How to Create WordPress Chatbots and What are Their Benefits

Chatbot Plugin is a vital solution for customers to get in touch with the business. With the help of the chatbot plugin, customers can get answers to their questions. Integrating AI-powered chatbots into websites has become a mainstay of efficient, cost-effective, and satisfactory customer service. In fact, Drift’s 2020 State of Conversational Marketing report states that chatbots are the fastest-growing brand communication channel, with a usage increase of 92% since 2019. Chatbots yield largely positive customer experiences, deliver immediate responses, independently handle over half of the chats with customers from the start to finish and cut operational costs by nearly a third.

So, in this blog post, we’ll talk about what chatbots can do and how to make and add chatbots to your WordPress website.

Chatbots: What Are They & How Do They Work?

Chatbots are sometimes referred to as bots or virtual assistants. It is software developed to process human language and put on a conversation with humans.

These computer programs can take off the human conversation- written or spoken. Also, it enables humans to interact with the digital world as if they were real people.

For Eg: You have talked to a chatbot if you have ever asked Siri about the weather or started a chat on a Facebook page.

There is a myriad of types, uses, and levels of complexity of chatbots. Chatbots that are generally seen on websites as a form of live chat are a simple way for users to ask questions. And the user can get instant or pre-set single-line response.

The best AI companies create chatbots using artificial intelligence and machine learning. So that, they can learn how people interact and change over time. As a result, these intelligent chatbots deliver outstanding levels of user personalization.

Types of Chatbots

1. Rule-based Chatbots

Rule-based Chatbots are also known as Linguistic Based chatbots. This might be a good solution for you if you are able to predict common questions asked by your customers.

2. Keyword Recognition Chatbots

Powered by Natural Language Processing (NLP) AI, keyword recognition chatbots “listen” to the user and determine how to respond appropriately.

3. Menu-based Chatbots

Button Chatbots, also known as a suitable solution for answering FAQs. FAQs comprise about 4 out of 5 support queries.

4. Machine Learning Chatbots

This chatbot is more advanced than the three before mentioned. It uses ML and AI for conversations with a specific user to self-improve based on the users’ queries.

5. Hybrid Chatbots

If you need a chatbot that offers the simplicity of a rule-based one, try a hybrid model.

6. Voice Bots

With the rise in popularity of Virtual Assistants like Alex, and Siri. Thus, people are opting to speak rather than type in the majority of cases. This is the convenient way and that is the reason voice bots are a popular solution for companies.

Creating Chatbot for Your WordPress Websites

In the last three years, reports show over two-thirds of people interacts with a chatbot. Most of these users noted an excellent customer experience.

The usage of chatbots is more in retail and eCommerce industries such as banking, real estate, healthcare, and telecommunication.

You can integrate chatbots in an easy way if your website runs on WordPress. Adding a chatbot to your WP site doesn’t require much technical knowledge or spending large amounts of money developing the bot software.

So, let’s go through the steps of creating a chatbot for a WordPress website.

1. Find the WP Chatbot Plugin that Fits Your Needs

1. As a business owner whose website is powered by WordPress, you’re already well aware of the powerful and user-friendly plugins the website-building platform offers.
2. To find your perfect chatbot plugin, go to the plugins directory on the official WordPress website and search for chatbots. You’ll get a list of all WordPress chatbot plugins, along with their ratings, the number of installations, and WP version compatibilities.
3. Conversely, you can go to your WP dashboard and search for chatbot via Plugins in the left-side menu.
4. To find more about the tech specifications, specific features, and support info, simply click on the plugin you’re interested in. Then, once you’ve found the plugin you want, click download.

Note that some plugins are entirely free, while others might ask you to purchase the premium version to access all plugin features. Therefore, before downloading and installing any plugin, make sure to carefully examine pricing. Of course, developing custom chatbot software for your website is a viable option; however, most of these plugins are pretty capable of handling your customer requests – at a much lower price than going custom.

2. Install & Activate the Chatbot Plugin

1. After downloading the chatbot plugin, you’ll need to install and activate it within the Plugins section in the WP dashboard. If the downloaded plugin came as a .zip file, go to Plugins → Add New, click the button Upload Plugin, select the .zip file and click Install Now.
2. Once you’ve completed the activation, the chatbot plugin will ask you to create an account. Set up your profile and head on to tweak your chatbot plugin features as per your requirements.

3. Customize Your Chatbot Messages

1. Here comes the fun part! Log into your chatbot plugin account and start creating messages that will greet your users upon landing on your website.
2. Many chatbot plugins boast premade templates that you can use, but for a more personalized user experience, we suggest creating a chatbot from scratch. Play around and customize the chatbot’s appearance, welcome message, and responses to specific user questions.

4. Test Your Plugin & Go Live

1. Once you’ve finished customizing the plugin, it’s time to test it out.
2. First, check whether the plugin pops up at the right time and with the correct greeting message. Then, chat with your bot to make sure all the answers are accurate and try typing in some nonsense messages to see whether the bot responds as planned.
3. After you’re satisfied with the testing results, move on to the final setup stage of integrating the chatbot into the live website.
4. Some chatbot plugins may require embedding a snippet of code to the footer.php file of your WordPress website, while others may be added automatically to the site’s code. Of course, you can always hire WordPress Plugin developers for more customization.

Benefits of Integrating Chatbots to WP Websites

Chatbots will provide 24/7 services with instant replies to your customer. For businesses, chatbots are a way to direct visitors toward important information, gather customer data, and introduce an element of personality to your website.

Thus, it’s no wonder SalesForce’s data can predict over half of service organizations plan to hold chatbot technology within the next 18 months.

If you’re still not convinced chatbots are more beneficial to your business. Here are some of the amazing advantages of implementing website chatbots.

Benefits of Chatbots for Customers

1. Users Seek & Receive Instant Replies

1. The opportunity to have their problem solved in an instant is the number one reason why customers love chatbots.
2. Faster response time is undoubtedly the main advantage chatbots have over human customer service representatives.
3. Funnily enough, recent studies show that nearly 50% of consumers now expect chatbots to provide an immediate response to their queries.
4. It’s a chicken and egg situation: have chatbots made customers less patient, or have they become so popular exactly because users grew impatient?

2. Customer Support Availability 24/7

1. Not all businesses can afford a customer representative to be available at all times. And studies suggest that over half of customers expect a business to be available 24/7.
2. Providing your site visitors with a 24/7 response opportunity ensures your customers don’t hit a wall when wanting to connect with your business – even on weekends and late at night.
3. In addition, round-the-clock chatbot support allows customers to file a support request that will be forwarded to a human employee in case the chatbot cannot solve it.

3. Personalized User Experience

1. Chatbots can store user data and interaction history to provide a more personalized experience during the next interaction with the customer.
2. In the domain of customer service, chatbots can remember the customer’s name, ticket number, and the specific problem they reported. This helps you as a business resolve your customers’ issues faster.
3. Websites with an account login feature can leverage user data and use chatbots to create a hyper-personalized site experience.
4. Chatbots’ personalization includes their potential to be programmed in multiple languages – a feature especially handy for global brands.
5. Bots can start the conversation by asking the user their preferred language or automatically switch to the website visitor’s language.

4. Find Information on User’s Behalf

1. Users often get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of product portfolios or complex menus on websites.
2. Luckily, chatbots are quite good at dealing with abundant information and can search through a database and deliver users just what they need.
3. Thus, chatbots save the user a lot of their time and nerves when interacting with your business online.

Benefits of Chatbots for Businesses

1. Cost Savings & Resource Management Optimization

1. Implementing chatbots to bolster your customer service efforts is a substantial investment; yet, in the long run, the cost can be lower compared to salaries, education, and the infrastructure your CS reps would need.
2. According to data by Juniper Research, chatbots are predicted to save businesses $8 billion and 2.5 billion hours by 2023.
3. Moreover, as chatbots take over the dull, repetitive tasks, your employees will be able to focus on more creative and complex tasks that require human attention.
4. Besides, chatbots can improve your company’s internal communication and processes, such as employee onboarding and streamlining internal communications for simple questions, such as an employee asking for a company laptop password.

2. Gain Deeper Insight into Your Target Customers

1. Chatbots collect customer data that could hold invaluable insights for your business strategy.
2. For example, questions and problems that your customers contacted the chatbot about can be used for content ideation and creation.
3. Moreover, user data can be leveraged if you’re using digital agency services to improve audience targeting and key messaging.
4. Chatbots enable you to talk directly to your customers and request their feedback – whether on customer service, products, or your site’s offer.
5. Insights gathered from users can be leveraged to make improvements to your online business strategy.

3. Build & Strengthen Your Brand Identity

1. For many of your website visitors, a chatbot represents the first touchpoint with your business. Thus, a lot of attention is paid to the personality of that chatbot, i.e., developing a bot whose character aligns with your brand personality and company identity.
2. Depending on the tasks the bot should perform and the preferences of your target audience, chatbot personalities can be more or less playful, witty, creative, serious, etc.

4. Boost Customer Interaction

1. Chatbots are an amazing method of starting out a conversational marketing strategy. Your business can initiate a conversation with potential customers, increasing their engagement with convenient tips and offers your website’s chatbot can present to website visitors.
2. Reports show that chatbots can generate everywhere between 35-40% to 80-90% customer response rate.

Best WordPress Chatbot Plugins

When it comes to WordPress chatbot selection there are many, many options to choose from. Here, we have a shortlist of the 9 of the best WordPress chatbots you can use:

1. IBM Watson Chatbot
2. WP Chatbot for Messenger
3. Join. chat
4. Collect.chat
5. My Chatbot
6. Chatra
7. Live Chat by Hybrid. Chat
8. Cliengo
9. QuantumCloud Chatbot

Concluding Remarks

Chatbots have taken over the customer service industry by storm. Users love chatbots as it provides instant answers at any time without wasting time. Businesses enjoy chatbots as they improved customer experience such as sounder internal company, streamlined customer service activities, and deeper customer insights, among others.

Integrating a chatbot into your WordPress website is an effortless way to revel in all these advantages, as the website builder offers a myriad of free or paid plugins you can install without knowing to code. We are yet to see the full power chatbots can offer to businesses and customers, so make sure to keep up with this growing customer service trend and provide your users with the best possible online experience. Also, Improve your website user experience by using the best social login WordPress plugin for your website. Check out our other blog on Top WordPress Development Companies in India.