WhatsApp is the new buzzword for digital conversations as the post-pandemic world gets more digital-savvy and contactless shopping emerges as the new trend.

According to a Statista report, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging platform with more than 2 billion active users outranking Facebook Messenger at 1.3 billion and WeChat at 1.2 billion users. Not only this, it has become the world’s third-largest social networking platform after Facebook and YouTube.

Given the popularity and demand of this new messaging channel, businesses too have started to turn their ships, the WhatsApp way. Also, recent innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) make WhatsApp more profitable for businesses. AI-powered virtual assistants, also known as WhatsApp Bots have helped businesses engage, support, and serve their customers virtually while igniting a new spark of online sales, known as WhatsApp Commerce. It simply means:

Offering and selling products and services to customers on WhatsApp

Using WhatsApp Bot to assist and personalize customer’s buying journey

Delivering a high-quality customer experience throughout the conversation.

What are the Benefits of using a WhatsApp Bot?

• Establish real-time conversations with instant messaging
• Help customers to explore the entire product catalog in one place
• Provide a secure platform for conversation with WhatsApp end-to-end encryption
• Deliver top-class virtual support with personalized communication
• Strengthen the trust between the customer and the brand

How to figure out the best WhatsApp Bot?

• It should solve the preexisting sales/support problem that the business is already facing?
• It should communicate, personalize and empathize like humans.
• It should understand the customer’s context and intent.
• It shouldn’t ask to subscribe/register/install anything to use a WhatsApp bot.
• It should be easy to use without any technical/coding expertise required.

Now that you have already dipped your toes into knowing WhatsApp bots, their capabilities and benefits, let us explore the best WhatsApp bots that can help brands drive their online sales and support, like never before.

In this article, we are covering 6 renowned brands in India that are successfully using WhatsApp bots as a conversational channel for their customers.

Trending Bot Articles:

1. How Conversational AI can Automate Customer Service

2. Automated vs Live Chats: What will the Future of Customer Service Look Like?

3. Chatbots As Medical Assistants In COVID-19 Pandemic

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

#1 Personal Shopper by Shoppers Stop

Shoppers Stop, one of the leading online shopping brands in India, offers seamless virtual shopping with Personal Shopper. It is a WhatsApp bot that answers all purchase/support-related queries at Shoppers Stop. If you are looking to shop online, you can directly WhatsApp your Personal Shopper with your requirements and they will help you find the best product with the best deals. It also provides a secure payment link via SMS to make instant and safe payments. Once done, your order will be delivered to you without you having to step out.

#2 Dottie by Indigo Airlines

Dottie — a conversational AI-powered chatbot has been designed to help customers with commonly asked queries. With Dottie available at your service, you don’t need to call customer care, you can find answers to FAQs on several topics such as revised travel mandates, baggage related queries, refunds, COVID-19 travel queries, flight cancellation, flight status, change booking, about credit shell, it’s usage and much more.

Not only this, but customers can also book a flight, web check-in, and perform an array of tasks related to their booking using this WhatsApp bot. The bot understands short phrases and keywords in a better way, so it is advisable to keep your query short while interacting with Dottie. In an unlikely situation wherein Dottie is unable to understand a customer’s query, it immediately transfers your query to a live agent to assist you better.

For example — To find out what you carry on our flights, try saying ‘conditions of carriage’ or say ‘baggage allowance’ instead of ‘Can I carry 30 kg as check-in baggage on my flight.’

#3 Mr. Simple by Tata Mutual Fund

Part of the Tata group, Tata Mutual Fund is the most trusted fund house in India offering a range of investment solutions for financial planning and wealth creation. With an investor base of over 3 million, the brand manages funds across the entire risk-return spectrum targeting investors of all ages and risk profiles. In such scenarios, providing top-class instant support to their customers became a critical factor for business success.As a solution to challenges like delayed response and a broken customer experience, Tata Mutual Fund introduced an AI-powered support bot known as

Mr. Simple. It brought a game-changing experience to TMF’s customer support by resolving 90% of queries end-to-end resulting in a reduction of call center calls by 67%.

Check out this Case Study to learn more about Mr. Simple and its contribution to TMF’s business

#4 MyGov Corona Helpdesk

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Government of India wanted a solution that would eradicate misinformation and empower citizens with the right steps to take precautionary measures and stay safe. The idea was to offer a 24/7 help desk that can answer all sorts of COVID-19 queries and help prevent the spread of false information.

Haptik, one of the world’s largest Conversational AI companies, accepted this challenge to handle and resolve the diversity of queries coming from millions of users across the country in English & Hindi. As a result, Haptik built the MyGov Corona Helpdesk, a WhatsApp bot that helped users check symptoms and get a diagnosis, provided tips and precautionary measures to stay safe, and shared the latest updates and advisories from the Ministry of Health.

Check out this Case Study to learn how Haptik helped India fight COVID with a WhatsApp Bot

#5 JioMart WhatsApp Bot by Reliance

JioMart is an eCommerce venture launched and run by India’s most valued firm, Reliance Industries. It is an offline to online grocery service that allows you to order online and the product is delivered to you from a local nearby store. JioMart offers a selection of 50,000+ products and processes over 250,000 orders per day.

With increasing orders every day, JioMart started experiencing 3x more traffic than expected. Soon, they realized an immediate need to automate and upgrade their customer support. As a result, JioMart built a WhatsApp bot that later emerged as the primary go-to channel for users to shop with JioMart. Also, JioMart observed that the WhatsApp bot is capable of resolving 88% of the queries with a reduction in response time by 62%. Some of the key use cases of this WhatsApp bot are Check Order Status, Delay in Delivery, Replacement Request, Refund Related Query, etc.

Check out this Case Study to learn how JioMart Handles 40% of Customer Support on WhatsApp

#6 WhatsApp Banking by HDFC

HDFC Bank is the second-largest private bank in India with a customer base of more than 19 million. With an objective to be available for customers 24/7 x 365 and provide uninterrupted customer service to everyone, HDFC too reaches its customers — the WhatsApp way, known as WhatsApp Banking.

HDFC WhatsApp bots help customers get information about their cards, important updates, regulatory messages, payment alerts, and a number of other banking queries like:

• What documents do I require for a car loan?
• What is the available limit on my credit card?
• What is my pre-approved loan offer?

5 Reasons why you should use WhatsApp Bot in banking

• It is available round the clock and even on holidays.
• All the messages sent on WhatsApp are encrypted and remain totally safe.
• Non-HDFC Customers can also use WhatsApp Banking for inquiring about the services of the bank.
• It is absolutely free. All you need is an active internet connection.
• Resolves almost all kinds of queries related to your account and associated cards.

Final Words

As WhatsApp commerce takes the center stage in the eCommerce journey of India, WhatsApp bots will play an extremely important role in shaping the future of Conversational Commerce in India.

So far, we were able to conclude the scope and capabilities of a WhatsApp bot. We also saw leading brands leveraging this AI-driven innovation to scale up their online sales and support performance. Now that you are also clear about the best WhatsApp bots in India, it is time to choose the best one for your business.

Surprisingly, the best part of a WhatsApp bot is that you can get it up and running in very little time. Unlike a website or app, which requires a long development phase, it is possible for a brand to deploy a WhatsApp bot, in as little as 7 days!

Interested to explore more about WhatsApp bots or want a WhatsApp chatbot for your business?

Interested to explore more or want to try out a chatbot of your own?

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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6 Best WhatsApp Chatbots in India 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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If you are a data person by which I mean you use data or facilitate data to others for their use so that others can make “data-informed” decisions on an almost daily basis then you might have come across many scenarios where data is just overhead and sometimes using data even might be an overkill.

So imagine a situation where a person who is not aware of many aspects of data and how it can be utilised how much overwhelming it can be for them, right?

Business, product and engineering all, need to come together to get the right information from data, which means essentially tons of meetings, documentation and finally, the intuition-based decision is taken, which means why to use data in the first place.

Here are the top 6 excuses I have seen why not to use data — and simple solutions to get moving.

Excuse #1: “There is too much data”.

Solution: Start with the questions, ask for the directions.

The №1 reason I think people don’t like using data is that it can be too much to handle. The numbers are too vague and don’t make sense and whatever type of analysis we are doing be it comparative, correlation or impact is not usable. To avoid all this confusion always starts with what we are trying to solve, funnelize your data or branch it out as per your solution.

Always remember to take 2 steps back after taking 1 step inside.

Excuse #2: “I don’t know the correct way to handle my data”.

Solution: There is no such thing as the correct way, it’s a creative field driven by your competencies.

Depending on the organisation, product, teams, data volume and their use of data in their work as well as the type of problems we are trying to solve data handling can differ. The only solution is to increase our competencies and delve deep into product and data. Don’t get stuck into analysis paralysis.

Trending Bot Articles:

1. How Conversational AI can Automate Customer Service

2. Automated vs Live Chats: What will the Future of Customer Service Look Like?

3. Chatbots As Medical Assistants In COVID-19 Pandemic

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

Excuse #3: “There is no data which I can actually use.”

Solution: Upgrade data tracking.

Things can get pretty dark, pretty quick while working with data as there was a lot of data to start with but after a bit of observing,slicing and dicing relevant data is very less, required data points are not getting tracked or the sample is too small to draw an inference from. There is no quick fix to this problem and the only solution is to have a collaboration from data, product and engineering teams to upgrade your data tracking.

Excuse #4: “It takes too much time to do the analysis”.

Solution: Define the problem, create frameworks.

This is actually a problem of the outcome-based mindset of stakeholders rather than having process-based. Instead of changing the mindset, we can divide our analysis as per usages like on a daily basis, weekly or monthly basis and create our automation paths accordingly around that for faster responses.

I personally have created comparative, impact and correlation analysis frameworks which comes in very handy after I have defined the problem and created modules as per my inputs to the framework.

Excuse #5: “I don’t have time for this, I know my product and consumers.”

Solution: What you need is an expert.

This is where most of the upper-level management lies, they know everything about their users since they are with them since the first day. But I would like to highlight while starting your product journey intuition is the right way to go, but while scaling intuition does not work and the only logical step is to use data to analyse the users and their behaviour to focus on the right thing moving forward.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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5 Reasons not to use Data (and why Most are BS) was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How to Create a Chatbot from Scratch in 2021 (The Ultimate Guide) — EmpathyBots

So, you want to create a chatbot?

Well, you definitely should!

Because your customers want it and it is backed by data.

According to Salesforce’s “State of Service” report, 76% of service professionals said that customers have increased their use of self-service resources during the pandemic.

And, 83% of customers expect someone to interact with them immediately after they contact a company.

Then, What are you waiting for? Let’s get started!

But before moving ahead I highly suggest you to read this complete guide on What Exactly is a Chatbot? And Why is it Important?

To get a detailed understanding of the subject including, types of a chatbot, how does it work, its importance, use cases, and examples.

It is a prerequisite for this guide!

Ok, let’s start!

If you want to create anything from a tiny piece of art to a complex software product, there are 3 basic steps you need to follow that is,

1. Plan
2. Implement
3. And, Optimize.

And, the same concept goes for creating a chatbot as well.

So, let’s look at the things you should consider and plan before creating a powerful chatbot, in the next section!

How to Plan a Chatbot?

There are 4 most important things you need to plan before actually starting to create a chatbot.

1. The Goal of a Chatbot

Why do you want to create a chatbot?

What will it do?

The answer to these questions is your goal.

It can be from answering FAQs, collecting emails, qualifying leads to recommend products, booking tickets, sending coupon codes, and so on and so forth.

Understanding your goal is very important because it will guide you to create conversations that meet your end goals.

And also, it will give you a clear idea of why chatbot is being built.

2. Type of a Chatbot

As you know there are 2 types of chatbot (if you have read the above-suggested guide).

1. Rule-based Chatbot
2. And, AI-based Chatbot

To give you a brief idea,

The Rule-based chatbot is built with automated pre-set rules and the AI-based chatbot is built with advanced NLP and ML.

You have to select one of these types and be consistent with that.

Pro Tip: If you are a beginner, then go with a Rule-based Chatbot, because an AI-based chatbot needs data to train it. And, also a Rule-based one is the most used chatbot nowadays because it has a very low chance of conversation breakdown.

Trending Bot Articles:

1. How Conversational AI can Automate Customer Service

2. Automated vs Live Chats: What will the Future of Customer Service Look Like?

3. Chatbots As Medical Assistants In COVID-19 Pandemic

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

3. Deploying Channel

Where will you deploy your chatbot?

You need to decide the platform where you want it to be available.

It can be your Website, App, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Ecommerce Store, or anything else.

You can go for a multi-channel approach as well, it is up to you.

Pro Tip: Deploy on a platform where your customers and prospects are available.

4. Tech Stack

Ok! Now it’s time to choose the tech stack that you need to create a powerful chatbot.

Note: I only recommend the tools that I’ve personally used, trust, or at least know about.

First, you need a flow design tool where you can design the entire conversational flow. You can use the tool called Draw.io to do this.

Then, you need a development platform where you build your chatbot. It can be a no-code platform or a code-based framework.

You can use the no-code platforms that I personally used like, Chatfuel or ManyChat.

Or, coding-based frameworks like Dialogflow (I used this), Wit.ai, and IBM Watson.

Then, at last, you should have a graphic designing tool in your stack to use graphic elements in your chatbot like, GIFs, Images, and many more.

You can use a simple drag-and-drop tool like Canva to do this.

Ok! Now you understand how to plan for creating a chatbot. Now we’ll see how to actually implement it in the next section.

How to Implement a Chatbot?

There are 6 steps you need to take to create a chatbot.

1. Design a Conversational Flow

The first step in creating a chatbot is to design a conversational flow.

Conversational flow is different from the conversational script.

It is nothing but a flowchart that may contain a value or condition, and based on these conditions progression of responses happens in the chatbot.

You can also say it is a mindmap of your chatbot.

For example, this is a conversational flow of EmpathyBot,

You can see that how responses had been designed according to conditions and user selection.

BTW, this is a Rule-based chatbot designed to collect leads and help people learn about chatbots and marketing automation.

2. Write a Conversational Script

The second step is to write a conversational script.

The conversational script is nothing but the words, sentences, images, GIFs, and many more things you use to give direction to the conversation.

This script can include topics to start a conversation, answer questions, lead conversations, and end the conversation.

You can use anything like Word Document, Notepad, or even a Notebook (which I used) to write the script.

For example, this is a conversational script of EmpathyBot,

Pro Tip: Try to write the script in a conversational manner like I did above and read it aloud again and again so that you can improve it.

3. Build a Chatbot

The third step is to actually build a chatbot.

As I said earlier, there are two types of chatbot.

If you want to build a Rule-based Chatbot, then I suggest you to use no-code development platforms like Chatfuel or ManyChat.

It is very easy to build a chatbot with these platforms as they offer a very intuitive flow builder to do so.

And, if you want to build an AI-based Chatbot, then you should go with development frameworks like Dialogflow.

In this, you have to train their NLP engine with data to give appropriate responses to the users.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t build an AI-based chatbot with the development platforms, but using frameworks can give you more control and features to do so.

4. Test & Optimize

After building a chatbot, it’s time to test and optimize it.

Now, some platforms can give you the in-built testing feature, and on some, you have to deploy your bot first and then test it.

The two important points you should test in the chatbot is,

1. Does it meet the end goal?
2. And, User Experience, because ultimately all the efforts you’re putting in is to improve their experience.

Then, the next thing is to improve and optimize your bot for a better experience and more conversions.

5. Deploy

And, finally, Deploy your chatbot!

The process of deployment depends on the platform you are deploying on.

Like, if you want to deploy it on Facebook Messenger or Instagram, then it hardly takes 2–3 clicks to do that.

But, if you want to deploy it on your website or online store, then you need a plugin or manually add the code into the header section of your website.

6. Maintain

It’s not just about building and deploying a chatbot, the real process starts after this, that is to maintain a chatbot.

You have to observe & analyze the user’s response and keep your strategy up-to-date.

And, according to that new strategy, you have to add new necessary features to it as well.

Conclusion

To conclude this article, I would say, “Chatbots are the future, and that future is NOW!”

With the availability of so many code, little-code, and no-code chatbot development platforms, it has become extremely easy to build a bot.

So, you should take benefit of this massive opportunity and integrate this awesome self-service tool with your business.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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How to Create a Chatbot from Scratch in 2021 (The Ultimate Guide) — EmpathyBots was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.