An Introduction To Bots

If you have been keeping up with technology trends over the past few years, you will know that bots are all the rage. Whether or not you want to have bots or chat bots for your ecommerce store, they are a trend worth educating yourself on. Bots, chat bots, and robots are all different. While each of these is worth getting to know in depth if you plan on using them, having a basic understanding of each, as well as the differences, will help you keep up with industry standards.

Robots:

Robots are typically not worth much for ecommerce stores. However, since “bot” sounds like the shortened version of robot, it is important to know the differences. Robots are machines built to resemble a living creature, and are able to perform complex actions such and moving independently, or grasping objects. For online sales and marketing, having a robots assist you will not do you much good.

Chat bots:

Chat bots are something that most people have used before. A chat bot is designed to mimic human interactions to hold a conversation. Chat bots are often used in live chats, especially for basic questions. They are helpful in allowing ecommerce companies to maintain a presence, even when all team members are busy. While having an actual person answer customer service questions is often preferred, chat bots can be a helpful tool to assist customer service representatives. Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Google Assistant are considered chat bots, and are a great example of how helpful and fun chat bots can be.

Bots:

Bots are possibly the most versatile and useful program of the 3. Miriam-Webster defines bots as “a computer program that performs automatic repetitive tasks”. Bots are an old concept, dating back to the 1950’s. Today, bots are primarily used to analyze content and index webpages. Using bots rather than having a human manually go through all of the web pages allows the process to go much more quickly and efficiently. There are a wide range of bots- both good and bad. Good bots would include copyright bots, that are designed to scan webpages for plagiarized information. Spider bots are a very useful bot, that “crawls” through web pages to help find users the most relevant answer to their search. Bad bots are typically used to skew data, by imitating humans. These bots will click on ads, download information, and create fake accounts in order to leave comments and gain followers.

Why use bots:

Without getting too in depth, using bots helps humanize your brand. While there is no substitute for human interaction, bots help customers find the answers they are looking for much more quickly and efficiently while still having a conversation. Since a bot is just a program, it does not need breaks or time off, and is always available to help customers. If you are thinking about adding bots to help with your company, make sure that you are using language and keywords that are going to be most helpful to your customers. Chat bot language should mimic that of two humans having a conversation with one another, and offer the option of getting in touch with a human representative if the customer is not getting the answer they are searching for.

If you think using a bot is right for your company, make sure that you put in the effort to write quality content for it. Your bot should be used to enhance the customer experience, not to simply free up more of your time. Make sure that your bots are giving you the results you and your customers want to ensure a positive experience for everyone.