I want to introduce you to a new member of the blog team — StartiBot. You may have noticed him in the bottom right-hand side of the blog this week (or on the bottom of the screen on mobile devices). StratiBot uses Acobot, an easy to use bot tool.

Lots of my clients have large libraries of content. This is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, the wealth of content provides lots of stuff to use in marketing. On the other hand, the content is often created for specific audiences. This might not sound like a big deal, but it can present a problem when audiences stumble on it. This often raises the question — Is this brand meant for me?

My team and I recently launched a new digital experience for a client that altered most of their content. While post-launch discoverability is good, post-launch engage has raised a few red flags. One particular piece of content saw an increased bounce rate and drove users to a page where they could submit questions (Not the desired outcome).

Many of the questions submitted, the organization had already answered on various pages across their experience. One of the solutions I discussed to help fix this is a chatbot.

The chatbot experience

I’ve worked on a number of bot projects across platforms for a variety of brands. Each project had the same goal — create a more engaging, approachable experience that feels personalized and helps users discover content.

By 2020 nearly a quarter of customer service and support operations will use a chatbot. While this isn’t a surprise, it is important to think about when chatbots should be used (the article I linked to above does a good job at breaking out the do’s and don’ts of chatbots). Chatbots are not the right solution for every situation, but often they can be a helpful solution on digital platforms that boast a lot of content.

There are many factors to consider when thinking about the user experience. Two of which I think are most relevant in the chatbot discussion.

1. Users enter digital experiences at various points. This means that their first interaction with your brand/organization could be with content that’s three or four levels deep.
2. Users expect a personalized experience. We’re spoiled with great search engines and virtual assistants that allow us to ask questions and get immediate answers.

Creating a personalized experience allows a brand/organization to own the relationship and build brand loyalty. Making an experience easy to use shows that your brand values their time and is ‘meant’ for them.

Let’s think about it in this scenario — A user searches a question on Google and selects the top result. They get the answer to their question but have a followup question. What should they do?

• They can go back to Google and search the followup question. Will this lead them to your content or to another brand’s content?
• They could search for their question on your experience, but they don’t know your brand so do they really trust your brand?
• If you have a chatbot, they could ask the bot that promotes a low-risk conversation with the brand. If they have one question how many more could they have?

Bots vs Humans

True personalization means one-to-one content and interactions. Let’s be honest, for most organizations, it’s not practical to hire a customer service team to always be available to help users find what they want at the drop of a hat.

Most organizations publish new content weekly, if not more frequently. This means it’s hard to stay on top of the content offerings. This isn’t an issue for bots as they index content in seconds and process that content with the past information they’ve learned. The more information a bot has the better it is.

Chatbots have high upside and evolve daily. The same can be said of humans. When it comes to efficiency and effectiveness, that argument can be made that bots are the way to go. I don’t think bots are the end all to be all but I do believe they have a valuable place with a lot of digital experiences. Especially, when their purpose is to help nudge users towards the most relevant content for them.