chatbot examples

Chatbot Examples: How Businesses are Successfully Using Chatbots

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Businesses are constantly looking for ways to engage with their audience in any way they can. The more you engage with them, the more effectively you can nurture them. It’s one of the reasons why companies are beginning to implement chatbots more and more. Chatbots are a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that engage with website users via a messenger. Chatbots use data such as user information and behavior to personalize interactions. They are a great way to keep visitors engaged as they navigate your site by answering basic questions and providing assistance any hours of the day. Considering how popular online messengers are in general (Facebook Messenger alone has more than 1.2 billion monthly users), it should come as no surprise that chatbots are a form of customer service people appreciate. The following are some chatbot examples.

Types of Chatbots

When it comes to implementing a chatbot, it’s important to know that there two main types to choose from: a simple chatbot and a smart chatbot. The following is a brief rundown of their differences:

  • Simple Chatbots – Simple chatbots work by implementing a series of commands written by the developer based on pre-written keywords. Basically, the chatbot will only understand a user query if it contains one of these pre-written keywords. If a user engages with the chatbot but doesn’t use any of these keywords, it will automatically respond with something like “I do not understand.” It’s a very basic chatbot, but it can still be useful for answering simple questions.
  • Smart Chatbots – Smart chatbots use AI to communicate to users. Instead of replying to user queries and responses with pre-prepared answers, a smart chatbot will respond with appropriate suggestions on the topic. The words of the user will also be recorded for additional data.

How Major Brands Use Chatbots

Now that you have a better understanding of what chatbots are, the following are a few examples of how some of the more well-known companies have adapted chatbots and why they have been so effective for them:

  • Adobe – The Adobe chatbot helps users troubleshoot issues by responding to questions with links to pages that contain the solutions. It’s a no-frills chatbot, but it’s one that users can rely on when they have questions or issues.
  • Arsenal FC – The London based Arsenal soccer team has a chatbot that provides users with real-time updates about ongoing games. It is useful for anyone who can’t catch the game on TV. Their chatbot also provides information about upcoming games, team line-ups, and team-related news.
  • Universal Studios – The chatbot used by Universal Studios in hugely helpful in a number of ways. First, it can provide a significant amount of information while users are at one of their parks, such as where the nearest restroom is or what the wait times are for certain rides in real time. It also gives users the chance to speak with a human representative if the chatbot can’t provide the answer they’re looking for.
  • Dominos – Dominos lets its customers order food through its chatbot. It’s like someone is taking their order over text. The chatbot asks customers what they want and will follow up with specific questions about customization options. It’s particularly customer-friendly because customers don’t have to download or sign-up for anything. The chatbot can also save your preferences for future orders.

These few successful chatbot examples show just how helpful using chatbots can be, especially when it comes to improving your customer service.

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Brand Ambassador Programs

How Businesses Are Using Brand Ambassador Programs To Increase Brand Awareness And Trust

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Generating brand awareness and building brand trust are two major marketing goals all businesses have. One of the most effective ways to achieve these goals is by encouraging loyal customers to increase brand awareness and trust on your behalf. This is because positive word-of-mouth can be incredibly powerful, and because consumers tend to trust one another when it comes to brand recommendations. As a result, many businesses have established brand ambassador programs in order to turn their loyal customers into official ambassadors.

What are Brand Ambassadors?

Brand ambassadors are consumers who work closely with you to advocate your brand. Companies generally choose loyal customers who already have a history recommending your brand, and also have some online influence. Someone with tens of thousands of followers on Instagram is going to be more effective as a brand ambassador than someone who only has LinkedIn and a handful of connections.

Having brand ambassadors can influence their followers by recommending your products or services, incite conversations about your brand, and create content on your behalf. For example, a brand ambassador on Instagram might post a picture wearing a jacket your company sells.

To take advantage of brand ambassadors, you’ll want to establish a brand ambassador program. You’ll need to do a lot of research to identify individuals who will make good brand ambassadors. Consider making the program membership exclusive. People are more likely to take their brand ambassadorship seriously if they know that not just anyone can be one of your brand ambassadors. Additionally, you’ll need to provide some sort of compensation, whether you actually pay them or you give them free products. Many companies will provide their brand ambassadors with new products before they’re even available to the masses.

Examples of Successful Brand Ambassador Programs

The following are some of the most successful brand ambassador programs launched by some of the biggest companies:

• Red Bull – Red Bull’s brand ambassador program is called the Wings Team. They focus on students who have an exciting lifestyle to turn their brand into a lifestyle brand. Because their ambassadors are students, they are able to reach a college audience much more effectively.
• Lululemon – Lululemon essentially uses its brand ambassador program to sponsor local athletes, yoga instructors, and influencers. They provide incentive by partnering with their ambassadors to support their local philanthropic projects and initiatives.
• American Express – American Express has a brand ambassador program filled with social media influencers. They target travel and lifestyle influencers in particular since they showcase a luxurious lifestyle — one that obviously benefits from the extensive use of a credit card. They not only showcase the use of their American Express credit cards, but the rewards that they can obtain from their regular use as well.

Even the biggest companies in the world recognize the value of a brand ambassador. If you have loyal customers, then you should encourage them to become brand ambassadors by implementing a brand ambassador program. Use these three examples as an inspiration to set up your own brand ambassador program today.

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Customer Benefits

What Are the Real Customer Benefits of AI?

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more prevalent in the technology of today, from virtual assistants, such as Alexa and Siri, to Google’s self-driving cars. AI also sorts through massive amounts of data for businesses of all sizes. This technology can also eliminate repetitive tasks. Thought the benefits of using AI are apparent for business, it may not be as obvious as to how the customer benefits. The following are a few ways that the use of AI can help your customers:

Improve Customer Service

As much as you would like to have somebody waiting to speak with every person that comes to your website, that’s going to be impossible to do. A queue of users could build up waiting to speak with someone, which could harm their customer service experience. Not to mention that people will visit your site after business hours as well. Chatbots address the questions and concerns of your customers immediately. Chatbots can be programmed to answer basic questions, thereby preventing users from abandoning your site or waiting for a response.

Personalize Your Interactions

Not only can you segment your email list by the information that users have submitted to you, but you can further personalize emails through dynamic content, ensuring that the content users receive will be tailored to their specific needs and actions. You can even personalize interactions through your live chat or chatbots feature by tracking user behavior.

Help Customers Find What They Need

You can trigger certain product or service recommendations based on users’ purchase history or what they’re looking for. AI helps your customers discover relevant products or services they may not have known about.

Improve Customer Experience

There are AI tools that can not only collect user feedback so that you can identify ways in which you can improve their experience, but that can also track user behavior to identify problem areas on your site (for example, maybe a significant amount of people are abandoning their shopping cart without checking out). You can use this information to improve your customer experience.

The use of AI is growing in all facets of life. AI can be especially useful when it comes to providing customer benefits. These are just a few of the ways you can benefit your customers through the use of AI.

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marketing trends

What’s Trending in Marketing for July 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs. They highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Microsoft Just Dealt A Blow To Google’s Ad Blocking Plans

Google announced their plans to restrict ad blocking Chrome extensions. This means that ad blockers, like uBlock origin, won’t work on the Google Chrome browser. This update will come in the upcoming months and some Chrome users have made it clear that they’ll move to another browser if Google carries out that plan. Microsoft has responded by reaching out to their users to see if they’d like Ad Blockers built into the new version of the Microsoft Edge browser. You can learn more about this story on Forbes.

Instagram advertisers can now convert organic influencer posts into ads

Instagram confirmed in March that it’s testing a new ad format. It’s going to be possible for brands to create ads using organic posts from the influencers they have relationships with. Marketing Land writes, “Before brands can use influencer posts as ads, the content creator must grant their business partners (the brands they have relationships with) access to promote their posts. Once the creator — or influencer — has done this via their Advanced Settings page, brands will see the influencer’s posts in the Ads Manager under “Existing Posts” and can run the content as an ad within the Instagram newsfeed or Stories format.”

Comcast partners with Charter, Cox to advance targeted advertising

Comcast launched an advertising strategy that will target audiences better in an effort to lure more advertisers away from digital platforms like Facebook and Google. The initiative is called “On Addressability” and the aim is to target advertisements to certain households based on their interests. So far, this has only been done on a small scale in TV advertising. TV is the best way to reach a lot of people at once, but it lacks the big data that digital platforms use. Learn more about this story at Yahoo.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Emotional Advertising: How Brands Use Feelings to Get People to Buy

Informing your audience is important. You want potential buyers to understand what their problem is, and how your products or services can solve that problem. Unfortunately, people don’t generally make purchases based on information alone. It turns out that people are more prone to making emotional purchases than informed purchases. It’s why commercials consist of much more than an explanation of a product’s use. Instead they use emotional advertising to target the viewer. It’s effective, and it’s why connecting with your audience on an emotional level will benefit your marketing strategy.

Simple Ways that Small Businesses Can Use Data to Build Better Customer Relationships

In this day and age, it’s pretty difficult for consumers to not be inundated with dozens of advertisements. As such, targeting your audience has become more important than ever, especially when it comes to running a smaller business. The most effective way to target your audience is to make use of the consumer data that you have access to. Knowing how to use the data you have can go a long way towards building customer relationships.

However, having consumer data is a lot different than knowing how to make it actionable, which can make the data you have very intimidating. The following are the three steps that you should take to so that you can leverage your data to build strong customer relationships.

What Are Behavioral Biometrics and How Do They Fit Into Marketing?

Companies often hold focus groups in order to get direct feedback about products, services, and even website experiences. The only drawback to such focus groups is that people often aren’t sure how to articulate what they feel about certain things. However, new biometric technology, such as eye-tracking software, has made it easier to determine exactly how someone feels about a website experience at any given moment–and they can allow you to do so without holding a focus group.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Almost 70% of digital ad spending going to Google, Facebook, Amazon, says analyst firm

Google, Facebook, and Amazon are collecting more than 2/3rds of all digital ad spending. Between the 3 companies, this is about $73 billion. Amazon owns 38% of e-commerce, which is down from almost 50% a year ago.

These numbers matter greatly as the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice will begin antitrust investigation of Facebook, Google, and Amazon in the upcoming 12-18 months. More about this story can be found on Marketing Land.

Political Ad Spending Will Approach $10 Billion in 2020, New Forecast Predicts

A new report predicts that spending on political advertisements will reach a new high in 2020. According to the forecast, political ad spending will total $9.9 billion in 2020. In 2016, $6.3 billion was spent on political ads. Political ad spending in 2018 accounted for 2% of total digital ad spending in the US and it’s projected to increase to 2.2% in 2020. Learn more about this story on WSJ.

Survey finds 89% of marketers seeing increased sales using location data

700 U.S. based mobile marketers from 536 consumer brands and 164 agencies took part in this 2019 survey. The survey found that about 9 in 10 marketers plan to use location data in the future to increase sales. However, of those surveyed, only 24% are using or plan to use location data for store visitation or offline measurement.

This report shows that location data is becoming a popular horizontal tool for audience segmentation and targeting across channels. Learn more about this report at Marketing Land.

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