a total of 78,352 minutes per year on average per year or 60% of their work per year. Incredible true?

As a consequence, recruiting processes are extended in some cases to unsuspected limits, causing the satisfaction rate to be low for both the HR department and the candidates. This reality comes into contact precisely with another key point. We currently use Linkedin, Infojobs, Domestika and many other applications and websites to find. Given that future employees are accustomed to using web platforms to talk with their friends, family … why not introduce a bot that helps both sides of the line?

Starting from this context, today bots can be introduced into the world of Human Resources in two different ways. On the one hand, it can help the departments themselves to manage with more agility the process of recruiting candidates and boost the creation of the famous short-list. At present there are already bots related to this functionality and from AppStudio we have had the opportunity to know how they emerged in the first person.

But this is far from its only function. According to the survey conducted by Care Builder 2018, 68% of people seeking employment have a bad impression of the firm that does not contact them, either for better or for worse, immediately. With this in mind, the bot could notify both those selected and those not selected in the final election in a matter of hours and automatically, thereby improving the impression of the candidates.

Communication with employees

Although in the process of attracting talent, the role of bots is very interesting, in the organization and internal communication is also key.

When we talk about companies with a high volume of employees, internal communications can be a real mess. Emails that not everyone reads, communications that can go unnoticed … They are some of the inconveniences with which the HR and Internal Communication teams meet daily. With this in mind, the bots present a real opportunity to report certain issues related to staff management.

Let’s give some examples. Imagine that you need your company’s employees to fill out a series of forms for internal procedures that you are doing. Currently, you use online forms that are sent by email to the entire template. An email that the employee has to read, fill out and send. However, with the chatbot the sending would continue to be massive, in unison, but with a difference, they can now fill in the fields through a conversational format directly from their mobile and without having to fill it all at the same time. Maybe now you are thinking:

“But this is not the same as the lifelong survey?”

Yes but no. In life, forms matter (and a lot) and, in this case, you are making it easier for your employees to carry out the processes through a platform they use daily and to which they are more than familiar. Moreover, they do not even have to complete the process at the same time, you can resume it whenever they deem appropriate. And that is not all, as with other systems all responses will be received and grouped to facilitate the assimilation of information to the maximum.

Sending information through conversational platforms is simply revolutionary. Just as you can subscribe to your favourite media to receive the last hour of your preferred section, through the company’s internal bot you can send communications leaked by departments, general shipments, last minute notifications … In summary, all the information that you need to notify the template with the advantage of being on a conversational platform like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger where they are constantly.

Taking into account this reality, and these cases that demonstrate that it is possible, it is a matter of time for conversational assistants to be incorporated into the process of selecting future employees. Not only to boost the tasks of professionals in the HR sector but also to improve the experience of candidates and employees. We must not forget that the term that gives name to this department, are the people and, as a consequence, we must spare no effort to improve the care given to them in this type of process.

The post Chatbots: Design, Management, Expectations, and Human Resources appeared first on Zazz.

We are facing one of the clearest and strongest trends of the coming years. According to studies conducted by Business Insider among 800 companies in Europe and South Africa, 80% of companies say they will incorporate chatbots by 2020.

What are they?

We talk about chatbots when we refer to those programs designed to automatically interact with received messages. These can be created to respond in the same way, differently or even adapt responses depending on the situation.

They are undoubtedly the closest to what some imagined as the future. We are before conversational agents that mimic a real conversation and that thanks to machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) improve the user experience simulating text and language.

Chatbots are used in SMS, messaging services on Facebook or Twitter and also in chat windows on websites.

According to Facebook, about 2 billion messages are sent each month between users and companies. And 53% of people say they are more likely to acquire a product or service from companies that can communicate through instant messaging services

But why are chatbots important?

A report carried out by Drift this 2018 indicates that among the advantages of chatbots, it stands out that they can offer a 24-hour service, as well as quick and detailed answers. At the level of productivity of the company, it is also an advantage: if the volume of chats increases and we do not have enough staff to meet all the demands quickly and effectively, chatbots can intervene to respond to incoming chats. In this way, the response timeout decreases.

Why do we use chatbots?

• Productivity: assistance or access to information quickly.
• Efficiency: the chatbot “remembers” the preferences of the user and the information registered.
• Specific: the specific questions of the users are answered.
• Better response rate: there is no risk of users remaining without being served due to lack of staff. Chatbots ensure that the largest number of messages are answered.
• Automation: chatbots can reduce the workload of employees by having the answers ready for frequently asked questions such as office hours or location of the store.

More and more people are using the internet to search for their dream home. Real estate portals are just a touch away, make searching easier, and showcase a plethora of options that satisfy the desires and fit into consumers’ pockets. This is all simply, quickly and not at all bureaucratic. In today’s article, we will show you the main advantages of owning a chatbot as an online realtor and how it can help real estate agents across the country meet this increasingly digital demand.

Recently, a survey by consultancy Deloitte showed that in the year 2040, 40% of real estate purchases can be made entirely through the internet, even without the help of a broker. Therefore, in light of this new – and growing – consumer behavior, it is essential for real estate agents to adopt an online customer service system that is both fast, efficient and very functional.

It is just then that being able to count on a chatbot to fill the position of an online realtor makes all the difference. If you do not know yet, a chatbot is a technology that interprets, understands and predicts actions, being able to interact normally with humans through chat systems and that is increasingly falling in the taste of Brazilian Internet users. Get to know some of the key benefits of the tool and marvel at the power of bots for the real estate market.

Efficient service that promises to relieve the team

The chatbot system, which can be powered by artificial intelligence or pre-programmed scripts according to the sales objectives and target audience of each real estate agent, is ideal for answering first questions, solving the main doubts and solving possible problems and promises to unburden the team of brokers. This is because technology prevents a collaborator from always having to be online to serve site and social network visitors or from wasting their valuable time performing dull activities like answering repetitive questions and performing the SAC. So chatbot can act as an online realtor, meet new – and multiple – contacts, and pass on to the human team only the already heated leads. In the meantime, brokers get their breath to focus on what matters: selling more real estate.

Instant availability and 24 hours a day

A survey by a leading company that deals with internet statistics showed that 52% of respondents use night time to search real estate on the Internet. Chatbot with its 24/7 availability is the perfect tool to embrace this demand and meet contacts outside of business hours, even on weekends and holidays. Another advantage of technology is that time the bot’s response is almost instantaneous, thus decreasing the customer’s dropout and loss of interest due to ineffective service. That way, whenever a client comes to the real estate website, he can count on the bot to answer his questions and help him in his decision, regardless of the time and day of the week.

Friendly and affordable treatment

Unlike us, humans who can wake up sick or in a bad mood, chatbot as an online real estate agent has been thinking to value, above all, the quality of customer service and always available to help those in need. It is a mistake to think that as a robot, communication with a chatbot will always be mechanical. You can program your language and make it friendly and accessible by mimicking a conversation between two flesh and blood people. This small adjustment allows for greater proximity and identification with the customer, thus resulting in better service experience and, perhaps, the sale of the long-awaited property.

Capturing and converting leads to real estate may be easier than you might think. Especially if you can count on the help of chatbot specialized for the real estate market. If you own a real estate company, or even a builder or developer, it’s time to take advantage of technology’s benefits and facilities to convert more leads and make sales through contacts made through your institutional website and social networks.

How to capture more leads for real estate

If you don’t know it yet, leads are those potential customers who have already shown interest in your business or the properties and lots offered by you. They have already registered their personal and contact details (such as full name, email, and phone, etc.) in some form and expect to receive more information about their products and services or, perhaps, some exclusive content such as ebooks or special discounts.

The big challenge from this registration point is to nurture these leads for real estate and effectively convert them into purchases. However, for this to happen, it is necessary to establish a mutual relationship of interest and trust with the customer. Thus requiring that brokers always remain in touch and available to resolve questions quickly and quickly and effectively resolve problems that may arise during negotiations.

This is where investing in a specialized chatbot for the real estate market makes all the difference to those who always want to be ahead of the competition. The bot, as it is also known, is a technology that interprets, understands and predicts actions, and can normally interact with humans through chat systems. As such, it is regarded as the ideal tool for making the first call and maintaining direct contact with leads for real estate agents, acting as a practical, economical and very effective solution for automating lead heating.

Through artificial intelligence and predefined interactions, a chatbot can understand the wishes of potential customers and direct the conversation to capture the already heated lead data. That way, while chatbot serves and selects visitors to your site, sending only the most qualified real estate leads to your team, your brokers get their breath to focus only on selling real estate.

According to Neil Patel, digital marketing guru and New York Times bestselling author Hustle: The Power to Charge Your Life with Money, Meaning, and Momentum, chatbots can hold 40 to 60 percent of leads. The result is very positive, especially considering that the retention rate of conventional applications is between 20 and 40%.

Another advantage of being able to rely on chatbot is its availability to serve visitors to your site 24 hours a day, even on weekends and holidays. This allows you to generate and nurture leads even after business hours. Whenever your customer needs it, the bot will be there to serve and assist you in making your decision.

Finally, in addition to generating new signups, a chatbot is perfect for tightening your relationship with real estate leads. They can send you new messages with reminders, launches, promotions, properties similar to what customers have already searched for, and more! Just a little creativity and knowledge of the audience you want to reach.

Types of chatbots

There are simple chatbots that work based on certain keywords. However, if the user asks a question that does not contain any of the keywords, he may get an answer like “I’m sorry, I didn’t get it”.

We also have smart chatbots that respond with appropriate suggestions on the subject. Besides, all words spoken by customers are recorded for further processing.

How to use them?

Now that you know the advantages of using chatbots as part of your digital marketing and communication strategy, it’s time to get going and implement it, but where to start? As always, for the main thing: design your goals or ask yourself what you want to achieve with the implementation of the chatbots in your company and on what channels you will use them: social networks, your website or just as a method of customer service? To promote a product or launch?

Then you will have to determine what type of content will be used during the interaction with chatbots. A good strategy is to gather the most frequently asked questions from your users or the keywords most used by them. If you are not sure, you can inquire among the sales, customer service or marketing teams.

You will also have to define the tone of the questions. This should be in tune with your brand. Some companies have chatbots with their names, for example, and this can convey some warmth to some users.

For example, Avianca Airlines has a chatbot named Carla. This allows users to manage their trips with services such as national check-ins, itinerary checks, flight status updates, weather conditions, simple translations, and other useful reminders. Carla works 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.

Content Strategy

Touch to design welcome messages, questions and possible answers to provide users. Keep in mind that even if it is an automatic service, it should not sound “robotized” but must convey the spirit and voice of your brand.

Bot Builder of AppStudio allows you to give identity to chatbots thanks to personalized avatars that allow users to know when they are talking to a bot or a customer service agent, for example. At any time during this interaction, the human factor may intervene, either to answer, ask or end an interaction.

It’s a fact that chatbots are here to stay. If you are dealing with a real-estate business or as a matter of fact, any business that deals with customers frequently, you must incorporate a chatbot that is efficient, productive and enhances usability. Want to know more about the process, the Zazz team is always there to help.

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As it usually happens in most cases, when we talk about the development of chatbots we end up mixing pears with apples and watermelons with melons, so, with this post we want to give some visibility to what many of you ask, and what is it worth a chatbot? What is its cost?

I’m sure you agree with us that they are all fruits, but they all have a characteristic flavor, color, smell, etc. that makes them different from each other. The same happens with chatbots, you can think that everyone is the same or that once trained, you can with everything, but it is not like that. As not all are equal, not all involve the same time of development, technology, and cost and, therefore, in this post we are going to talk about one of the thorniest points in regards to the development of chatbots.

Well, if we leave aside the fruits and focus on these conversational assistants (which is what concerns us), we have to take into account that when developing a chatbot we will have several costs that we will differentiate between three:

• Construction of the chatbot and the costs related to the maintenance and / or evolution of the chatbot.
• Technology costs
• Cost of the channels.

Having said that, let’s address each one separately.

Need of Chatbot Development?

Entertain customer needs:

Chatbots could provide customers with a seamless experience, so they seem to be a favourite among a large number of people. This means that by adopting a new chatbot, organisations will excite their clients.

Works 24/7:

Many organisations want to continuously serve their clients, but because of a shortage of employees or money, that’s just not possible. However, chatbots are still ‘on’ and will cater to your clients, anytime as per needs.

Cut down operational costs:

With the assistance of AI chatbots, these costs can be greatly decreased. For many businesses, recruiting agents and adding the services required to serve customers around the clock will prove simply too expensive. Yet chatbots are helping to avoid these expenses.

Collect data & boost brands:

Customer information such as name, occupation, and contact details are collected by Chatbots to create customer profiles. They will also learn what clients are looking for, their expectations for goods and more.

Consistent evaluation and optimization:

Continuous evaluation and automation involves chatbots. Based on related areas such as user interface, linguistic skills, and usability, Chatbot performance must be monitored.

Customer expectations and boost brands:

Chatbots are well-designed to encourage a wide variety of prospects with brand values, have friendly connexions and create relationships with clients.

Price of The Construction of The Chatbot

At first, we will usually have to do the first version of the chatbot, which, like in all chatbot, will play several main parts:

The design of the conversations that give a tone and form to the answers (remember, the chatbot does not invent the answers, or if your chatbot is not trained with a question and its answer, it will not randomize the response of another business!).

The design and technical development (programming and integrations with other systems).

The linguistic training (prepare the chatbot of the different forms of questions of the users and in each language …). The price, the main functionality, is usually an initial implementation, which will be followed by new developments and training.

• What will the cost of the construction of the chatbot depend on? We have several concepts:
• From the number of questions to train him.
• The degree of difficulty of each of the answers (not the same as before “hello”, the chatbot answer “hello, do you think I tell you a curiosity?” And from there establish a conversation – we will have to define / design / implement and test-, to be just a “hello, what can I help you”),
• And how many integrations with other systems to identify who the client is and give him information about his balance?
• Of the number of languages.
• Of the number of channels in which you want to display them, etc.

Cost of Technology to be Used

Some bot builders like Xenioo make your life easier, and they allow (i) the training of intentions (the doubts of the clients) with their engine, but also with that of IBM or Google, (ii) the implementation of dialogues or (iii) ) the deployment in several channels . These technologies have a monthly fee per use that vary depending on the number of interactions.

Something similar happens with tools such as Google Dialogflow or IBM Watson Convesation which serve for one of the parts of the chatbot such as language recognition (NLP). The NLP allows you to know what the client wants (although, if you do not accompany it with another technology, it is usually short for the management of conversations and to develop a dialogue with ¾ questions with the client). With these technologies there is also a cost for each interaction to the system (each time the client speaks or we answer) and about which, generally, and again, depending on the use case, we will have to accompany it with integrations and / or developments ad- hoc to keep conversations adapted to our business (no technology makes magic alone). In short, like any SaaS model, it will depend on the success of your chatbot and the volume of users that you know will use it.

If you talk about 2,000 clients a month who are going to consult us 5 times a month, and each conversation can have 10 average interactions, we would talk about an NLP cost of 0.002 € / interaction. Consequently, for 100,000 interactions we get a cost of € 200 / month in the technology to understand what they mean; additionally, if we do not talk about a very basic, we will have the cost of hosting the rest of the developments, the management of those servers, etc. It will depend on whether or not your company can take over.

If you talk about 20,000 clients, we may already go to 2,000 € / month. In these cases what you have to consider is that the implementation cost is fixed, regardless of how many people use the chatbot because the cost depends on the equipment you have to use to develop it. However, later we will have to keep in mind that the more people use it, the higher the cost of the technology (and this cost will be every month).

Cost of the channel you want to be in

Do you want to deploy in WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Alexa? If so, you will have to bear in mind that some of these environments may involve additional expenses. Is it hard to have a chatbot running on Facebook? Do not; but it does have it in WhatsApp, given the working format of the official WhatsApp API providers. As we said, regardless of the costs that we have discussed in the previous points, WhatsApp implies an additional cost that you have to take into account:

WhatsApp case: when we talk about deploying in WhatsApp you have to take into account the cost that will have access to the API of the messaging app itself. As well as a series of cost based on parameters established by the company. In this sense, we recommend you read this article prepared by Angel Hern, managing partner of Chatbot Choco, a company specialized in the development of chatbots on various channels and, especially, on WhatsApp.

Cost of a voice chatbot?

For the simple chatbot cost without voice, you have to include the cost of integrating a voice-to-text transcription service and the cost per use, so that:

On the one hand, you will have (i) the cost of developing the chatbot without the option of being a voice chatbot, whose price will depend on the functionality you have and the integrations that are necessary (examples: does it allow payment? Databases need to be connected?) And (ii) the cost per use of the external natural language processing service that you use, if you do not use a small engine developed by you.

On the other hand you will have, (ii) the cost of integrating -on the bot without a developed voice- a transcription service and (ii) the cost for its use.

Where do I get that transcription service?

Technology companies have voice cognitive services that allow us to collect an audio and convert it to text. We talk about Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon…

The truth is that what I tell above is the case of basic transcription, but if you need something more complex like: Recognize the voice of the speaker.

Convert from speech to text a conversation in which two different interlocutors participate. For example, in a call center. Being able to manage the audio when there is background noise, or use a specific vocabulary, you can also train your voice service. But beware, to say “I want a flight to Madrid-Paris urgent for tomorrow” you do not need this option.

In summary

Taking into account all these points, the cost of a chatbot depends on the use case you want, we can talk about:

• An initial prototype of 5,000 euros or 20,000 € [6,000 USD dollars – 25,000 USD]
• Cases of elaborated uses of € 15,000 or € 50,000 to € 60,000 [USD 18,000 – USD 70,000].

Those that involve setting up a specific architecture and the order of magnitude that we can talk about are different, given that the need is different. Sometimes, it is possible to have a profile that does the training, which is the cost of your employees, of another that makes the design of the conversations, and that another company makes you the implementation of the complex answers and integrations between systems. Either way, they are usually profiles that you have to involve.

I hope the post has been helpful, and that it helps you understand that we have several concepts:

• Creation of the chatbot (payment for the initial development of chatbot): which can be around € 5,000 – € 20,000 for the little brothers (“prototypes”, chatbots for a purpose, or in a language); or move in the 25,000-50,000 € slots when we move to more “powerful” chatbots or that take into account several languages.
• Technology cost (€ 150 – € 400 / month depending on the case but for low volumes).
• Support / maintenance costs (which could be around € 300 – € 1,000 / month per language), and / or evolutionary costs (which are usually evaluated as new implementations).

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