A growing number of businesses are jumping on the chatbot bandwagon, so it’s high time you did too. You’ll provide your prospects and customers with greater convenience, and treat your business with excellent benefits. You’ll cut your customer support costs, keep lines of communication open 24/7, and boost your sales and revenue.
But I have no programming skills whatsoever, you may say. Well, lucky you, you don’t need any. You can create your own chatbot without writing a single line of code.
Yes, it’s possible!
Many chatbot platforms allow you to either use a pre-built template or build your own chatbot from scratch (also without coding). And you don’t need any technical know-how for either of those options.
With that in mind, explore the following chatbot building 101 guide with simple steps for creating your chatbot in no time.
Choose A Chatbot Platform
As a beginner, you should choose an intuitive, easy-to-use platform that makes building a chatbot online both simple and fun.
SnatchBot, for instance, is a very user-friendly platform that you’ll absolutely love. It lets you create your own bot in minutes, without any coding or otherwise complicated steps.
The best part? It’s completely free!
Once you register for an account, you can instantly start creating your free chatbot. You don’t have to worry about hidden costs down the line because there aren’t any.
Avi Ben Ezra, the CTO and co-founder of SnatchBot, stated a while ago that he and his brother, Henri Ben Ezra, started the company “with the goal of benefiting everyone and helping brands increase their engagement.”
That’s why “all the features and services of our platform will remain free indefinitely,” said Henri Ben Ezra.
So, you really might want to give their platform a try. If you don’t find it suitable for your needs, you can always switch to another one. Since it’s free of charge, you have absolutely nothing to lose.
Select A Template Or Build Your Bot From Scratch
Remember, building your bot from scratch doesn’t have to mean coding. Some platforms allow you to create a chatbot by following their intuitive step-by-step instructions that include only typing text and clicking buttons.
You usually start your UX design process by assigning a name to your bot and choosing a welcome message. Intuitive platforms will provide you with default greetings to choose from, which you can modify any way you want.
You can then proceed with creating a conversation flow by adding interactions, connections, and different sequences based on different user responses. You can create as many message blocks as you want to diversify the conversation flow and keep your users informed and engaged.
The most exciting part is creating branches of the conversation. Depending on what a user needs, you can create responses for directing people to your blog, a YouTube tutorial, FAQ page, your live chat, or anywhere else. You can type a bunch of different responses for any keyword relevant to your business.
All of this will be clear as day once you start poking around a chatbot building platform. It will seem like a game, like creating a game character that will be your customer service superhero.
But you can also always go with ready-made templates.
SnatchBot has a Bot Store offering a wide range of pre-built templates designed for various industries. You can simply pick one and build your bot in minutes – literally.
Customize Your Bot To Match Your Brand Personality
Letting your brand personality shine through is the key to your customer service. Therefore, customize your chatbot before hitting the “publish” button.
If you go down the template road, make sure the platform you choose actually allows you to modify the templates.
Add your logo, match the color scheme to your brand colors, customize the font (choosing your brand’s font would be ideal), and choose an interesting chatbot avatar.
Some platforms, like SnatchBot, let you upload your own image to use as a bot avatar, which is also ideal for branding consistency.
Deploy Your Chatbot On The Desired Channels
Once you’ve tested your new chatbot and made sure everything works perfectly, it’s time to finally publish it for the world to see.
You should choose an omni-channel platform that lets you deploy your chatbot on various channels with just a few simple clicks.
Select all the channels to instantly deploy your chatbot, such as Facebook Messenger, Skype, Slack, WhatsApp, Viber, and any other platform you want.
Of course, embed it on your website as well, so every visitor can interact with it right there on the site. You can have it as an embedded function on the site, as a pop-up, a full landing page, or as a classic live chat.
Integrate Your Chatbot With Relevant Tools
Apart from connecting your chatbot to various communication platforms for customer service, it would be best if you integrated it with other relevant tools you’re already using.
For instance, you should integrate it with your email client so that you receive email notifications about new conversations, subscribers, tickets, and any other query.
You can also integrate it with your CRM. That way, your chatbot will send your leads directly to the CRM from any channel.
Connect it to any third-party tool you use, and you’ll have a powerful system for capturing and converting leads and generating more sales and revenue.
As you can see, not only is creating a chatbot online without learning programming possible, but it’s also incredibly simple. You’ll see it for yourself once you utilize a tool for building chatbots, as long as it’s user-friendly.
