Choosing the Right Chatbot Program Could Be Your Best Customer Service Move Chatbots are ideal for how consumers increasingly prefer to communicate with brands.
By Aaron Agius Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
When you consider that 45.8 percent of consumers would rather connect with a business through messaging than through email, it's clear that businesses need to utilize new communication channels if they want to retain their customers.
Unlike impersonal email exchanges, messaging apps allow brands to connect with people in an intimate, personalized way. Unfortunately, maintaining intimate communication channels using human employees is challenging, for a number of reasons. With technological automation, chatbots can be used to deliver a personalized experience, without additional human labor costs.
For this reason, chatbots are highly effective for businesses that want to scale their marketing and customer services.
If you're looking to get started with chatbots, choosing a platform that fits your requirements is crucial. Here are 10 of the most popular chatbot platforms, so you can make an informed decision on the right chatbot for your business.
Related: Enterprise Chatbots and the Conversational Commerce Revolutionizing Business
Facebook Messenger Platform
Facebook has over 50 million companies that operate on the platform, with over 1 billion business messages being delivered every month. For this reason, Facebook Messenger Platform is very enticing for developers that want to build chatbots.
With Messenger, your customers don't need to download your app in order for you to communicate with them. Instead, you can get in touch with them whenever they're logged into Facebook (which is over 20 minutes per day, for the average person).
Facebook's developers section has an abundance of material about chatbot creation. Check out this informative guide for getting your chatbot up and running.
Related: How to Create a Facebook Messenger Chatbot For Free Without Coding
Chatfuel
If you're looking to integrate a chatbot with JSON, YouTube or Twitter, but lack the coding skills to make it happen, you're in luck. Chatfuel has been specifically designed to enable non-technical developers to create fully functional chatbots.
Chatfuel features a very simple interface, which allows you to pick your chatbot's name, input conversational content and add images with ease. Check out this video to see how you can get your Chatfuel chatbot running in less than 10 minutes.
Just because Chatfuel can be used by non-technical developers doesn't mean you'll wind up with a weak functioning chatbot. Chatfuel has produced chatbots for big brands like Adidas, MTV, TechCrunch and more.
Related: Enterprise Chatbots Platforms and the Future of Work
Beep Bop
Beep Bop is a popular paid platform which allows developers to create chatbots for Facebook and Slack. You can manage your Slack integration using GitHub and work with your desired coding language.
Beep Bop features comprehensive event analytics and makes it easy for developers to collaborate with other team members. You can also receive customer support from the Beep Bop team directly within Slack.
Remember that Slack's core users are people at work - so it may not be appropriate to create a chatbot for Slack if you're a leisure or entertainment brand.
ChattyPeople
ChattyPeople is one of the most popular chatbot solutions for ecommerce brands, due to the fact that it integrates seamlessly with Facebook commerce. With ChattyPeople, you don't need any coding skills in order to create a helpful customer service bot for Facebook.
Your bot will be able to process orders from Facebook and can recognize variations in trigger words.
Due to its excellent functionality and flexibility, many ecommerce marketers choose to integrate ChattyPeople with their Shopify stores. The platform also supports PayPal and Stripe.
You can get started with ChattyPeople for $10 USD per month or try the advanced payment plan ($20 USD per month) which offers more comprehensive services for established businesses.
Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business
Telegram Bots
Telegram, a messaging application founded by Russian tech entrepreneur, Pavel Durov, was the first app to feature a bot store. In this regard, Telegram is partially responsible for the rise in popularity of chatbots.
Since Telegram's chatbot code is open-source, numerous bot tutorials have been published which teach the basics of bot building with the Telegram platform. Regardless of if you want to create a bot for predicting the weather or a polling bot for market research, you'll find many comprehensive guides online.
BotKit
BotKit is another open-source platform which enables you to build chatbots for Slack, Facebook Messenger and Twilio. BotKit has a sizeable developer community forum, where you can get your technical questions answered and receive valuable feedback from expert developers.
It's worth noting that BotKit was developed with plenty of input from Slack. If you're looking to integrate BotKit with Slack, I recommend checking out this starter kit.
If you want to create a chatbot with an identity that can mimic human conversations, BotKit could be a good choice for you.
Botsify
Botsify is a paid subscription service that enables you to integrate fully functional chatbots with Facebook, as well as other platforms. With a simple drag-and-drop interface, it's easy to build complex question-answer sequences in no time.
Botsify is lauded for its fast-learning, sophisticated artificial intelligence.
For instance, Botsify can ask people questions which enable the AI to build a user profile for each individual. Once Botsify understands each user's likes, dislikes and location, it can deliver personalized content for each individual user.
Related: 7 Ways Chatbots Can Benefit Your Marketing Strategy
FlowXO
If you're looking for a business platform that creates chatbots for Slack or Facebook Messenger, FlowXO might be the right choice for you. The platform features over 100 integrated modules, services and applications.
FlowXO's USP (unique selling proposition) is that you get a high level of flexibility without any coding expertise required. You can customize your bot to behave exactly as you want, using FlowXO's simple interface.
This informative guide shows you how to create a chatbot for Facebook Messenger, setup flows, add triggers, ask questions and respond to answers.
Related: Top 7 Chatbot Monetization Strategies You Need to Know
Smooch
Not to be confused with the dating website of the same name, Smooch is a cloud-based platform that excels in multi-channel messaging.
Integrate your most popular customer channels, such as Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Viper, with one API. With all incoming messages streamlined, you can craft your responses without leaving Smooch.
Smooch integrates with many popular bot platforms, allowing you to deliver automated, conversational messages across all relevant channels.
Related: 10 Facebook Messenger Chatbot Marketing Expert Tips
Meokay
With Meokay, developers can create highly sophisticated chatbots without any coding skills.
Meokay recognizes variances in trigger words and leverages signals in order to deliver relevant offers to the right people. You can integrate Meokay with Stripe and Paypal, and process orders within Facebook Messenger.
