How did Amazon increase order completion by 30%? How did Amtrak increase bookings by 25%? Chatbots.

Every day, hundreds of people land on your website searching for the products and services that you offer. Live chat, Facebook Messenger, and chatbots can keep them there and give you opportunities to interact with them in real time for lead generation, customer service, and order fulfillment.

• Live chat allows the visitor to chat with someone on your staff and get answers to their questions on the spot. The chat window can be customized per page, so the greeting and invitation can be specific to the content they are looking at. 

• Facebook Messenger is rapidly becoming the preferred method for customers and prospects to reach out to retail and service companies. Messenger also has a plugin that allows you to add chat capability to your website through the Messenger platform.

• Chatbots look and act like live chats, but they are automated. The chat is customizable and designed to elicit specific information from the visitor, like name, email address, company name, and product category of interest. Using AI (artificial intelligence) the bot is designed to steer the customer to products and services that match their search, and to get contact information that can be used for future interaction and for email marketing, much like a web form.

Anyone with a company Facebook page can install the Facebook Messenger chat on their website. Plus, there are many companies that help you create bots that integrate with Messenger, like Chatfuel, MobileMonkey, and Botsify.

Companies like HubSpot offer easy-to-use live chat and chatbot capabilities that integrate with any website and with the HubSpot CRM, sales, and marketing platforms. Others like Flow XO, and Drift offer custom solutions for more demanding e-commerce interactions outside of the Messenger platform.

Communication methods are changing fast! If you want to take customer interaction to a new level in 2019 while growing your email list, getting new leads, and making sales, these tools are a must-have. It’s relatively easy to incorporate live chat and chatbot into your website platform and to develop a system for monitoring interaction, so get started today!