How to build a chatbot for your website in 5 steps

TL;DR

Learn how to build a chatbot in three stages: Ideation, creation, and analysis.

Ideation: Identify the business need and find out where to deploy

Creation: Figure out the apt platform for your business and build 

Analysis: Before deploying, test and train the bot. After deploying keep an open feedback loop

Table of contents

• Benefits of chatbots
• Types of available chatbots 
• How to build a chatbot 
• Step 1: Identify why you need a chatbot 
• Step 2: Determine where to deploy the chatbot 
• Step 3: Select a chatbot platform 
• Step 4: Creating a chatbot 
• Step 5: Test, train, and deploy the chatbot 
• Why you need Zoho SalesIQ to build your chatbot 

Benefits of having chatbots for your business

Chatbots increase business efficiency by streamlining engagement strategies, making it convenient for customers to get instant assistance. Additional benefits of having chatbots on your website for your marketing, sales, and customer support teams include:

• 24/7 assistance

• Not missing out on any leads

• Instant responses to customers' questions

• Self-service resources that help customers resolve their own queries

• Saving 35–40% of your agents' time

• Increasing sales revenue

• Reducing operational costs by over 40%

• Improving overall customer experience and engagement

Before you build a chatbot for your website, you need to understand the types of chatbots available on the market. This will help you choose the right one for your business.

Types of chatbots for your business

These are suitable for businesses that want to both collect information and converse naturally to provide resolutions.

Now that we've seen the types of chatbots and their use cases, let's explore how businesses can build their own.

How to build a chatbot in five steps

Building a chatbot should be approached in three stages: ideation, building, and analysis.

Ideation: Prerequisites to creating a chatbot

Step 1: Identify why you need a chatbot

First, identify the reason your business needs a chatbot. Since there are many types, you want to avoid investing in something that doesn't meet your requirements. 

To help identify the right chatbot for you, ask yourself these questions:

• Why do you want a chatbot?
• What do you want your chatbot to do?
• Which team will the chatbot help?
• How should the chatbot communicate (i.e., strictly answering questions or more conversationally)?

Once you've identified the reason you need a chatbot, determine the type of chatbot you'd need for your business using the use cases above.

Step 2: Determine where to deploy the chatbot

After figuring out which chatbot type you need, determine where to deploy it. If you're not sure, ask yourself where you get the most visitors and queries. 

• Websites: Websites are the faces of businesses, and it's crucial to have chatbots on your website as your first line of communication.
• Social media and instant messaging channels: Businesses now focus more on social media and instant messaging channels since that's where their target audiences are. Some companies even use a social-only strategy. If you're mainly on social media, then chatbots should be deployed on your social channels. 
• Portals: If your business operates via a portal or has developed an ERP-like solution, chatbots can be deployed in those products to make it easy for your customers to engage with you.

Since APIs are commonly available for chatbots, even if you have a custom requirement that goes beyond the above-mentioned areas, they can be deployed wherever you prefer. 

Step 3: Select a chatbot platform

Next comes the tricky part. You've identified why you need a chatbot and where to deploy it. Now, you have to select the appropriate chatbot platform.

• ​​Codeless chatbot platforms: If you don't know how to code, you can choose a codeless chatbot platform that allows you to drag and drop blocks to build chatbots. Codeless chatbots won't take long to build, and it'll be easy to add modifications if needed. However, if you have niche use cases that require custom functions, codeless chatbots won't have the capabilities.
• Coded platforms: Coded platforms are a good choice for niche use cases. Compared to codeless chatbots, coded chatbots will require more maintenance, and they'll need coders to build extensive use cases to satisfy your business needs.
• AI platforms: If you want your chatbots to converse naturally and dynamically, choosing an AI chatbot platform helps you build conversational AI chatbots.
• Hybrid platforms: If the different types of chatbots are confusing you or your business needs more than one type, hybrid chatbot platforms give you the option to create coded, codeless, and conversational AI chatbots.

Creation: Building and deploying chatbots

Step 4: Creating a chatbot

With all your research in mind, you can log in to your selected chatbot builder platform and start building.

While building, try to make the chatbot as helpful as possible; users need to feel comfortable letting a chatbot answer their questions. Refer to the notes you took during Step 1 on conversational flow and make sure your chatbot is meeting those goals. You can also set up a trigger message that nudges customers to initiate a conversation.

Step 5: Test, train, and deploy the chatbot

The last step is to test the chatbot you've built to ensure it's working properly. While you're doing this, you can train your chatbot to be what you want it to be.

If you're using an FAQ chatbot, you need to add the resources and knowledge base articles that would answer customer questions. You also need to make sure the chatbot pulls the correct information and shares relevant articles with the customers.

If you've built a conversational AI chatbot, you must check and train its tone to ensure it matches your brand's. Since AI chatbots can hallucinate (give incorrect answers instead of saying they don't know), asking questions outside the scope of your business can help you determine its responses. Based on its responses, you can determine the bot's extensibility.

Once everything is tested, you can deploy the chatbot on your platforms.

Analysis: Make your chatbot even better

The process doesn't end here. After deployment, monitor the bot's performance, the quality of conversations with customers, the number of queries, the provided resolutions, and the quality of these resolutions.

With constant monitoring, you can identify what changes can be made to help your customers have better conversations and faster resolutions.

Are you overwhelmed by all these stages and steps? Would you like a platform that can accommodate all your requirements and make the building process a breeze?

Why you need Zoho SalesIQ to build your chatbot

Zoho SalesIQ is a platform that can handle a wide variety of requests. Whatever your chatbot requirements are, you can accomplish them with SalesIQ.

• Codeless bot builder: SalesIQ has a simple yet powerful drag-and-drop interface. Build a complete chatbot without writing a single line of code. The no-code chatbot builder can be customized for your business needs and integrated with your CRM and help desk to better understand prospects and customers.

• Script platform: SalesIQ offers a code-friendly and robust platform for building a powerhouse chatbot that suits your business's needs.

• FAQ chatbot: Answer Bot is our FAQ chatbot powered by Zia, Zoho's AI. You can add relevant resources to its knowledge base, and Answer Bot will take care of your customers' questions.

• Hybrid chatbot: If you want combined benefits, you can merge our codeless and FAQ bots. Since we support integration with OpenAI's ChatGPT, it turns SalesIQ's Answer Bot into a conversational chatbot.

 Ready to see what chatbots can do for your business? Sign up for a 15-day free trial and build one yourself.