Do you need a chatbot builder for your business? In today’s digital age, chatbots have become an important feature that must be integrated to make the company more accessible across a variety of channels.
Across the internet, you can find numerous pre-made chatbot packs that you can already integrate into your site. However, most of these options lack customization. To go the customization route, you will need to select the appropriate chatbot creation platform. Not only will this ensure you have all the features you need, but you can also add some elements of your own.
What to Look for in a Development Platform
Not all platforms are created alike. When selecting a new platform for the development of chatbots, it is essential to have a few considerations to choose the best possible product for you and your business. Here are some of the factors that you should take into account.
Functionality
With improved functionality, you can use chatbots to streamline a variety of processes and functions. The idea is to use multiple chatbots for different tasks.
The ideal setup would be to have a platform that can allow you to deploy a chatbot for each critical task. These specialized bots will be more efficient for particular or specific tasks.
However, they should also be able to communicate with other systems. Thus, when the need arises, the user can tap into various contact points to help resolve an issue or find the necessary information for its resolution.
Support for Speech and NLP
The best chatbot builder software should be able to support Natural Language Processing (NLP). Incorporating NLP technology allows you to train the chatbot for a specific task through different iterations of the job.
Chatbots capable of NLP training can improve its scalability. This means each interaction with human users improves the bot’s functioning, which translates into better and more human-like behavior and responses.
This will enable them to understand a user’s intent a lot better. And of course, that will translate to a better and more relevant response.
Capability to Connect with Other Parts of the Platform/System
Another thing that you should check is if the bot builder allows you to create a chatbot that can share messages to other bots, users, as well as other parts of your enterprise system.
This feature will allow automatic logging, which can be accessed by other systems as well. This means specialists, other bots, and tech/customer support will be able to review the bot’s interaction and see the success or failure of the bot’s interaction.
Industry Experience
You should also check the industry experience of the platform provider. They should have sufficient knowledge of the domain you select. They should be able to incorporate flexibility, scalability, and speed when deploying support for your employees (i.e. the ones that will be using the chatbot software) and, of course, your customers as well.
There are plenty of chatbot builder software providers out there. They all offer a wide variety of features that you can take advantage of. However, you should identify the provider that creates the features that can provide you with a platform that matches your business needs.
Multiple Channel Support
Look for chatbots that can be deployed across different channels. The platform should be able to support mobile channels as well. That means you should be given the option to deploy your bot via mobile apps and also through your enterprise website.
Intelligent Chatbots
You should check reviews as well as metrics to see how intelligent the chatbots perform. You should check how well the chatbot can understand, learn, and recollect information and data that has been gathered from a variety of sources of customer interactions.
These chatbots should be able to identify the context of a customer’s request. The bot should also be able to use machine learning technology and become smarter and more aptly responsive to the customer’s or other user’s needs.
Intuitive Tools
You should also review the development tools provided in the platform. Your team should be able to build, design, and customize the chatbot according to a variety of use cases.
Remember that the development process is not a one-time thing. On the contrary, it is a continuous process. That means your team will be monitoring the performance of the chatbot and fine-tune it as needed. They should be able to review how it performs its tasks and identify key metrics in various channels where the chatbot is deployed.
Also, if needed the platform should support the possibility of starting from scratch. Check if the platform allows you to reuse components from previous deployments of the chatbot software.
That means in case you need to create a new chatbot, you can take the useful components from other previous bots that you are currently using and reuse them in a new bot that you are developing. This allows you to simplify the development cycle.
Support for Different Types of Chatbots
Another important factor or feature to check is if the chatbot platform or chatbot creator can support different types of chatbots. Some only specialize in certain types of bots. What you should be looking for is a platform that supports B2C, B2E, as well as B2B functionalities.
Here are some of the types of chatbots that you may have to create along the way:
- Customer service bot
- Advertising chatbot
- Information provider bot
- Conversational commerce chatbot
- Utility chatbot
The platform should be able to support these deployments and more.
Social Media Integration
Social media can create massive traffic. That is why social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others employ chatbots as well. A lot of companies do their marketing on social media. If you are looking into that channel then you should invest in a chatbot platform that supports it as well.
Conversation Building System
Your chatbots should be given the ability to build customized conversations. Look for the option to get tools such as channel data storage, message queuing, and also a trigger service.
Recommended Chatbot Builder Softwares
The following are our recommended chatbot builder software systems:
- Chatfuel (specialized for Facebook Messenger)
- Flow XO (provides support for multiple platforms)
- Botsify (for Facebook Messenger with integration features)
- ChatterOn (fastest development and deployment system).
- Sequel (highly customizable with drag and drop editor).
These are the features that you should consider when selecting a chatbot builder platform. Don’t just rely on the sheer number of features. Find the ones that are reliable and also a provider that has a proven track record of efficient and effective service.
