The complete guide to AI chatbots for businesses

How does an AI-chatbot work?

An AI chatbot, based on “normal” AI / generative AI, always works according to the same principal: It receives a text or language information through chat (e.g. website chat or messaging app) and processes it through Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand the user’s content and intention.

Afterwards it searches a previously curated knowledge database for the best result.

Thanks to self-learning-capabilities, the AI chatbot collects new realisations with every conversation, tailors its answers to the user’s behaviour, analyses conversation protocols and is therefore always able to deliver precise insights.

Advantages of AI chatbots

Using an AI chatbot in your company brings a lot of advantages – for you and your customers.

Increase customer interactions: Similar to a salesperson in a store, chatbots can proactively approach your customer while they are scrolling through your online shop. If your AI chatbot is in the right place at the right time, you increase the chances of positively influencing the buyer’s journey.

Automate easy tasks: Chatbots relieve your service employees from repetitive tasks in the support process. For example, scheduling appointments, sending reminders or collecting customer feedback.

Reduce service cost: Chatbots cannot replace human employees, but they can decrease the service cost. They quickly solve simple customer requests and clear up valuable time for more complex tasks by doing so.

24/7 available: Chatbots offer immediate real time support on website and messaging apps, independent of time. If your customers are active primarily outside of your service hours, AI chatbots can help to answer simple questions, recommend products or helpful blogposts and tutorials.

Easy to maintain: Once the initial setup is complete and the knowledge database for your chatbot has been curated, the chatbot independently improves to develop better answers.

Direct and personal: Chatbots answer practically immediately. Therefore, customers are not required to wait in a loop in a service hotline to be able to solve an easy question. Additionally, bots based on GPT 4 offer customers a whole new human-like chatbot experience, leading to an increased customer satisfaction.

Important criteria for choosing the right chatbot vendor

For chatbot newbies, almost any software sounds promising. That does not come as a surprise, as lots of chatbot vendors are throwing around buzzwords like “AI” and “automation”, but without explaining which technology is behind it exactly.

To find the right tool for your business, you should test the software extensively and check functions and features, before making the decision. To help you even further, we have put together a checklist with the most important criteria for picking a chatbot software:

• Chatbot type. Is the bot based on a rigid if-then structure (rule-based chatbot) or does it use advanced AI technology (AI chatbot)? AI chatbots are currently establishing themselves as the standard in the industry, but there are still some providers who sell simple rule-based bots.
• GPT-4-Integration. Is the chatbot able to integrate with the strongest AI system on the global market, to give human-like and context-related replies?
• Website-Chat. Does the vendor offer a user interface that you can implement on your website, or do you have to purchase an additional software?
• Compatible Apps. Is the bot compatible with all channels that you want to use, for example WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram?
• Implementation and Utilisation. Can you create the bot by yourself and in a couple of steps, or do you need a developer to help with the setup? Is it easy to use and intuitive, for customers as well as service employees?
• Bot-human handover. Is a live chat already integrated in the chatbot software, making it possible for you to forward the conversation to a coworker? Or is an integration to an external chat tool needed?
• Integrations. Can the chatbot be easily integrated with your existing software infrastructure, for example for sending customer information to your CRM system?
• Price. Is the chatbot platform, with all included functions, worth the money?
• GDPR. Is the chatbot tool and possibly the GPT4 integration GDPR compliant?

All-in-one chatbot software: Combining personal and automated support

Although it is tempting, letting a chatbot do all the work, we do not recommend using it as an allround solution for your support. About 40% of users like the contact with a chatbot, but want to have the option to chat with a support employee when needed, according to a Lime Connect study.

Lime Connect helps businesses to create chatbots and connect them with human support, in a meaningful and useful manner. Thanks to their central AI knowledge (AI Automation Hub), companies can operate three self-support functions with just one tool: An AI chatbot, an interactive FAQ-page and a contact form that suggests answers and replies before a ticket is delivered to your support team.

The currently most powerful AI globally extends your chatbot’s capabilities, that can thereby answer multiple questions in one message, show emotions and consider context from previous messages.

Do you want to find out more about the great advantages of their AI tools and how to integrate them into your support processes? Then start a chat on their website right away! They look forward to speaking to you!