How to Use Chatbot to Enhance the Performance of Your Social Media Strategy

⏱ Reading Time: 8 minutes

Gone are the days when customers had to stay on the line for hours or wait until the next day to hear from a company. Thanks to technology, the world is becoming more and more fast-paced, and customer service is no exception. 

 🚀Read: Omnichannel Guide for Digitally Advanced Brands🚀

You can’t afford to miss a message from a customer just because you don’t have a customer representative available at the time. Consequently, a customer will move on to your competitors who don’t fail to respond timely. Luckily, businesses now are able to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbots to offer faster and more advanced customer support services. 

Not particularly sure how to use chatbots to advance the performance of your social media strategy? This article is a great start! We’ll cover the benefits of using chatbots and practical tips on how you can incorporate chatbots into your social media efforts. As a bonus, you’ll find the cases of companies that have done chatbots right.

Why Use Chatbots? 

Before you rush to chatbot tips and suggestions, let’s first figure out the benefits of employing chatbots in your social media strategy. 

Improved Customer Service 

With AI-enabled chatbots, you can automate responses and create a 24/7 presence. This availability helps to address as many clients’ issues as needed. They  don’t need to stay on the line or wait for the next available customer service representative. Additionally, social media platforms further advance this availability. In this way, customers can choose the communication channel most convenient for them. 

Read How to Improve Customer Service and Ensure Customer Satisfaction

Increased Customer Engagement 

There are many users on social media platforms who have questions about your brand and products. Therefore, by offering an easy way of communication (chatbots), you allow these users to engage with your brand while they’re seeking information. 

Also, you can build a chatbot that particularly aims to engage more customers. As you will discover later, some fast-forwarding businesses already use chatbots to engage existing followers. Consequently, they’ve expanded customer reach in engaging and interacting ways. 

Quicker Purchases

Chatbots enable always-available extensive customer assistance and proactive customer interaction. In other words, chatbots can assist customers when they require support during shopping . They can also initiate conversations with prospective customers. Both of these factors enable a much quicker shopping process and further customer reach.  

Monitoring Customer Data 

By leveraging chatbots, you can get valuable insights about customer behaviors, preferences, and needs. In other words, AI-powered chatbots are able to collect data provided by customers. Some of these are conversations, types of customer inquiries, purchase behaviors, etc. 

Picture 1. Chatbots can be a valuable source of customer information

This way, chatbots provide the essential information you need to know about your customers and individuals who are interested in your products. You can analyze this data to make more informed social media marketing decisions and develop a customer-centric strategy. 

Read How To Improve Customer Experience With Data

Lead Generation Benefits  

Chatbots have the potential to encourage better lead generation, qualification, and nurturing. They can use the information provided by users (or social media platforms) to craft more personalized messages. This way, bots can ask relevant questions, provide requested information, and help leads convert into customers.  

The Financial Benefits 

Implementing a well-functioning AI-powered bot is much faster and cheaper than hiring a bunch of customer service reps. In fact, research shows that chatbots can help businesses save as much as 30% of the costs associated with customer support. 

Besides, businesses have a rich spectrum of options on where to get chatbot software. 

For example, you can leverage ready-to-use chatbots created by Facebook and other tech giants.  Also, you can use the services of a third-party bot developing company. They can create a unique product concerning your business’s unique needs.

How Can You Use Chatbots to Boost the Performance of Your Social Media Strategy? 

A chatbot can act as your company’s brand ambassador or a customer service agent. It can also be a sales representative with the ability to reach a limitless number of users simultaneously. 

As the chatbot technology continues to grow more complex, there are more ways you can use it to your advantage. Here’s how you can leverage AI-powered bots to improve your social media capabilities.

1. Employ Autoresponders

One way to leverage chatbots in your social media strategy is by employing autoresponders. An autoresponder is a chatbot that automatically responds to Facebook messages and comments, regardless of the user input. This means that a bot will attribute the same response to any comment or message. 

Here is an example of a message sent by an autoresponder: 

“Thanks for leaving a comment/message. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

Autoresponders can’t help complex user problems. They allow you to automate message and comment replies. They also make it possible to send faster responses and inform them that you’ve received their message. 

The good news is that you don’t even have to use a third party chatbot builder tool. You can set up an autoresponder natively in your Facebook business page settings. 

Picture 2. Auto-reply on Facebook

2. Address Customer Inquiries

One of the most effective ways to use a bot to your advantage is to employ it as a social media customer service representative. A well-programmed chatbot should be able to answer simple commonly asked questions. But it should also efficiently resolve more complex customer inquiries. 

To help you get started, here are some examples of the basic questions every social media chatbot should be able to answer. 

• What are your services?
• What is your website? / Can you redirect me to your website?
• I’m looking for [a specific product/product series]. Can you help me? 
• Where are you located?
• What are your business hours? 
• What are your shipping options? 
• How fast can you ship? 

The more consistent, relevant, transparent, and, most importantly, helpful your chatbot is, the more confident and satisfied your customers will feel communicating with your brand in the future.

Read Social Media Customer Service Plan – Why Is It Important to Have It?

3. Craft Personalized Experiences

Technically, your chatbot is a robot, but it doesn’t mean that it has to act like one. Regardless of the industry, customers value interpersonal communication and personalized experiences. In fact, studies show that 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences. 

Intelligent chatbots are now able to craft more personalized customer experiences. How does it work? The chatbot’s algorithm monitors user social media posts. Additionally, it leverages data collected by social media platforms to personalize messaging. In this way, chatbots can offer more valuable and personalized content. It can be crafted specifically for each customer based on their data (like social media preferences and previous purchases). 

“Your chatbot’s tone of voice is another aspect to consider. Your bot’s online personality should reflect the tone, values, and style of your business,” shares her experience Liz Sullivan. She’s a communications consultant at Essay Tigers, a company that uses chatbots to connect customers with academic writers. “Needless to say that a bot of a law firm should speak differently than a bot of a street style clothing brand.”

You can use chatbot’s personalization capabilities to increase customer satisfaction, engagement, and as a result, boost your social media strategy.

4. Leverage Feedback

When we think about chatbots, we typically associate them with helping out customers. Yet, something that’s often overlooked is the value they provide when collecting customer feedback. 

Each conversation a social media user has with your bot contains is valuable. You can find out a lot about customer preferences, pain points, and areas of your business that need improvement. 

For example, if your data suggests that users keep inquiring about general information, you can adjust your social media pages as well as your website to include this info. 

There will be times when your chatbot doesn’t know the answer to a customer question. If this happens a lot with the same question, you can reprogram your chatbot and include an answer to this question. 

Read What is Live Chat?

3 Companies That Have Done It Right 

So now you know the benefits of employing chatbots and ways you can use chatbots to improve your social media efforts. Next, let’s take a look at inspiring big-name companies that have done it right. 

Whole Foods 

Whole Foods’ Facebook Messenger chatbot is an amazing example of how to create an engaging and helpful bot. Regardless of whether you’re at home planning to cook or at a store shopping for groceries, the bot allows you to search for healthy recipes. You can even explore recipes by typing in emojis!

Picture 3. Whole Foods social media strategy 

Lyft

Here’s another great example by Lyft, a US ridesharing service. The chatbot allows you to request a Lyft ride with a Facebook Messenger. This way, Lyft offers additional channels for customers to use their services as they don’t need to log in to an app to request a ride.

Picture 4. Lyft social media strategy 

Domino’s

Domino’s example proves that you can employ chatbots for practically any business. The pizza chain’s chatbot allows users to order pizza and track orders, as well as contact customer support using Facebook Messenger.

Picture 5. Domino’s chatbot takes orders

Final thoughts 

Social media can be difficult to master for any business. With AI-powered bots, you can not only ease the management of your social media but also get better results. 

Integrating the chatbot technology can transform any social media strategy. In this way your businesses can achieve the following: 

• Improved customer experiences 
• Customer service automation 
• Faster shopping process 
• Advanced lead generation 
• Reduced customer service costs 

Forward-thinking businesses are already implementing AI-powered bots within their social media platforms. Now, it’s time for your business to rethink the needs of your customer base. See what the chatter about social media bots is really all about.

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Stacey Wonder is a content marketer who enjoys sharing best practices for self-development and careers with others. In her free time, Stacey is fond of contemporary dance and classic French movies.