Chatbots have become a an essential tool for improving customer service, increasing sales and generating leads. Because of this, learning how to build a chatbot has become an increasingly sought-after skill for companies of all sizes and sectors.

Below you will find all the necessary steps you need to take to effectively design, develop and launch a chatbot. In addition, we will explain how using a online organizational chart you can make your robot design process easier.

What is a chatbot and why is it useful?

You’ve probably had at least one interaction with a chatbot in the past few days, either when making an online purchase, requesting information on a website or social network, or receiving technical support. Chatbots have become an integral part of our online experience. But, What exactly is a chatbot?

A chatbot is essentially a program that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to simulate a conversation, either through text or voice, to help and answer questions from its users.

We usually see chatbots integrated into websites and social networks, where they are very useful in providing customer service and answering questions in real time, helping with the lead generation process and collecting user data.

Step by step how to create a chatbot

Create a chatbot from scratch It’s easier than it sounds. In fact, there are several platforms today (many of them free) that allow you to create chatbots without the need for prior programming knowledge.

Let’s see what steps you should follow to do this effectively:

Step 1: Define the bot’s purpose and personality

If you are thinking of developing a chatbot, you must have a problem in mind what do you want to solve for your clients or employees.

You may need to offer 24/7 support, as in the case of banks, or reduce the burden on your team by answering frequently asked questions. Maybe you’d like to save your sales team time by automatically qualifying leads or automating tasks like booking appointments.

Whatever your reason, it’s important to be clear from the start, as it will dictate your chatbot’s interactions, design and functionality.

Once you are clear about the purpose, you also need to define it the personality of the bot. This must be consistent with your brand identity and values. For example, if your brand is youthful and friendly or more formal, the bot’s personality and tone should match.

Step 2: Choose a development platform

As we mentioned earlier, there are many platforms and tools for building chatbots today, and they all tend to be fairly intuitive and easy to use.

Here it is important that you take your time and choose the one that best suits your needs, skills and budget. But some of the most common ones include Dialogflow, Chatfuel, and ManyChat.

Step 3: Design a conversation flow

AI generated image.

Designing a conversation flow is one of the most important and time-consuming steps. Here you define how the bot will interact with users, what questions it will answer and how it will guide users to achieve their goal.

To facilitate this process, it is strongly recommended to use a Organisational scheme because it helps to structure and clearly visualize all the possible paths a bot-to-user conversation can take, and plan responses just in case.

Also organizational charts facilitate cooperation between different team members, from programmers to designers and managers, allowing them to suggest improvements, keep track of project status, and solve problems more effectively.

Step 4: Develop and train the chatbot

We arrive at the funnest part creating a chatbot: its evolution! And this process will be much easier for you if you have done a good job in the previous point.

It is important to know that the development of your chatbot will vary depending on the platform you choose to build it on.

Some platforms allow you to develop a bot completely without using code, while others may require some technical knowledge. But generally the majority platforms provide guidestutorials and tools so you can develop your bot and integrate it into your website or app quickly and easily.

Once you have the basic structure of your chatbot, you need to train it and give it enough information to execute. This is achieved by:

• Feeding the chatbot a lot data quality
• Conducting internal tests to identify and correct errors
• Including as many variants of concepts and questions as possible
• Implementing machine learning algorithms for performance

Step 5: Implement, monitor and optimize

After training your chatbot you should really test it. To do this, you can ask your team members, friends, colleagues or even trusted clients to work with him and give you their opinions.

This feedback will help you identify bugs, areas for improvement, and fine-tune the bot’s responses before its official launch.

Once you are satisfied with the performance of your chatbot, all that remains is to implement it on your website or app and continue to monitor their performance to continue to optimize.

Finally, remember that chatbot development is an ongoing process. always arises new ways to improve the user experienceadd features and adapt it to the changing needs of your clients or your company.

That’s why it’s important to be proactive and schedule regular checkups and maintenance appointments. In addition, during these meetings it is advisable to designate a space for possible discussion improvements based on feedback users, make sure the information the bot is working with is up-to-date, and discuss trends and news technology which can be used to improve the system.

Content offered by inConcert.