WhatsApp has become one of the most popular messaging apps with over 2 billion active users worldwide. Given its huge user base, many businesses are leveraging WhatsApp to engage with their customers in a more personal way through WhatsApp bots. WhatsApp bots allow businesses to automate conversations and interact with customers 24/7.
According to a survey, 67% of consumers prefer contacting businesses via chatbots and 30% of enterprises will be using chatbots in some form or other by 2020. This shows the immense potential of chatbots in customer engagement and services.
So how do you go about creating a WhatsApp bot for your business? In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through the step-by-step process of building a WhatsApp bot from scratch using different platforms and tools.
Benefits of WhatsApp bots
Here are some of the key benefits of having a WhatsApp bot for your business:
– Automate repetitive tasks – WhatsApp bots can automate repetitive and mundane tasks like responding to common customer queries 24/7. This saves a lot of manual work and frees up human agents.
– Instant response to customers – Bots can respond to customers instantly, improving response times significantly compared to email or calls. This leads to higher customer satisfaction.
– Engage users proactively – Bots allow you to engage customers proactively through notifications, offers, newsletters etc. This helps build better relationships.
– Analyze conversations – The conversations happening over the bot can be easily tracked and analyzed to gain customer insights that can be used to improve products or services.
– Cost-effective – Bots are more cost-effective than hiring multiple support agents for customer service. It can handle large volumes of conversations easily.
– Available 24/7 – Bots can work round the clock, ensuring your business is always available for customers. No holidays or leaves.
Steps to create a WhatsApp bot
Creating a WhatsApp bot involves these key steps:
1. Decide the purpose and use cases
2. Choose a platform
3. Design conversations
4. Integrate with business systems
5. Test and deploy the bot
6. Market and promote the bot
Let’s look at each of these steps in more detail:
1. Decide the purpose and use cases
The first step is to have clarity on why you need this WhatsApp bot and how it will be used. Here are some common use cases for WhatsApp bots:
– Customer support – Address common queries, share info, receive orders or complaints
– Lead generation – Qualify leads, send offers, get user details
– Notifications – Send alerts, updates, reminders, newsletters
– Surveys & feedback – Conduct polls, gather user feedback
– Appointment booking – Enable users to book appointments or schedule meetings
– Payments – Accept payments for products/services right within WhatsApp
Once you identify the use cases, you can design appropriate conversations and capabilities in the bot. Prioritize the most important use cases to tackle first.
2. Choose a platform
The next step is to choose a platform on which you will build and deploy your WhatsApp bot. You have a few options:
– **Using a bot building platform** – Platforms like Chatfuel, Manychat, FlowXO, and MobileMonkey make it easy to build bots visually without coding. They provide pre-built templates, workflows, and integrations. Ideal for simple to medium complexity bots.
– **Build from scratch** – For advanced custom bot capabilities, you can build the bot programmatically using Node.js, Python, Java, .NET etc. This requires technical expertise but gives the most flexibility.
– **WhatsApp Business API** – WhatsApp also provides a Business API to integrate your business systems and build customized bots. Requires business verification.
– **Third-party API providers** – Services like ChatApi and Vonage provide developer APIs to build WhatsApp bots by integrating with the WhatsApp network. Easy to implement.
Evaluate your requirements, use cases complexity, time and technical capabilities to choose the right platform. Building on top of an existing platform is the fastest way to get started for most businesses.
3. Design the conversational flow
The most important part of creating a great bot is designing the conversational flow. These tips will help design effective conversations:
– **Identify possible questions/queries** – Analyze existing customer conversations to identify the most common questions customers ask. The bot should be designed to answer these intelligently.
– **Create dialog flows** – Map out the possible dialog flows based on user responses. Use flowcharts to visualize the conversation flow from start to finish.
– **Offer quick replies** – For questions that need the same type of response (like Yes/No), use quick replies to provide relevant options. This improves user experience.
– **Use a question-answer model** – Ask questions and provide answers in a contextual way during the conversation to extract necessary information from users.
– **Personalize conversations** – Use names, personalized messages, and variables to make conversations more contextual and human.
– **Add fallback options** – Prepare fallback responses for questions where the bot doesn’t have a relevant answer to avoid getting stuck.
– **Make it effortless** – Minimize the effort required on the user’s part to get their job done. Avoid too many steps or pieces of information sought.
– **Test the flows** – Check how the conversations flow end-to-end. Identify and fix gaps, complex paths. Iteratively improve the conversations.
4. Integrate with business systems
To make your bot intelligent and useful, you need to integrate it with your existing business systems like:
– **CRM** – Fetch customer data to personalize conversations and provide relevant information to users when needed.
– **Support desk** – Let users create tickets that get routed to your support agents for resolution.
– **Ecommerce platform** – Allow users to browse products, add items to cart, and checkout to make purchases.
– **Payment gateway** – Accept payments from users by integrating a payment gateway like Stripe or PayPal within the bot.
– **Databases** – Connect to databases and data sources to provide users up-to-date information on inventory, orders etc.
– **External APIs** – Enhance bot capabilities by connecting to third-party APIs like weather, maps, lead detection etc.
– **CMS** – Fetch dynamic content from a CMS to send latest articles, blogs, offers to users.
Choose integrations smartly based on the key use cases and business scenarios for your bot. These will make the conversations more useful.
5. Test and deploy the bot
Once you’ve built the bot, it’s time to test it and then deploy it for users. Here are some tips on testing and deployment:
– **Rigorously test main flows** – Test the main conversation flows end-to-end to identify gaps. Ask others on your team to test the bot to get unbiased feedback.
– **Test on multiple devices** – Check how the bot works on both desktop and mobile devices. Mobile is used more for messaging.
– **Test error handling** – See how the bot handles scenarios when something goes wrong like incorrect user input, API failures etc.
– **Beta launch** – Launch a private beta version first for a small set of users before a public launch. This acts as a soft launch and helps gather user feedback.
– **Monitor and fix issues** – Keep monitoring user conversations after launching to see where users get stuck. Quickly resolve any issues.
– **Integrate fallback channel** – Have a backup channel like chat/email to move complex conversations when the bot cannot handle them.
With rigorous testing and monitoring, you can ensure a smooth experience for users.
6. Market and promote the bot
Launching the bot is not the end. You need to actively promote and market the bot to drive user acquisition after launch:
– **Spread awareness** – Let your existing users know about this new service channel through emails, notifications, ads etc.
– **Share on landing pages** – Add a chat widget to your website pages and highlight the WhatsApp bot as a key contact channel.
– **Run social media ads** – Create ads for social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter showcasing your WhatsApp bot.
– **Incentivize users** – Offer promotions, discounts or deals exclusive for users who engage with your bot to encourage signups.
– **Monitor metrics** – Track key metrics like active users, messages handled, user satisfaction to quantify bot performance.
– **Take feedback** – Continuously gather user feedback to identify areas of improvement in the bot conversation.
With effective marketing, you can rapidly grow your WhatsApp bot userbase and deliver more value to customers.
Building Your First WhatsApp Bot
Now that we’ve understood key steps involved in creating a WhatsApp bot, let’s look at building a simple bot from scratch using the ManyChat platform.
ManyChat provides a code-free environment to create Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp bots visually. It has pre-built templates, workflows, broadcasting, analytics, and integrations with tools like MailChimp, Google Sheets, Shopify etc.
Here is how you can easily build your first WhatsApp bot on ManyChat:
Step 1) Create an account on ManyChat
Go to www.manychat.com and click on Sign Up to create your free account. Follow the on-screen instructions to sign up using your Facebook business page or cell phone number. ManyChat needs it to manage your WhatsApp account.
Step 2) Create your WhatsApp bot
After logging in, click on the “Create Bot” button and select WhatsApp to start setting up your new bot. Give a name and description for your bot.
Step 3) Get verified WhatsApp number
To activate WhatsApp on ManyChat, you need a verified WhatsApp business account. Click on Get Started to connect your FB page or get a new WhatsApp number. Follow the verification steps.
Step 4) Set welcome message
You can now set up an automated welcome message that users will receive when they first text your bot. For example, “Welcome to ABC company’s Bot!”
Step 5) Build conversation workflows
This is where you design the actual conversational flows of your bot using ManyChat’s workflow builder. You can add conditions, blocks, buttons, quick replies and more to create interactive conversations.
Some examples you can build include:
– FAQ bot – Answering common customer questions
– Lead generation bot – Capturing user details
– Appointment booking bot – Scheduling appointments
– Survey bot – Conducting a poll survey
Keep testing and enhancing the conversations. Add integrations to connect to external tools if needed.
Step 6) Broadcast to subscribers
You can automatically broadcast updates, offers, newsletters to all your bot subscribers using ManyChat’s broadcast feature.
Set up a list, create content and schedule broadcasts. This lets you engage users outside of conversations.
Step 7) Analyze bot metrics
ManyChat provides detailed analytics on your bot performance – total subscribers, conversations had, messages sent, user engagement.
Study these metrics to identify usage patterns and see how users interact with your bot. Use it to improve the bot.
This covers the essential steps to create your first WhatsApp bot on ManyChat. Refer to their documentation to access more features and integrations.
Tips for improving your WhatsApp bot
Here are some tips to improve your WhatsApp bot and deliver more value to customers:
Enhance conversational capabilities
Improve the conversational depth using techniques like natural language processing, sentiment analysis, machine learning etc. This makes conversations more human-like.
Add rich media
Enhance engagement by adding images, videos, GIFs, audio clips, location maps etc. But use them only where appropriate.
Personalize conversations
Use names, personalized messages, transaction history etc. to provide tailored messaging for each user. This boosts satisfaction.
Integrate payments
Allow users to make payments for services/products directly through the bot using integrated payment gateways.
Automate lead generation
Make the bot automatically qualify leads, capture details, and trigger sales team notifications to boost conversions.
Provide account management
Let users access account details, statements, raise and track tickets etc. via the bot for better self-service.
Proactive notifications
Send timely updates, notifications, and reminders proactively based on events. But avoid spamming users.
Implement chatbot handoff
Seamlessly escalate complex conversations to a human agent from within the chat itself for resolution.
Continuously train the bot
Keep training the bot with more FAQs, conversations logs, and feedback to make it smarter over time. The more data, the better it gets.
By implementing these tips, you can take your WhatsApp bot capabilities to the next level.
Conclusion
WhatsApp bots provide an exciting opportunity for businesses to drive deeper customer engagement in a messaging platform that has over two billion users globally.
The key steps to building a WhatsApp bot involve deciding the business use cases, choosing a platform, designing effective conversational flows, integrating with business systems, thoroughly testing and deploying the bot, and then marketing it to drive adoption.
Tools like ManyChat, Chatfuel and business APIs from WhatsApp make it easy to get started building your first bot without much coding. You can start simple and evolve the capabilities over time.
The real metric of success is delighting customers and solving their needs through natural conversations. By providing quick and convenient two-way interactions at scale, WhatsApp bots can transform how businesses engage and support their customers in the digital age.