Year: 2021

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(This article originally appeared in Forbes)

My dog died a few years ago. She was only about 7 years old and had a lot of health problems. I miss her. But one thing I don’t miss: my pharmacy bill.

That’s because Lavender (my wife chose the name, not me) was on no less than seven medications. And a day rarely went by without me a text message from my pharmacist at the CVS near me. It almost always went something like this:

CVS: Hello Lavender, you have a prescription due for a refill. Would you like to refill it? Me (impersonating Lavender because she’s a dog): Yes. CVS: Thank you. (5 minutes later) CVS: Lavender, your prescription does not have any more refills. Would you like us to contact your primary doctor? CVS: Thank you. (2 hours later) CVS: Lavender, your prescription has been renewed and refilled. You can pick it up at our location. CVS: Thank you.

I have hundreds of these interactions and it probably took me a good dozen or so of them to realize that I wasn’t talking to a pharmacist. I was talking to a robot. A chatbot robot. This is not new stuff. Lavender passed almost four years ago. So CVS — and other big brands — have been using this AI-based technology for a while. Not only is it getting better but it’s expected to significantly grow in use, and particularly with small and mid-sized companies like the one I own.

That’s according to new research from ResearchAndMarkets, which projects a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) in the conversational AI market of more than 22 percent over the next few years. Right now the market is about $6.8 billion. By 2026 it’s predicted to expand to more than $18 billion.

And where’s the biggest growth? Small and mid-sized companies, which is projected to record a higher CAGR during the period. This should come as no surprise. As the cloud grows, it is becoming less expensive for even the smallest of companies to collect and analyze data. Many of the leading CRM software vendors — even the ones focused on small firms — are now incorporating chatbots into their applications.

According to an analysis of the report by Destination CRM chatbots “can communicate with mobile users with the help of text messaging, applications, websites, and social media. They help organizations in the real-time monitoring of customer behavior, trends, and interactions. They also track mobile services, such as geolocation, enabling rich, targeted communication based on locations and events.”

The report showed that the customer service segment will “hold the largest market share” because of its importance in meeting the demands of 24/7 support and that “chatbots provide a powerful way to conduct two-way communications by analyzing customer intents, and thus, act as an effective medium to respond to customer requests.”

What does this mean for your company, particularly if you run a smaller firm like mine? Two things.

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1. How Conversational AI can Automate Customer Service

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4. Chatbot Vs. Intelligent Virtual Assistant — What’s the difference & Why Care?

For starters it’s better customer service. The more you dig into your CRM system’s chatbot capabilities the more you’ll find that these conversational robots can handle basic questions from your customers and prospects quickly and accurately which is exactly what your visitors want. The more steps you take to enable your chatbots to deliver their information via any platform and device the more you can expand your reach. And the more willing you are to deploy the real time 24/7 translation features many of these applications have the better able you’ll be to serve and find customers anywhere around the world.

More importantly — and bluntly — these chatbots are simply replacing people. They cut your overhead. They reduce your costs of employment — wages, benefits, administration, etc. If you ask the management at CVS about this they’ll deny and just say that their AI technology is “helping to improve employee productivity” which, of course, is a bunch of nonsense. Answering basic customer service questions or sales requests is a value-less, skill-less job and it’s being replaced by robots. Hopefully the employees doing this kind of work are realizing this truth and are bumping up their skill set. I know that many of my clients are waking up to this fact. So am I.

Right now, my website has a simple chatbox on it with zero automation. I am going to make some changes this year. My CRM system, which provides this chatbox functionality for my website, has AI-powered features that — with a little bit of effort — can be configured to carry on conversations in advance of escalating a question to someone with more knowledge. It will not be perfect. There will be a learning curve. But I know in this will save my company time and help to cut overhead.

For what it’s worth, we did get a new dog a few months after Lavender passed and he’s doing great.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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On CRM: Chatbots Are Becoming A $10 Billion Market was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Did you know that 81% of people use their mobile devices to look for restaurants? Mobile phones are found almost everywhere. People use their smartphones to plan where they will eat, what they will eat, and with whom they will eat. Some people are so engrossed in their phones that they would use them to check their social media accounts while eating.

Consumers’ methods for finding restaurants and ultimately deciding whether to order or dine in have evolved substantially over time. To be competitive in an era when consumers have so many more options at their fingertips, businesses must better understand their customers and competition than ever before.

By covering tablecloths with adverts promoting their opt-in SMS marketing campaign, several restaurant owners have turned something as ordinary bland as their restaurant tables into a marketing opportunity. However, this is just one of several possibilities.

Let’s look at how restaurant marketing can help you produce a lot of revenue for your establishment.

How Restaurants can use Mass Marketing:

Mass Marketing, according to this approach, restaurants develop, distribute, and advertise products to the general public. McDonald’s, for example, served only one-size hamburger to the entire market in the hopes of pleasing everyone.

When customers identify brand signs and buildings, the familiarity factor rises, and the likelihood of them visiting a specific restaurant rises as well.

• Brand recognition and promotion: Short and quick SMS offers are a great way to promote your brand. For redeemable prizes, use SMS shortcodes. Never presume that your customers are familiar with you! At the end of each text, include your company’s name and website.
• Promote your new menu and dishes: What’s a better way to inform people about your delectable new meals than to send them a text with a tempting offer? Send your consumers regular updates and become the talk of the town.

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• Attract new customers with exclusive deals: Offer exclusive deals to attract new customers. Restaurant SMS marketing works incredibly well with exclusive restaurant specials, 1+1 meals, student deals, monthly contests, vouchers, and coupons. Make use of them to attract new customers.
• Text to win contests: Do you want to rapidly expand your text marketing list? Run a text-to-win campaign with an attractive grand prize. It keeps current subscribers interested and also attracts new ones.

• Increase subscribers: Cloud Messaging generates special QR code to encourage customers to join the distribution list
• Send SMS Blasts: Cloud Messaging enables you to send hundreds of messages in a matter of minutes with this bulk SMS feature. Send your texts when they’ll have the most impact. Make use of these features to publicize upcoming events and special offers.

Also, you need good software to get better results. Cloud Messaging, a software that helps you in Mass Marketing, Target Marketing, as well as MMS Marketing! Also, it is offering a free trial too! Try it now and see your business reach new heights!

How Restaurants can use Target Marketing:

Because there are so many various sorts of restaurants, each specializing in a distinct style of food, restaurant owners should target specific demographic groups to increase sales. Restaurants frequently promote their cuisine niches and pricing points to attract what they consider to be a distinct group of customers. When customers identify brand signs and buildings, the familiarity factor rises, and the likelihood of them visiting a specific restaurant rises as well.

• Limited-Time Offers: Send time-sensitive discounts to increase traffic, reduce wait times, and fill seats.
• Mobile Coupons: Send a campaign with an SMS voucher from a restaurant. You can also send an image of your food or a scannable QR Code via MMS.
• Weekly Offers: Inform your consumers about any weekly specials you may be running.

• Offers tailored to specific guests through loyalty and direct connection. For example, rewards-only invitations to wine dinners. When implemented correctly, this method reduces costs and increases ROI.
• Automated Birthday Text Rewards: Birthday rewards easily increase brand loyalty and daily food traffic.

Your target market is the group of customers you want to attract — eg. diners. They are the people who are most likely to purchase what you have to offer. Your restaurant’s target consumer is a specific segment of the larger dining market.

You can define your audience into these segments:-

• Breakfast buyers
• Lunchtime loyalists
• Prime customers
• Weekenders
• Devoted diners

Cloud Messaging is a target marketing software that is suitable for all business types! From restaurants to Branded stores, it can be used everywhere!

How Restaurants can use Direct Messaging:

Take a peek around your restaurant if you want to see how efficient restaurant SMS marketing is. Surprisingly, bars and restaurants have been hesitant to adopt text marketing compared to other businesses.

Restaurant SMS marketing is straightforward. Think about it for a second. At various times of the day, potential customers are likely to be thinking about food. They’re likely to do so with their phone in hand.

Why not offer them a special deal, discount, or offer to attract them to sign up?

• Reservation Reminders: Remind your customers that they’re dining with you.
• Staff Communications: Direct Messaging will help to keep your staff from missing important meetings.

Here are a few more SMS marketing campaign ideas for restaurants:

• Send texts when a customer’s food or table is ready
• Manage curbside pickup
• Manage reservations by SMS
• Limited-time offer for their next purchase
• Invitation to follow your restaurant on social media
• Request to leave a review

Restaurants Marketing Ideas:

Restaurant competition is intense, and you’ll need to give it your best to succeed.

We’re here to help you out with a few restaurant marketing ideas and techniques that can help you build your business and attract customers from all over the world!

• Foodie Photos
• Loyalty Programs
• Geo-Targeted Ads
• Send out an E-Mail Newsletter
• Promote user-generated content
• Monitor your social media presence
• Start a blog
• Offer coupons and discounts

Why Cloud Messaging:

Many text messaging solutions allow you to text customers one-on-one or send mass SMS. You’ll need a platform like Cloud Messaging that can do both. It allows you to do everything from sending out promotional messaging to managing pickups messages.

We hope you found this useful 🙂

Still, need any help? We are here for you! Visit us now at icloudy.cloudladderconsulting.com

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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How Restaurants can use Cloud Messaging was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Developing a marketing message sounds like the simplest task. You might think it’s just a few hours of work, but the truth is, developing a marketing message is a big deal! A campaign’s success is determined by the marketing message it conveys.

Any promotional effort is doomed to fail from the outset if it lacks the necessary plan and execution. But don’t worry; In this blog post, we’ll go over the importance of messaging and how to use it in your marketing campaigns in the most effective way possible!

So, keep on reading!

What is a messaging strategy?

A messaging strategy is a key that successfully markets your business. It’s how you present yourself, how you communicate, and how it affects every piece of text associated with your company, from in-store signage and advertising to customer service emails and website copy. It is a type of digital marketing strategy that helps in building brand awareness on a more personal level.

Your message helps you build brand recognition and informs customers about who you are as a company, and it could be the determining factor in whether or not they choose to support you.

An ideal marketing message should do the following:

• Describe your key offering to the public in a way that is simple to understand and remember.
• It should connect with your audience and make them feel as if their issues are important.
• Give them a clear picture of the problem you solve, how you differ, what you stand for, and so on.
• Build trust in your goods or services so that people will buy them and recommend them to others.

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Benefits of a messaging strategy –

Here are some benefits of messaging strategy:

• Consistency: Because your communications will be built around a messaging strategy, your messages will be consistent across all of your marketing products. This will ensure that your message is delivered consistently regardless of which medium your target is seeing.
• Saving time: Once you’ve defined your messaging, you or your copywriter will save time when it comes to writing.

• Clarity: When your website doesn’t convey your worth, it’s never a good thing. This issue is eliminated with the use of a communications strategy. Your site content will reflect your brand voice once you’ve defined it.
• Brand Strength: Brands with consistent, clear messaging across all channels appear to be more powerful than those that don’t.
• Enhancing the user experience: By defining your audience and their needs, challenges, characteristics in your messaging strategy, you can ensure that your brand’s experience with them is authentic. You may now speak directly to their requirements and ensure that your message is delivered as effectively as possible.

Crafting the Perfect Marketing Message:

Message development begins with research about the needs of your organization. It’s also a good idea to look at some existing brand message samples to gain a better sense of the company’s values, identity, and voice. Once you have a good understanding of the company and its principles, it’s time to focus on your target audience.

Let’s take a look at a few pointers to help you take your marketing message to the next level-

• Target a Mix of Emotions and Logic: People make purchases based on a combination of emotional impulse and logical reasoning. As a result, it’s critical to assist your audience in seeing both aspects of your brand. Create a marketing message that straddles the two worlds. When fashion brands advertise things like “the latest trends in the highest quality,” they’re appealing to both the buyer’s emotions and their logical side by convincing them that their high-quality goods are a good investment.
• Present Results from Similar People: Another technique to make your marketing message more powerful is to include the results or experiences of people who are similar to the persona you’re talking to. You can connect the audience even further by showing them that someone like them, with the same pain points and problems, has experienced the benefits you’ve outlined in your marketing message.
• Differentiate Your Brand: Differentiation is one of the secrets of an effective marketing message. Businesses should always strive to make their brand stand out as unique.
• Speak Their Language: Your marketing message should be written in the same tone as your target audience. Maintain a conversational tone in your writing, as if you were speaking with them in person. You can always maintain a professional attitude without alienating your listeners!

Your firm should be built on the foundation of a well-crafted message strategy. Define your objectives and get your message out there — a great tale told with the appropriate tools will resonate with customers and make a huge difference for you and your company.

You’ll need to pin your audience by describing what’s in it for them before you can hope to have earned enough of their interest to talk about who you are and what you do.

Use this blog post as a checklist next time you find yourself crafting a marketing message and use it to make sure yours is as effective as possible. Here’s to creating a truly compelling marketing message!

If you don’t know what to do after building a messaging strategy, we at Cloud Messaging would love to help! Cloud Messaging is software that helps businesses reach their audiences through Mass Marketing as well as Target Marketing. Contact us today and let’s grow your business together! 🙂

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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Marketing Message Strategies for Successful Campaigns was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Religious and volunteer organizations all over the world use bulk SMS service to deliver important messages to their communities and members about future events, meetings, functions, donations, welfare programs, and other news. Information can be communicated to a large number of individuals in a matter of seconds for very little cost, and messages may be picked up while on the move because people take their phones with them everywhere they go. Religious groups increasingly employ promotional SMS, transactional SMS, community SMS, websites, emails, and even blogging to keep in touch with today’s youth. Cloud Messaging allows you to reach out to your community through the most common medium — SMS.

It’s essential to consider that text messaging can really assist churches in overcoming typical issues.

The following are the basic issues that all ministries and religious organizations face:

• In a day of digital distractions and information overload, keeping your community engaged
• Connecting with your community’s youth, teenagers, and young adults
• Making your message memorable for the entire week

Your religious organization will be able to address each of these difficulties with ease using Cloud Messaging’s text messaging for religious organizations.

How religious organizations can use Message Marketing:

• Send daily religious quotes straight to your members’ mobile phones: Community members will be inspired all week long by text quotes from Religious Organizations. Improve the spiritual well-being of your community. Send out weekly devotionals or motivational SMS to keep folks on the right track.

• Alert members instantly about schedule changes: No one will be left in the dark if you send timely texts regarding scheduling changes. Text notifications allow you to contact a large number of people in a short amount of time.
• Reach your youth by speaking their language: Did you know that text messaging is by far the most popular method of personal written contact among people aged 15 to 24?
• Get feedback and suggestions from your community: Are you looking for a recommendation? Have an idea for which you’d like the input of your entire audience? Send an SMS, ask for feedback, and wait for the replies.

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• Ask for volunteers to help out at events: Sending a fast text message to recruit volunteers is a lot easier using SMS.

• Share prayer requests with the whole community: It’s also simple to let everyone know about a significant prayer request.
• Small-Group Reminders: It is important to work in small groups. They make it easier for church members to connect on a more personal level. With a simple text message, remind all potential participants of an upcoming event.
• Increase attendance at your events: A newsletter isn’t always sufficient. Send out automated text message reminders for future sermons, bible studies, mission trips, and other activities.
• Text to join: Make a list of phone numbers easily! People should text a unique keyword to a 6-digit number that is easy to remember. (For example, the text FAITH)
• Use texting for donations: Churches require donations throughout the year to keep their activities running, and texting for churches is a great method to get them. It provides contributors with a straightforward approach for making a one-time donation to your organization and then moving on.

• Send Event Updates: Using text reminders to increase attendance is a wonderful idea. You can send customized reminders to your congregation to attend worship on Sundays or other days of the week. These could also contain reminders about upcoming activities or meetings, as well as notifications if a regular event’s time or location has changed. Other special events, such as church camps or classes, can also be announced.
• Organize your staff: From choir to youth programs scheduling and maintaining facilities, church leaders must ensure that all programs and services operate smoothly. Volunteers can stay in touch with each other no matter where they are in their busy life, thanks to text messaging services for churches.

Religious organizations can also use SMS Marketing for:

• Send out an invitation for an upcoming prayer
• Provide updates on missions trips
• Let people know where their donations are going
• Wish members a happy birthday

Apart from being the dominant SMS platform, religious organizations use Cloud Messaging for a simple reason: emails aren’t checked, and people aren’t home to answer phones or check voicemail. Text messaging for religious organizations is a low-cost, high-impact tool to spread the word. Within 15 minutes of receipt, almost 98 percent of text messages are opened and read. When compared to an average email open rate of 14 percent to 20%, this is a significant difference.

Platform dependability, rapid setup, easy account management, and great customer service should all be considered while choosing the finest texting system. Cloud Messaging has a number of capabilities tailored to religious organizations, including the ability to send text message reminders, notifications, and manage interactive SMS and MMS campaigns.

Why Cloud Messaging:

• User-Friendly Mass Text Messaging Service
• Affordable SMS Solution for Meeting Reminders
• Automated SMS Marketing for Church Events
• Engage Better with Bulk SMS and Direct, Two-Way Messaging

Cloud Messaging has established itself as the number one texting service for Religious Organizations

Need more help? Contact us or visit us at icloudy.cloudladderconsulting.com

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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How Religious Organizations can use Cloud Messaging was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A ChatBot is a computer program designed to communicate with human users via the Internet. For example, any user can ask an inquiry or statement to the bot, and the bot will respond immediately. It allows a form of communication between machines and humans, mainly through voice commands or messages. It can answer human language questions and respond like a human. It also provides responses based on a combination of default scripts and machine learning applications.

When ChatBot is asked a question, it will respond based on the knowledge and understanding of the database available at that time. If the conversation introduces a concept that has not been programmed to be understood, it will either distract the conversation or pass the communication to a human operator. Currently, many e-commerce companies are looking at different ways of using chatbots to improve Customer Experience. Whether for shopping, ticket booking, or just for customer service.

Types of ChatBots:

1. Support Chatbots: Support chatbots, which are designed to handle a specific problem, require context awareness, personality, and multi-turn functionality. They should be able to guide a user through a business process and respond to a wide range of frequently asked questions. To perform tasks, most support chatbots use deep learning and natural language processing. For support chatbots, speech recognition is an optional feature.

A customer service chatbot is useful in a variety of businesses, including retail, human resources, digital marketing, and healthcare. In all of these industries, the use of chatbots for consumer services is becoming a requirement, as it saves money and enhances customer happiness.

1. Skills Chatbots: It’s a one-turn chatbot that doesn’t necessitate a lot of context information. It can just do an action by obeying an instruction. With its speech recognition capability, a skills chatbot, for example, can easily obey the order “turn on the lights.” A powerful NLP function is required for a skills chatbot, as well as the ability to work quickly. Though Alexa is a bot that may be divided into numerous sorts of chatbots, it has a wonderful skills chatbots feature.
2. Assistant Chatbots: Assistant bots, like support bots, must be capable of conversing and answering questions. To keep users interested, they must also be amusing. Siri, Apple’s most successful example of an assistant bot, can not only aid the user with a variety of activities such as retrieving news, conducting a Google search, setting reminders, and so on, but also answers in a humorous manner if it doesn’t comprehend the inquiry.

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Advantages of Chatbots:

• 24/7 Availability: According to research, more than half of customers want a firm to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Maintaining a 24-hour response system ensures that the seller and the client are in constant contact. Bots that can’t answer simple customer questions, even if they’re available 24 hours a day, don’t bring value.
• Instant Answers: An operator can focus on one customer and address one question at a time. A chatbot, on the other hand, may answer thousands of inquiries at once. Instant responses are possible because of the cloud, the internet, and software procedures.

• Consistent Answers: When a consumer speaks with a customer support representative, there is no guarantee that subsequent representatives will respond in the same way. Whether a customer service representative is unhelpful, the customer may be tempted to call again to see if the next representative is more helpful.
• Multi-Language: Chatbots have the advantage of being able to support several languages, which is very important for worldwide brands. Chatbots can either ask the user which language they prefer at the start of the chat, or they can detect the user’s preferred language based on their input phrases.

Why businesses should use Chatbots?

• Time and Money Saver: Customers frequently ask the same questions. Your employee’s time is wasted by answering the same questions again and over. Chatbots can answer these frequently asked questions quickly and efficiently, saving you time.
• Eliminate Errors: Chatbots don’t forget things, they follow pre-programmed directions, and they always do what they’re supposed to. As a result, they do not make mistakes.
• Endless patience: While both customer service representatives and customers lose patience from time to time, bots are incapable of doing so. One of the human-related failures is the frustration of the representative and the customer while solving a problem. The representative is expected to be as patient as the organization to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction. Chatbots may demonstrate a level of patience that no human can.
• Drive Customers through the Funnel: Chatbots may pitch and persuade consumers with offers, and then turn them into buyers by recommending the proper products. This eliminates product browsing and so facilitates their purchasing process.

Problems while using Chatbots:

• Limited User Attention: Users have a limited amount of time to get replies to their questions and want lightning-fast responses. It’s difficult for businesses to create chatbots that keep users’ interest until the finish. Here, conversational UI plays a crucial role in displaying human-like discussions and providing improved consumer experiences. It encourages more social contacts rather than technical ones. In order for your chatbot to be effective, the discussions should be spontaneous, imaginative, and emotive.
• Lack of convenient software: People find it difficult to find convenient and easy-to-use software to create chatbots.

Cloud Messaging is an easy-to-use and convenient software for every business type! It solves all the problems which people face while creating Chatbot.

Bots can collect and analyze data to take critical action. Chatbots are used to streamline personal tasks or day-to-day activities like parenting, fitness, kids, e-learning, etc. There are many examples where AI has already entered the world of mobile apps and benefitted many sectors such as healthcare.

Chatbots can be game-changing for any business, as chatbots can do almost everything a human can do. They can do it in a much better and faster way. The right chatbot will drive customer service and engagement, complement your market research efforts, generate more quality leads, and would be cost-efficient.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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What is a ChatBot? was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Text Marketing for retail stores strengthens brand loyalty, raises top-of-mind awareness, and, ultimately, boosts sales. Text marketing campaigns are read 99 percent of the time, making it a very successful marketing channel for retailers to reach out to potential and existing customers.

Texting is the ideal medium for sharing time-sensitive promotions and alerts because 78 percent of consumers feel Text Messages are the fastest way to reach them. With nurture sequences and welcome offers, it’s also a wonderful method to greet new subscribers.

Here’s how you can run a Retail Marketing Campaign:

Here’s how you can use SMS tools to engage your customers and grow your revenue:

• Acquire new customers: Customers who are interested in your store can text a keyword to your phone number to obtain an immediate coupon or discount on a product.
• Increase repeat business: once you have collected someone’s phone number, you can send someone information about new product launches or further discounts.

• Send transactional messages: You can use SMS to provide order updates, coordinate curbside pickup, restock alerts, etc.
• Limited-Time Offers: Send out time-sensitive offers to boost traffic, speed up slow days, and boost revenues. For eg. sends out distinct promos based on product categories that always include a campaign expiry date.
• Mobile Coupons: Send a coupon-based campaign. With the help of Cloud Messaging, you can also attach an image of your product or a scannable barcode to an MMS message.
• Send clients limited-time discount vouchers using Cloud Messaging SMS to increase foot traffic on normal days. Using our mobile app, you can effortlessly redeem these rewards at the store.

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• Especially for you: Shoppers’ significant occasions are noted, and personalized offers are sent to them for birthdays and anniversaries. By integrating your CRM with Cloud Messaging SMS APIs, you can notify customers when their favorite brand has new stock, send monthly reward point notifications, and more.

• Memberships: Put an end to long client enrollment lines. Allow clients to sign up for the membership program instantaneously via SMS or missed call by promoting keywords, shortcodes, long codes, and missed call numbers in-store.

• Drive in-store sales: Do you have a major sale coming up or need to get rid of some outdated inventory? Send customized media-rich communications in 20+ regional languages. You can even track your SMS campaign engagement rates with Cloud Messaging and utilize them to improve the content of your messages and the timing of your campaigns.
• Feedback: Is it a good or bad hair day? Gather fast feedback from shoppers with a survey p to track customer experience and service quality.

You can also use SMS tools for the following:

• Welcome series
• Thanks message after purchase
• Customer service
• Event promotion
• Back in stock
• New arrivals

• Special offers and discounts
• Loyalty programs
• Product reviews

Implementing mass marketing for your retail business is a guaranteed way to meet your customers on their preferred channel and increase sales.

Mass texting is commonly used by retailers to announce new product releases, discount coupons, events, special products, VIP deals, and birthday messages.

Retail professionals count potential buyers to estimate how big or small a market is. Retailers typically count loyal clients who purchase on a regular basis for this purpose.

Retail Direct Messaging has an impact that reaches far beyond the smartphone screen. It has the potential to alter the way you engage with consumers, close deals, train employees, and execute marketing campaigns. Retailers may interact with customers at vital moments and nurture them into long-term customers with text message marketing. Cloud Messaging combines the power of retail text message marketing with an easy-to-use, team-oriented platform.

Why use Cloud Messaging:

• Answer common questions with text marketing
• Drive sales with Cloud Messaging’s retail text messaging platform
• Grow customer loyalty with the personalized retail messaging platform
• Manage messaging schedules
• Integrate your websites with the Cloud Messaging API feature

If you have more questions, you can request a free trial(no credit card required). Alternatively, you can contact us if any queries!

Create a positive impact in society and connect with people in real-time by integrating the text messaging Service of Cloud Messaging. Cloud Messaging is a popular Bulk SMS Service Provider for Retail Businesses offering SMS at the lowest rates with the highest delivery ratios. We’ve created a user-friendly panel to assist you in talking with your connections in a simple and efficient manner.

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How Retail Businesses can use Cloud Messaging was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How is AI taking over rule-based chatbots? Is AI the future of chatbots? We will answer these questions in this article.

The rise of the chatbot industry

The chatbot industry is growing really fast year by year as many companies try to use chatbots to reduce customer service costs.

With rapid advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), more and more chatbots are made and released each day, and they serve a different purpose.

Future of rule-based chatbots with low satisfactory rate

The future of rule-based chatbots is worrisome because they are not dynamic enough to be able to tackle nuances in conversation, and their future is likely to be determined by the business value that they can provide.

Majority of the rule-based chatbots are now the legacy systems from the earlier times of technology that haven’t been able to keep up with the pace of AI and ML.

Of course, there are some great pros related to the rule-based chatbots. However, as the time have progressed, we can see that the low satisfactory rates of rule-based chatbots are trumping over these pros.

They are also too constrained in the conversations they are able to have. Rule-based chatbots often rely on some degree of handcrafted rules which can be difficult to create and maintain without a high degree of expertise.

Trending Bot Articles:

1. How Conversational AI can Automate Customer Service

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3. Chatbots As Medical Assistants In COVID-19 Pandemic

4. Chatbot Vs. Intelligent Virtual Assistant — What’s the difference & Why Care?

Which companies are relying on AI chatbots?

There are many companies that are relying on the rule-based chatbot to replace customer service.

As more and more companies try to use chatbots to reduce customer service costs, there is a rapid advancement in AI technology and Natural Language Processing (NLP), which has led to growth in the chatbot industry.

· Amtrak

Amtrak is an American railroad company that provides service to 30 states in the US. They’ve partnered with IBM Watson’s Artificial Intelligence technology to improve their customer service experience.

Amtrak has reported a cost savings of $500,000 by implementing chatbots for customer support instead.

This shows how much Amtrak benefits from using chatbots, which is why they invested heavily in AI technology.

· Sephora

Sephora is a beauty retailer from France. It offers a variety of products from cosmetics to fragrance and everything in between.

Sephora is also the parent company of other brands, including The Body Shop, Origins, and more.

Sephora partnered with a chatbot studio to create a virtual assistant that will help their customers shop while being customer service agents.

This chatbot provides answers for personalized styles while answering questions about how to use the product.

The main benefit for Sephora is the cost savings they make by using this chatbot.

Outside of this list, there are still many bots not yet on it that will make it big in the near future. Despite all these advances in technology, there have been some unexpected declines when deploying chatbots on various platforms.

Consumer conundrum: No flexibility in rule-based chatbots

Rule-based chatbots are determined by a set of predetermined rules. The AI in these types of chatbots is inert and not interactive.

Their behavior is only determined by the responses that they provide to certain keywords or phrases.

These chatbots, however, do not interact with the user, and this makes it hard to be sure if they are even capable of understanding what you’re saying to them.

Many chatbots require a database of information or conversational familiarity to work. This can be problematic for your messaging because the user may want to converse with the same bot. However, the rules may have changed, and it cannot interact with previous texts due to different contexts.

Rule-based bots are typically associated with simple tasks such as weather updates or an FAQ page on a website.

So, there’s not much flexibility there is to offer in rule-based chatbots.

Furthermore, when the developers of bots that are rule-based attempt to deploy it on various platforms, they will inevitably run into some problems.

As bot developers continue to improve their technology, they will eventually have to make the decision on whether or not it’s worth investing in more rule-based chatbots or moving onto other AI technologies.

Final words

The performance of an AI chatbot has proven its power over a rule-based chatbot.

It’s not something that should be left to chance, but rather it should be considered as part of your marketing strategy for driving sales and increasing customer engagement with your company.

Let us know your thoughts on this. We would love to hear from you.

Communicating Knowledge, Saltlux.

[1] https://www.reviewpro.com/blog/should-i-choose-a-rule-based-or-an-ai-chatbot/

[2] https://www.ringcentral.co.uk/gb/en/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-chatbots-what-is-a-chatbot-why-are-they-important/

[3] https://medium.com/voice-tech-podcast/why-chatbots-fail-limitations-of-chatbots-7f291c4df83f

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The Dominance of AI Chatbots Over Rule-Based Chatbots was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.