TOPICS: Chatbot for Businesses   Chatbot for Website    Building a chatbot   

Chatbot Development – How to Develop A Bot for Your Business

Chatbot development, though widely recognized as an asset for businesses of all scales and typologies, presents business owners with a range of questions. The absence of a standard set of procedures often leads to hasty decisions, inadequately developed applications, and other issues that restrict the benefits that online chat bots can bring to a business. This article provides some basic pointers to help business owners develop chat bots that serve as assets rather than liabilities for their businesses.

Identify your chat bot development goals.

The first step to building an effective chatbot involves knowing the purpose of the chatbot. Online chatbots that deliver customer support, for instance, are different than those geared at generating leads and boosting sales. Deploying one and expecting it to also fulfill the functions of the other, will never lead to ideal results.



As such, business owners must first identify the type of chatbot they need at a given point in time, and develop it with the appropriate script and actions. In cases where more than one function needs to be discharged, it is always wiser to deploy multiple chatbots, each dedicated to one function. This division of duties leads to streamlined and effective chatbot-customer interactions, and saves the time and effort that would otherwise be needed if human staff had to step in at frequent intervals to iron out issues created by sub-optimal chat scripts.

Use chatbot development platforms.

Building chatbots from scratch is practically impossible without prior knowledge of artificial intelligence or experience in developing chatbot applications. A large percentage of business owners make the mistake of undertaking chatbot development on their own. This soon compounds into a situation involving error-ridden and unusable chatbot applications, along with wastage of time and resources.

Using chatbot development platforms is a wiser alternative. These platforms help businesses by building the best chatbots for their needs, in a process that takes a fraction of the time and effort required in the first situation. Meanwhile, business owners are free to invest their own time and effort into aspects of their business that are dependent on their specific skill set.

Use adaptive, AI-powered templates.

Certain chatbot development platforms, including VirtualSpirits, offer ready-to-use chatbot templates for specific verticals. These templates are driven by artificial intelligence, which allows the applications to update themselves as they learn from their interactions with visitors. After businesses have deployed these templates on their websites, artificial intelligence optimizes the chatbots and creates better conversations with customers.

Services like these go a step further in helping business owners save the time and resources that would otherwise have been spent in setting up and optimizing the chatbot using manual tools.

Consulting a professional is a wise move.

The advantages of using chatbot development platforms has already been discussed in the previous sections. The benefits that professional assistance brings to a business are immeasurable, even after a chatbot has been built and deployed. Chatbot experts have experience with building chatbots of all types and complexities. They are thus well-versed with the practical realities of implementing these bots on a typical website, and can advise business owners with proven solutions in case of an issue.

The idea of hiring professional help when it comes to building chatbots, is analogous to the concept of hiring a professional search engine optimization expert to drive traffic to one’s website and get it a better rank on Google. An expert’s opinion and analysis helps the business avoid mistakes and build on its strengths. The same holds true for chatbot development experts.

If you require help with chatbot development for your business, do not hesitate to contact us here at VirtualSpirits. We also offer information and insights on building chatbots, through the articles posted on our blog.