It Can Be This Simple: Creating a Chatbot in 8 Steps

Are you considering creating your first own chatbot? We have good news for you: It can be quite simple with the right software. In this article, we'll show you what a chatbot is actually good for and which companies are successfully showing you how it's done. We'll also explain to you in a step-by-step guide how to go about building a chatbot.

What is a chatbot anyway?

"Your current wait time is approximately 5 minutes" or "Thank you for your call. Unfortunately, we are currently unable to take this call personally. You can reach us from…", does this sound familiar? Phew, nobody really feels like that, do they? A typical scenario from customer service, but that can now be a thing of the past.

The chatbot is, so to speak, the upgrade of the service hotline. Chatbot is a combination of "to chat" or "to converse" and "robot". So it is a robot with which one can converse: The digital conversation partner is available for you and your customers via text input and/or audio input in the chatroom. He learns over time from interactions and thus gets better and better.

Why should you create a chatbot and how can you use it?

Advantages of Chatbots

Why should you go to the trouble of building a chatbot? There are many reasons, both from the perspective of your business and your customers, that speak for a chatbot. These reasons could move you to use the digital employee:

• Relief of your staff by taking over simple and recurring tasks
• Automation of your processes
• Cross-departmental assistant activities
• Better customer experience with individual avatar
• Use in the international sector through multilingualism

Opportunities for Use of Chatbots

There are hardly any limits to the use of the digital helpers. They can support you in internal and external matters:

• For product recommendations when shopping online on the website
• For a multilingual help area with 24/7 customer service
• For convenient booking processes via channels like WhatsApp
• For the transmission of news and updates
• In personnel recruitment and HR in general
• For internal processes such as travel expense accounting

Do you want more information on the basics? We have compiled for you, what you need to know about chatbots.

How companies use their chatbots successfully

Are you still at the beginning when it comes to chatbots and not quite sure where the journey is heading? Don't worry - you don't have to reinvent the wheel! Take a look around and learn from the big players. You've probably already communicated with chatbots in everyday life. They are already well established in the B2C sector. But more and more B2B companies are also recognizing the benefits of chatbots for themselves.

You haven't had any touch points so far or at least weren't aware of it? Here are two inspiring examples:

Create Chatbot Example Ralph Lego

The chatbot Ralph from Lego helps with a particularly time-consuming task: finding the right gift!

Create Chatbot Example Jutta Lacome

The chatbot Jutta from Lancôme advises customers, similar to a shopping tour in the store, about the available products.

These are just two examples of many! You can create chatbots that answer the most common questions so that your customers or you yourself don't have to invest time in searching through FAQ lists. It can also provide information material for you in the form of links, videos or PDFs, or suggest locations. Depending on what suits your company and your industry best - there are no limits to your creativity!

Would you rather have chatbots create or program themselves?

You can either program chatbots yourself or simply get started with a software for chatbot creation. Basically, you have more leeway with self-programmed creations, because YOU are programming the chatbot. You can do this, for example, with Python: Here you learn how to program chatbots with Python. 

However, you must have programming knowledge and invest your precious time. Therefore, ask yourself whether the effort is worth it. Alternatively, you can access software with pre-made chatbots that you can adapt to some degree to meet your needs.

We asked people who have already built chatbots, Chatbotto review softwares and share their experiences.
⁠
⁠These are popular tools on OMR Reviews:

moinAI

melibo

OMQ Chatbot und Kundenservice Software

Userlike

Cognigy.AI

Tidio

Sinch Engage

botario

Mateo

BOTfriends

Chatarmin

Superchat

How-to: How to create a chatbot

You achieve the best results when you really put in the effort during preparation and strategy development. Because your chatbot is only as good as you let it become!

With these eight steps you build your perfect chatbot:

1. Define goals: Should your chatbot provide information (informative bot) or perform tasks (utility bot)?

You can build a chatbot that delivers the desired information to the other party. It can, for example, send links to landing pages or the appropriate place in your FAQs.

If you want more, you can set up your chatbot to answer specific questions or perform other tasks, such as scheduling an appointment for it. You can make it your personal assistant: Be clear about the tasks it should take over in order to create it according to your needs and those of your customers.

2. Define application: Via which messaging service or via which website builder do you want to have your chatbot communicate?

Where are the potential users of your chatbot hanging out? Of course, you not only want to be able to say that you have a wonderful digital helper. It should primarily be used frequently and with pleasure! So decide on the favorite messenger of your target group. In the B2B business, your decision could fall on Slack. For your target group in the B2C sector, the Facebook messenger or WhatsApp could be a good choice. The deployment of your chatbot should be aligned with your marketing strategy and harmonize with every other marketing instrument in it. If you haven't yet developed an elaborate marketing strategy, check out OMR Reviews and read how to properly define and accurately reach your marketing goals. 

3. Determine software for chatbot creation: With what do you want to build your chatbot?

There are some providers for the creation of chatbots. Each solution has its personal strengths - only you can decide which are most important to you.

Take a look at the above-mentioned chatbot creation software. You can find even more tools on our comparison platform OMR Reviews. So stop by and compare the software using the authentic and verified user reviews.

4. Give personality: What makes your chatbot unique?

When you hire employees, you pay attention to a uniform understanding of values, after all, your team should pull together and convey your brand message to the outside world. This also applies to your chatbot. So definitely involve your specialist departments so that topics such as branding, your brand language and recognition value are not neglected. You should also pay attention to the entertainment factor. You can underline this with music, symbolism and the interests of your target group, for example.

5. Define processes: How should your chatbot behave?

Your team is also in demand at this point. How would it make their work easier? What must it be able to do and know? How must it proceed? Chatbot users could, for example, describe their request using drag-and-drop and multiple-choice activities. You can also formulate If-Then-Else rules to determine the process for your chatbot.

6. Connect created chatbot with applications

Yay, finally it can start! Connect it with your selected messenger or website builder.

7. Test and train created chatbot

You can hardly wait? Now comes a particularly important step. If you neglect it, you can expect to do tedious follow-up work and have unhappy users - believe us, you don't want that! Therefore, determine some beta testers who put the chatbot to the test. There will certainly be one or the other optimization potential revealed. You certainly do not want your customers to have to discover them.

It's best to let people who match your desired customer persona have fun testing your chatbot. Only in this way can you perfectly prepare your little helper to make your users happy.

8. Present chatbot

All errors and quality defects that could lead to a poor user experience have been corrected? Then it's time to get down to business! Go full throttle and inform the world about your wonderful chatbot, into which you have put so much heart and soul!

Creating Chatbot - Our Conclusion

Chatbots are a great thing! Your users will love them because they can be super helpful and provide a fun user experience that makes you want more. But go about creating it in a structured way. Use the software that best meets your requirements! We wish you a lot of fun building your first own chatbot!