Understanding the Advantages of SMS Chatbot

Have you ever found yourself frustrated on a phone call with customer service, only to be greeted by a robotic voice that couldn't understand your issue? Or have you ever been overwhelmed by a flood of emails or messages from customers, making it difficult to keep up with the demand for immediate responses? 

These are common challenges that businesses face in today's fast-paced world, where customers expect instant gratification and businesses struggle to keep up. That's where SMS chatbots come in. 

These intelligent virtual assistants are revolutionizing customer service by providing real-time support and personalized engagement, all through a simple text message. As businesses navigate the complexities of digital transformation, SMS chatbots have emerged as a powerful tool to improve efficiency, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive growth. 

Let’s take a closer look at the role of SMS chatbots in today's business landscape and how they are shaping the future of customer engagement.

What Is An SMS Chatbot?

A lot of companies in eCommerce, financial services, healthcare, and more industries have already started utilizing SMS chatbots to handle customer questions and responses. In principle, it’s an ideal way of driving customer engagement without creating additional third-party software. This mobile marketing trend has taken the world by storm, and for good reason. 

The advantage of an artificial intelligence SMS chatbot is that it takes the human factor out of the equation. This means it can respond to multiple customers simultaneously, as opposed to humans who can handle one customer at a time. Whether it's customer service, qualifying SMS leads, or chat commerce, they come in handy in more than one way.

Moreover, chatbots are both cost and time-effective. The bigger question here is how can one create and implement a text chatbot for a business. 

To start, there are two ways to approach this—creating an SMS chatbot from scratch by yourself or using third-party tools for assistance. If you are building a chatbot from the ground up, you will need to develop your own scripts for the chatbot.

Third-party tools, on the other hand, have an existing database of scripts you can use. In either case, you will still need to customize the scripts to better adapt them to your needs. And with so many applications and services available, skipping the hassle of creating one is probably a good idea.

Upon creating your chatbot, make sure to thoroughly test it out before implementing it. You need a fully functioning software application before using it to interact with customers. A glitchy or unresponsive SMS bot can discourage customers from using it and decrease engagement.

Therefore, before delivering the final product, ensure its working stability through a chatbot prototype tool. This will give you an idea of what your finished product will look like and what you can improve.

How Does An SMS Chatbot Work?

1. The customer sends an SMS message to the chatbot's phone number or short code.

2. The SMS chatbot receives the message and uses NLP to analyze the message and understand the customer's intent.

3. The chatbot retrieves relevant information or data from its database and formulates a response based on the customer's inquiry.

4. The chatbot sends a response back to the customer through SMS.

5. If necessary, the chatbot may ask follow-up questions to clarify the customer's inquiry or request additional information.

6. The chatbot may also provide recommendations or suggest actions that the customer can take to resolve their issue or inquiry.

7. The chatbot may update the customer's profile or record their interaction in a database for future reference.

8. The chatbot may also escalate the conversation to a human agent if it is unable to resolve the customer's issue or if the customer requests to speak with a live agent.

Why Use SMS Chatbots?

Customer engagement has always been the driving force behind every successful business endeavor. Traditionally this was handled by people—and it still is for the most part despite the popularity of SMS chatbots. 

But, due to the increasing number of customer inquiries, the process of conversational marketing can get rather overwhelming, putting a huge strain on companies. Human effort simply cannot efficiently deal with all that communication—this is where chatbots take the stage. 

Chatbots provide a modern solution to this problem. These are computer programs that can simulate human-like conversations using an existing database of interactions. You’ll come across chatbots on apps, websites, communication platforms, and so on. Text message marketing also involves chatbots in practice.

1. Accessibility

SMS is a ubiquitous technology, available on almost every mobile phone, making it a highly accessible platform for businesses to reach their customers.

2. Convenience

SMS chatbots can provide 24/7 assistance to customers without the need for human intervention, allowing for quick and convenient responses to inquiries.

3. Scalability

Handling large volumes of messages and inquiries without experiencing any lag or downtime makes SMS chatbots highly scalable for businesses of all sizes.

4. Cost-Effective

Implementing an SMS chatbot can be much more cost-effective than hiring additional customer service staff to handle inquiries, as chatbots can handle a large number of inquiries at once.

5. Personalization

With chatbots, you can meet the unique needs of customers and provide a more personalized SMS marketing experience for them.

6. Efficiency

SMS chatbots allow you to streamline your customer service operations by automating routine tasks and inquiries, freeing up your staff to focus on more complex tasks.

7. Increased Engagement

Businesses can send texts to customers on a more frequent basis, providing them with valuable information and updates in real time.

8 . Analytics

Thanks to chatbot conversations, you can gain valuable insights into customer behavior. Armed with this data, you can track conversion rates, work on generating leads, analyze customer conversations, and understand which communication channels to expand on.

How Much Does An AI SMS Chatbot Cost?

The cost of an SMS chatbot can vary depending on several factors, including the complexity of the chatbot, the features and functionalities required, and the vendor or service provider chosen. Consider the following cost components when implementing an SMS chatbot:

Development And Setup Costs

The initial cost of developing and setting up an SMS chatbot can vary depending on the vendor or service provider, the complexity of the chatbot, and the features and functionalities required. This cost may include hiring developers, designers, or consultants to create and implement the chatbot.

Maintenance And Hosting Costs

Once the SMS chatbot is set up, ongoing maintenance and hosting costs will be incurred. This includes server costs, software upgrades, bug fixes, and ongoing support and maintenance.

Messaging Costs

SMS chatbots usually charge per message sent or received. The cost per message can vary depending on the country, region, and service provider. In some cases, the messaging costs may be bundled into a monthly subscription fee.

Integration Costs

If the SMS chatbot needs to be integrated with other systems or platforms, there may be additional integration costs to consider.

Do You Need to Create An AI SMS Chatbot?

If you're a business looking to improve your customer support operations and engage with customers more efficiently, an AI SMS chatbot service could be a valuable addition to your toolkit. However, you don't necessarily need to create your chatbot from scratch. Here are some reasons why:

Faster Implementation

Building an SMS chatbot from scratch can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, requiring a significant investment of time and money. However, by using an AI SMS chatbot service, you can quickly and easily implement a chatbot without the need for extensive development or technical expertise.

Lower Cost 

On top of that, creating one from scratch can also be expensive, requiring the hiring of developers, designers, and consultants. But if you resort to a service, you can leverage pre-built templates and pre-existing integrations, reducing the cost of development and implementation.

Access to Expertise

An AI SMS chatbot service will typically have a team of experts who specialize in chatbot development and implementation. This way, you can access this expertise and ensure that your chatbot is optimized for performance and customer satisfaction.

Scalability

The service can handle large volumes of messages and inquiries, making it highly scalable, which can be difficult to achieve when building a chatbot from scratch.

Advanced Features

An AI SMS chatbot service will also offer advanced features and functionalities, such as natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and machine learning. These can help provide a more personalized and efficient AI customer experience.

6 Best SMS Chatbot Builders

1. Twilio

Twilio is a cloud communication platform that offers an SMS chatbot builder with advanced features like natural language processing and machine learning. It also offers integrations with other popular platforms like Salesforce and Zendesk.

2. Dialogflow

Dialogflow is a Google-owned platform that offers an easy-to-use SMS chatbot builder with pre-built templates and integrations with messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and Slack.

3. MobileMonkey

MobileMonkey is a chatbot builder that specializes in SMS and Facebook Messenger bots. It provides a drag-and-drop interface and pre-built templates to help businesses build their chatbots quickly and easily.

4. Tars

Tars is a conversational AI platform that offers an SMS chatbot builder with advanced features like lead capturing and chatbot analytics, as well as integrations with platforms like Zapier and Hubspot.

5. Landbot

Landbot is a no-code chatbot builder that offers an SMS chatbot builder with pre-built templates and integrations.

6. Flow.ai

Flow.ai is a conversational AI platform that offers an SMS chatbot builder with advanced features like natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and machine learning.

Top SMS Chatbot Examples

H&M

H&M uses an SMS chatbot to provide personalized styling advice and outfit recommendations to its customers. The chatbot asks customers about their style preferences, budget, and occasion, and then makes outfit suggestions accordingly.

Sephora

This popular beauty retailer uses an SMS chatbot to provide customers with customized product recommendations and beauty tips. The chatbot inquires about their skin type, makeup preferences, and favorite brands, and then suggests products based on answers.

Domino's

Domino's uses an SMS chatbot to allow customers to place orders, track deliveries, and receive special offers. The chatbot can handle complex orders and payment processing, making it easy for customers to order their favorite pizza.