Today, if your business isn’t embracing the new wave of AI tools, it’s likely it’s falling behind. In fact, in 2023, 58% of B2B and 42% of B2C companies used chatbots. Recently, the spotlight has been on generative AI marketing technologies, which among other things, can be used to create content, images, videos, and more. Among those use cases? AI chatbot platforms.
Chatbots are becoming increasingly popular, and the rise of low- or no-code AI chatbot platforms has enabled marketing professionals to leverage these tools across their business. But it’s a fast-moving market with constantly evolving technologies. To ensure your business uses the best AI chatbots for its use case it’s vital you understand how to evaluate different AI chatbot platforms.
How Do Businesses Use the Best AI Chatbots?
The concept of a chatbot for business isn’t new, but in recent years, the development of AI technologies has seen many businesses adopt increasingly sophisticated AI chatbot platforms. Depending on a company’s desired use case, some AI chatbot platforms can be more effective than others. Here are a few common chatbot for business use cases.
- eCommerce: When customers need to make returns or exchanges, having a chatbot available to facilitate these repetitive processes is invaluable.
- Sales: Chatbots prove to be helpful for sales when prospects have questions about different products and services available. More advanced chatbots even allow sales professionals to generate new scripts and improve conversion rates.
- Writing: Chatbots can be used to generate content ideas and edit existing content for a variety of marketing channels, including websites, blogs, social media, and more.
- Healthcare: Care providers are beginning to adopt chatbots for assistance with medical questions, mental health services, patient screening, and more.
- Banking: The banking industry has also seen increased chatbot usage, specifically related to expense tracking, suspicious activity alerts, and providing financial advice.
Criteria for Choosing an AI Chatbot Platform
To choose the best AI chatbots for your business, it’s key that you understand the factors you should consider when evaluating different options.
Of course, factors like pricing and technical integrations are important, but your analysis should go a little deeper, considering the criteria outlined below.
Customization
The best AI chatbots are those that can be customized to the needs of your business, allowing you to provide a consistent brand experience. Consider the following questions when evaluating potential AI chatbot platforms:
- Can it tailor offerings to customers based on their preferences or past activities?
- Does the platform allow the bot to address customers by name?
- Are the responses unique and based on historical data specific to the use case?
Ease of Use
While some businesses continue to build their own custom bots, generative AI has made chatbots more accessible to teams from a variety of different functions, often removing or minimizing the need for technical expertise.
Consider how easy different chatbots are for your team to use. When determining the best AI chatbots, prioritize those that integrate well with your existing systems over those that require a lot of work from your business’s IT team. Key questions to ask as you assess the best AI chatbots for ease of use include:
- How much coding knowledge is needed to optimize the chatbot platform?
- Does the platform provide support for customer experience professionals?
- How difficult is it to customize the chatbot for specific business needs?
- Does it easily integrate with our existing tech stack?
Automation Features
The core function of any chatbot is to answer questions and point your customers toward helpful responses. But many of the best AI chatbots go much further, harnessing a variety of automation features to bring new efficiencies to your business’s workflow.
This approach helps your business to scale more effectively, acting as a sales enablement tool that saves your team time and boosts productivity. Consider questions such as:
- Can the bot change and update customer information in the CRM?
- Does it handle appointment scheduling and reservations?
- Will it facilitate account authentication or payment processes?
Best AI Chatbots of 2024
There are countless AI chatbot platforms on the market – but which are the best AI chatbots?. The key to your success, as with any marketing technology, lies in finding the tools best suited to your needs.
Many of the most well-known and best AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, are great for individual use. But if you’re looking for a chatbot for business that can handle tasks like customer service and social media, you’ll want to consider one of the best AI chatbots outlined below.
1. IBM watsonx Assistant
IBM watsonx™ Assistant is an AI platform that offers various features to enhance the customer experience. This platform is well suited to customer service, human resources, and marketing use cases, using generative AI technologies to streamline support offerings.
Pros:
- Intuitive interface
- Build voice agents and chatbots from one platform
- Integrates with existing marketing systems, including various Google tools, AWS, and Asana
- No coding skills are required because the platform relies on point-and-click design
- Added security to protect data
Cons:
- Usage-based pricing is expensive for small businesses
- Fine-tuning the platforms AI models can be time-consuming
A free version of Watsonx is available, and there are also two paid versions. The pro version starts at $140/mo and includes up to 1,000 monthly active users (MAUs). Contact the sales department for enterprise pricing.
2. ChatBot.com
ChatBot is a platform that scans your entire website, help center, or any other internal resources to answer a variety of questions for customers. This platform is best for marketing, sales, and support chatbot templates.
Pros:
- Integrations with Facebook Messenger, Slack, Shopify, and WordPress
- Prebuilt templates for everyday tasks/use cases
- No-code builder
- Testing tool available
- Customizable chat widget
Cons:
- Struggles to deal with complex requests
- Users on review sites note that there is a learning curve when first using the software
Chatbot.com offers four pricing plans:
- Starter: 1 active chatbot for $52/month
- Team: 5 chatbots with unlimited training history for $142/month
- Business: Unlimited number of active chatbots for $424/month
- Enterprise: Custom packages for large companies and premium customer support
3. Sprinklr Chatbots
Sprinklr service is an AI-powered Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform that offers chatbot solutions across multiple industries. The chatbot’s website boasts that it reduces service costs by 98% and leads to 21x faster response times, indicating the potentially transformative effects businesses can experience from adopting the best AI chatbots.
Pros:
- Social customer service chatbots across more than 15 channels
- SDKs and APIs for custom integrations with proprietary software
- 3-step process for building bots using natural language prompts
- Leverage unsupervised clustering to understand conversational intentions
Cons:
- Some reviewers note that the chatbot lacks an intuitive user interface and can be challenging to use
- Other reviews state that the support from customer service can fail to meet their expectations.
Sprinklr Service has an advanced self-service pricing model and an enterprise model. For the self-service model, costs start at $249 per seat/month. There is also a 30-day free trial to get started.
Brands that want a more customized implementation should contact Sprinklr. The enterprise solution also contains additional features that can’t be accessed when using the self-service model.
4. Landbot
Landbot is an advanced chatbot-building platform for companies seeking additional analytical capabilities across their marketing, sales, and customer service teams. The platform is a no-code environment, but does allow users to access extra features that allow for additional customizations, making it one of the best AI chatbots for all kinds of users.
Pros:
- Webhooks and APIs for seamless integration
- No-code visual chatbot builder
- Include rich media and templates for faster bot building
- Analytics and reporting to monitor chatbots
- Use advanced formulas to create and set variables to use during chats
Cons:
- Pricing can get expensive as businesses scale
- Limited customization features in some areas
There are multiple options for Landbot pricing. First, users must select whether to use a website or WhatsApp chatbot. WhatsApp chatbots start at $220 monthly and are billed annually for the pro plan.
For website chatbots, pricing ranges from a free sandbox environment to a $450/month business plan. There is also a starter plan for $45/month and a pro plan for $110/month. Each plan includes different features and capabilities, so it’s essential businesses determine which features are required for their specific use case.
5. Flow Xo
Flow XO is well-suited to both non-coders and teams with a technical background, providing a range of different features that support both basic and more advanced chatbot for business features.
Pros:
- Run automated workflows for a variety of tasks
- Qualify leads with chatbot questions
- Interface with Facebook Messenger, Slack, Twilio SMS, Telegram, and/or your existing website
- Cross-platform engagement for smooth communication
- Transition to live chat with an agent for more complex situations
Cons:
- Underdeveloped analytics make it hard to understand performance
- Businesses must connect third-party tools to create more advanced workflows
Users can start using Flow XO for free. The free plan includes 500 interactions, two weeks of logs, five bots, and 50 lifetime API credits. The exciting thing about this platform is that everyone can start free and upgrade as needed.
Standard plans are $25/month, providing users with 5,000 interactions, 5 team members, 50 AI credits per month, three months of logs, and 15 bots or active flows. Businesses can upgrade from the standard plan by selecting additional add-ons, such as more bots, interactions, or team members, for an additional fee.
Choose the Best AI Chatbots For Your Business Today
The best AI chatbots make your business significantly more efficient, freeing your employees up to spend more time on high-impact tasks that drive growth. The best AI chatbots listed above are suitable for a wide range of industries and use cases, but as you evaluate the best fit for your organization, don’t forget to keep the criteria we outlined in mind.
If you need additional support building the digital future of your business, partner with GoDelta. Our team of digital marketing and web design experts will work closely with your team to build and execute a winning strategy.
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