Chatbots are growing in popularity and sophistication. As machine learning and AI’s capabilities improve, chatbots have become a must-have feature for e-commerce businesses that are too small to have staff on-call around the clock.
There is no longer any reason to miss out on a potential sale because your online visitor lives in a different time zone or visits your site late into the night. The current crop of chatbots can collect answers to surveys, answer simple queries, process online payments. And they can seamlessly transition into a live chat should the conversation require a more complex response. Here are a few of the best chatbots you can add to your e-commerce store to improve the visitor experience.
Chatfuel
Chatfuel is shareware, which makes this chatbot one of the most affordable for small businesses. Despite its shareware status, Chatfuel has some big names attached to it, which all achieved excellent results after implementing it. As a result, the fully featured chatbot for Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger delivered a 3.4x return on ad spend and a 71% reduction in cost-per-conversion for LEGO.
Botmother
Botmother is a cross-platform chatbot for a business you can build yourself. Add the features you need without resorting to complex code or use a template to save time. Once created, you can launch Botmother across all platforms, including Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber, OK, and VK. Capabilities include online payments, send postponed messages, built-in analytics, and integration with Zapier. Dialogues with a visitor can also be transferred to a live operator if required.
Flow XO
Flow XO is a chatbot you can start using for free and upgrade its capabilities with paid options as your needs grow. You can gather information by getting the chatbot to ask a series of questions, answer simple questions, accept payments, send confirmation emails, or whatever else you need it to do. Transitioning to a live operator when things get too complicated is seamless. Moreover, it works with Messenger, Slack, Twilio SMS, or as a standalone service on your website.
Photo by Nattakorn Maneerat, 123RF.
Bot Kits
Bot Kits works in the cloud using the Microsoft Bot Framework. Build a chatbot to do what you need and embed it directly into Facebook, Telegram, Skype, and your website. The comprehensive interface provides for endless combinations of bot behavior and the ability to collect statistics. If a feature you need isn’t available, Bot Kits can integrate with external libraries and plugins. Bot Kits is an open-source project, so it’s free, but it’s also one of the most complex and least user-friendly options available. A paid version called BotKit CMS includes a flow-chart system to develop chatbots without code.
ActiveChat
ActiveChat comes with a visual chatbot builder that integrates with WooCommerce and Shopify APIs (Application Programming Interface). A range of templates covering various scenarios makes it simple to get up and running fast; plus, you can send emails directly from the chatbot through your SMTP server. Subsequently, the pricing plans start at free for 100 chatbot conversations a month, which is perfect for small businesses getting started. The next level plan starts at an affordable $9 a month.