As a small or medium-sized business owner, you probably suffer from a serious case of everything, everywhere, all at once. You are taking orders, handling deliverables, promoting your brand and still trying to have a normal life with all of these things happening. Or even if you have a team helping you, their work is most likely limited because, oh well, salaries right?

Amidst all of this, customers or potential customers are making enquiries about your products/services, deliveries, availability, etc., on your social media platforms. Basically, you want your customer service to be top-notch and are looking for a solution. That’s where a chatbot comes in.

Most businesses around the world use chatbots in one way or the other to interact with their customers. In 2011, Gartner, at its annual Customer 360 Summit, predicted that by 2020, 85% of businesses will definitely make use of chatbot automation to interact with customers. 2020 was 4 years ago and even the smallest of businesses that have an online presence have some form of automated conversations with customers (even if it’s just automated replies). That should tell you how beneficial chatbots can be to us.

In this article, we will look at what a chatbot creation tool is, including what a chatbot is, how you can create one for Whatsapp Business and Instagram and the tools to use. Let’s jump right into it.

What is a Chatbot?

Two things are running through my head as I am about to explain what this is. The first is that you, my dear reader, definitely know what a chatbot is or have an idea. The second is that this is most likely the first time you have heard about it. Either way, you are on the right path, so let’s see what it means in the simplest way possible.

A chatbot is a computer software that engages in conversations with people, interacting with them for a specific purpose and giving human-like responses. When you think of chatbots, think of Google’s Gemini, ChatGPT and the like. It’s basically artificial intelligence put in a computer program that you can easily communicate with.

Now that you understand what a chatbot is, let’s head on to what a chatbot creation tool is.

What is a Chatbot Building Tool?

A chatbot creation tool is software that helps you create and customize your very own chatbot. That’s just what it is.

In addition, technology has advanced so much Google and OpenAI are not the only ones that can create a chatbot. A business owner like you can create and customize your chatbot without ever learning a line of code. Sounds interesting right?

Most chatbot creation tools in 2024 are no-code tools. This means that you don’t need to have technical knowledge to make your chatbot. You just need to input the required information or set it up, your chatbot is generated and activated. But before we go to the tools, what are the benefits of using a chatbot? Let’s talk about that briefly.

Benefits of Chatbots For Your Business.

Below are a few advantages you will enjoy when you switch to the chatbot life. Let’s talk about what’s in store for you and your business.

More Sales:

One of the most well-known benefits of chatbots or chatbot technology is how it can be used to drive sales for businesses across all industries. From upselling, to lead generation and pushing marketing campaigns, chatbots are beneficial to businesses looking to increase their sales. According to Outgrow, 57% of businesses as of August 2023 have seen an increased sales ROI and minimal investments when using bots. This proves that no matter the size of your business, having a chatbot that can promote your products or services to your customers is a huge advantage.

Better Customer Service and Engagement:

I think this is another obvious benefit of having a chatbot. You dont have to worry about whether you replied to that client or customer’s message from 3 days ago with a chatbot. These bots help to improve communications with your client, answering their questions speedily and solving their problems faster. This means that your customers are better engaged and get premium service. This means you have a chance of retaining more of them at the end of the day because better customer service equals loyal customers.

Saves Time and Resources:

So here is how this works; your chatbot is responding to customer enquiries, promoting more of your goods and services to them while you spend time handling the major parts of your business. Sounds good right? You dont have to worry about time being wasted replying to messages or having to spend more resources doing all of that. It’s there to help you and even your staff. In addition to this, it’s making more money for you, while helping you and your staff take out time to build your business and serve your audience better. How do they say that popular slang about winning? A win is a win.

Grow Your Business:

A benefit that I’ve probably referenced in the previous point is the fact that you are not so worried about customer engagement. You now have more time to focus on how to expand your business and serve your customers better. You are thinking of new products or services to include in your offerings, brainstorming how to improve the ones you have available without worrying about whether your customers’ messages about working hours have been replied to.

So now that we’ve given you a couple of benefits, why don’t we head on to the chatbot creation tools you are here for?

3 Free Chatbot Builders To Improve Your Customer Service and Engagement Game.

The tools selected and listed below are chatbot-building software that are easy to navigate and use. Should I also mention that all of them have a free version? This means that you can try out any one of them for a while and then see if you like them. But beware, they have limited features in the free version.

Regardless, most of them just require you to sign up and start using them right away. Anyway, let’s jump into these tools and what they have to offer you.

ManyChat

First on our list because it offers a unique approach to social media channels integrations. This is a no-code chatbot creation tool for you to try out. Manychat is a tool that offers its users an avenue to improve their sales and marketing efforts with chatbot technology.

This tool covers WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook (that explains why they are affiliated with the Meta Business Partners Program) and other marketing channels available. It provides features that help you seamlessly create and integrate an automated chatbot to help you relate with your customers better.

Top Features

• Chatbot builder: Manychat has a unique chatbot-building feature that automatically integrates itself with your desired social media channel. All you need to do is sign up and follow the steps it has set out for the building process. This feature works with the latest versions of AI models to build an efficient chatbot for users.
• Automation: Manychat uses triggers, keywords and automated responses to activate replies to your customers. It involves setting certain keywords as triggers to produce a specific message. Its way of training your chatbot might be different, but it still does the work effectively.
• Customisation: Manychat’s customisation feature is limited and that is because it fully immerses the chatbot with the social media app to ensure effective communications with customers.
• Lead Generation: As I mentioned earlier, ManyChat provides users with an opportunity to improve their marketing efforts through chatbot technology. With this tool, you can convert your leads into customers by creating special messages or responses to follow them up, promote your products/services when they first meet your brand and even encourage them to buy more products/get more services. It even provides templates to help you create message sequences for specific actions you want your customers to take.
• Integrations: social media channel integration with Manychat is possible. It offers connections to WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram and Facebook. All you need to do is sign up and choose the channel you would like to create a chatbot for. Follow the instructions and voila, you have your bot ready for use. Note that for the WhatsApp integration, you will have to pay less than $1 for a new WhatsApp number. But you can change it to your old number when you’ve fully integrated
• Analytics: concerning this, Manychat gives users an analytics feature that helps them to track customers’ activities, view if their messages are converting and how the chatbot is performing.

SendPulse

SendPulse is a marketing platform that allows users to effectively engage with their customers and audience through various platforms e.g. emails, SMS and the star of the show, chatbots. It offers full-on automation, just like Manychat, helping you build a sustainable customer service and marketing platform through your channels. Since we are here to talk only about its chatbot technology offerings, let us limit ourselves to that. However, if you would like to explore more, head on to their About Us page or website to get more information.

Now, let’s focus on their chatbot-building capabilities. Here are the major features we’ve been able to pick out.

Top Features

• Chatbot Builder: SendPulse has a chatbot builder that helps you integrate your social media channel automatically with the bot. All you just need to do is sign up, choose your channel and follow the steps outlined in it for you. Everything starts working automatically once you’ve set it up.
• Automation: this tool has a similar automation structure to Manychat which involves message sequences, flows and triggers to be set as responses to your customers’ enquiries or chats.
• Customization: customizing your bot to suit your brand with SendPulse is unnecessary. Why? Because its chatbot builder allows instant integration which means it just blends in with your social media channel. So you don’t have to worry about colours or fonts. Everything just comes in automatically.
• Lead Generation: before I say SendPulse is a chatbot creation tool, I must first point out that it’s a marketing platform. This tool provides users with features and templates for special promos, discount sales, lead magnet prompts etc. Basically, if you are running a marketing campaign, this tool has set things in place to help you achieve that.
• Integrations: with its instant integration feature, your social media channel is automatically connected with the bot. They literally become one and you dont have to worry about using a special font or branding the chatbot. Just add your brand logo as a profile picture and it’s ready!
• Analytics: this marketing tool provides you with a statistics dashboard to view data about the messages you’ve sent or received, your sessions with customers and other important information you would need to track your customer service progress.

Chatbase

The last on the list, but not the least, (bad joke, lol, let’s skip that), Chatbase is a no-code chatbot creation platform that allows users to build and customize chatbots for their apps, websites and social media pages. The tool offers intuitive features to help you build a chatbot that suits your needs and business preferences.

Before we move further, Chatbase’s free version is only available for WordPress websites. It might not be what everyone is looking for, but if you have a WordPress-backed website, then this is what you need. If you want access to social media integrations, you are going to have to subscribe to their paid version.

With Chatbase, you can easily train a chatbot, tailor it to your needs while infusing it with your branding elements, and finally integrate it with your Whatsapp or Instagram page. What does Chatbase offer to business owners?

Top Features

• Chatbot builder: Chatbase offers users like you chatbots with the latest AI models. Currently, Chatbase’s latest models are the GPT-4o Mini, Claude 3 Haiku and Gemini 1.5 Flash (and this is just for the free version). This is just tech geek language for, it has the latest AI model versions.
• Automation: for you to effectively “train” your chatbot, you need to input the information that you want it to reproduce when necessary. This is what Chatbase’s Data Sources feature is for. Even if it’s information about your delivery time, business hours, or products/services, you can input your brand data into your chatbot in a variety of formats like a document, or typing in the information or Q&A form, Chatbase has a variety of options to help you achieve your desired outcome. Once it has been uploaded, your customers will send a message and get an instant reply based on what has been provided in the information. Here is a sample:
• Customization: Does your brand have a special colour or catchphrase that must be put everywhere? Infusing these branding elements into your chatbot won’t be an issue with Chatbase. It has customization tools to help you create a unique Chatbase for your social media handles.
• Lead generation: Besides building chatbots that respond to messages instantly, Chatbase also offers a way for you to gather and track customers’ information easily. All you just need to do is set prompts that allow your customers to input their information (don’t worry, it’s safe), and then it collects this information while helping you track them.
• Integrations: What is a chatbot builder without seamless integration? A chatbot no-builder (I need to stop with the jokes). With Chatbase, after you’ve successfully built your chatbot, you can easily integrate it with your website in minutes. You can get your chatbot up and running, ready to reply to your customers’ numerous questions/messages. However, the integrations to Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook are only available in the paid version
• Analytics: this is for business owners who want to go deeper with their chatbot. Chatbase offers users an analytics feature that can help them track their chatbots’ interactions with customers, giving you a chance to study your audience’s behaviour. If you are a marketing or customer attraction/retention guru, this is definitely what you need to understand how to best get to your customers and satisfy them.

Elevate Your Customers' Experience With Chatbot Technology

Chatbots are the new customer support and service agents. They might not be as great as talking to a human agent, but they get the job done when it comes to the basics. No matter the size of your business, if you have plans to grow and expand, you will need to rely on a tech tool like this one to help you move forward. Businesses around the world are using advanced AI technology to move forward, and one of those businesses can be you too.

Additionally, choosing to opt for these bots as a customer engagement tool also means choosing a chatbot creation tool to use. There are other tools available in the market, but these ones were sourced based on the criteria that they have a free version for users. If you are looking to widen your search, you will definitely find more on sites like Capterra, Gizmodo, TechCrunch and G2.

As for how to use these tools, SendPulse and Manychat have in-app resources to guide you on how to use them and what you can enjoy. On the other hand, Chatbase has a very simple interface that is easy to navigate with minimal technical experience. But if thats not enough, there are also resources available for it too.

Conclusively, whether you’re looking to automate responses, or engage customers 24/7, these free tools can make a real difference for your business. Start building your chatbot today and see firsthand how easy it is to enhance your customer experience.

If you found this post helpful, don’t forget to subscribe for more tech tips, or share it with fellow business owners who could benefit from these tools!

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Hello and welcome to the first edition of The Tech Toolbox. Are you a business owner looking for how to scale your business with technology? You are in the right place (or blog).

This blog is your weekly go-to resource for discovering cutting-edge tools and solutions designed to help businesses (especially small and medium-sized businesses in Nigeria and beyond) thrive. The focus is simplifying technology in a fun (and sometimes humorous)way, making it accessible and actionable for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and teams aiming to scale smarter. Whether it’s productivity software, marketing platforms, or innovative ways to manage your operations, the best tools and tips are curated to save you time and maximize your business potential.

The mission is to empower businesses like yours with the knowledge and tools they need to compete in today’s fast-paced digital world. At The Tech Toolbox, complex tech is broken down into practical and interesting insights, so you can focus on what matters most — growing your business.

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You can also contact me, your lovely author through my email: chioma.v.ubiji@gmail.com or on Linkedin: Chioma Vanessa Ubiji.