If you want to take your customer service to the next level, invest in Salesforce Chatbot! This powerful tool from the Salesforce factory revolutionizes the way you interact with your customers (without requiring you to hire more).
If you’re seeing more and more conversational chatbots pop up lately, it isn’t a coincidence. People want answers, and they want them fast. Business owners are increasingly aware that if they don’t give visitors the answers they need right away, they might leave and never return.
Ironically, even with their 24/7 availability (which 64% of consumers praise), chatbots that sound “robotic” ruin the user experience. That’s why AI chatbots are on the rise: they’re built to sustain human-like conversations using natural language processing (NLP) or natural language understanding (NLU).
In this ultimate guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about Salesforce Chatbot – from how to use it to why you should use it, and everything in between.
What Is Salesforce Chatbot and Why Do You Need One?
Salesforce Chatbot Saves Your Team Hours of Work
By 2024, chatbots should save businesses up to 2.5 billion hours of work. What does that mean for your business? Happier, more productive agents. Not to mention improved customer service, reduced response times, scalability, cost savings, and valuable customer insights.
Plus, Salesforce’s own research shows that 64% of agents who use chatbots are free to spend most of their time on high-value tasks. Better productivity and job satisfaction are guaranteed results!
It’s a Crucial Part of Your Salesforce Workflow
There are several AI chatbot options out there. But if you’re already using Salesforce, a native Chatbot is the one for you.
Salesforce bots stem from the need to help organizations see the full context behind customer activity. They bring all customer data together, creating that seamless workflow and 360-degree view you’ve always wanted.
By relying on them, you can bring your customer data to life across all of your Salesforce apps, making it easily accessible whenever you need it. So you can get the insights you need right where you work, adding a touch of context to every step.
Bots Are Multilingual
Multilingual support no longer means hiring a rep who speaks the language. Instead, you can wow visitors with a multilingual bot that easily connects with in-app, web-based, or third-party messaging channels. Bots translate solutions and categories effortlessly into all the languages Salesforce supports.
Not only does this save support bucks, but it also puts smiles on customers’ faces by tackling questions and sorting things out in the languages they understand. You’d be surprised at how many chatbots only operate in English, basically dismissing international customers. But not yours!
Salesforce bots are also on friendly terms with Slack and the Bots API, so you can let them take care of the day-to-day tasks by syncing up with your Salesforce data and give your team a productivity boost with just a few clicks.
Benefits of Using Salesforce Chatbot
Salesforce Chatbot Offers Instant Responses
Thanks to AI, your quick-thinking chatbot answers real-time queries, automating repetitive tasks for your customer support agents. It cuts down on the wait time, making customers happier and more loyal. It’s a true multitasker, with the ability to handle many conversations at once to ensure no one’s left hanging (without putting itself at risk of burning out).
If the bot is unable to answer certain questions, it’ll loop in a human agent for that extra touch of expertise.
Highly Scalable
As customer queries increase, the chatbot takes on a hefty load, freeing up human agents to handle more complex issues with a personal touch. It’s a win-win: it helps businesses provide around-the-clock service, regardless of time zones or working hours.
Priceless Insights
On top of that, Salesforce Chatbot brings in some profound insights into how customers tick. If you review the chat transcripts, you can pick up on trends and patterns, getting a feel for what your audience needs. This data is essential for tailoring marketing campaigns, tweaking products, and increasing overall customer experience.
How to Implement Salesforce Chatbot
Before setting up your bot, determine what you want to achieve. Whether it’s improving response times, reducing costs, or enhancing customer experience, defining your goals will help shape your implementation strategy.
The Bot Builder is versatile enough that it gives you options. You can get started with a pre-built template with popular actions. You can also customize an “empty” bot from scratch.
Choose from various templates that deliver customized solutions built for your cloud or use case. You can create bots in seconds with templates that include intent data, flows, and conversation design. Just note that your organization needs Chat or Messaging licenses to use Bots.
With that in mind, here’s how to get started!
Start by going to “Setup.” In the Quick Find box, type “Bots” and select it.
The first step is to click the toggle to enable Bots.
Next, click “New” and follow the Create a Bot Wizard. If you want a basic framework, choose “Start from Scratch.” For a bot with pre-built dialogs for common use cases, select the “Intro Template.”
If you choose the intro template, you’ll get instant access to options based on popular Salesforce bot tasks. These can be to chat with sales, report an issue, and more. Each task becomes its own dialog, allowing you to customize it further.
Enabling Bots with Salesforce DX
On the other hand, if you’re using a Scratch org and want to enable Bots quickly with Salesforce Development Experience (DX), here’s how to do it:
Create a Scratch Org, deploy Bots metadata using sfdx force:source:deploy -m Bot, and open the Scratch Org with sfdx force:org:open -u YourScratchOrgAliasName.
This makes setting up and testing Bots in a development environment easy. You can also personalize the bot with name and language for easier identification.
Next, link your bot to an existing deployment. This step is optional; you can do it later, but each bot must have a unique deployment. If you choose deployments already in use, you can interrupt the live chat experience.
Finally, you’re ready to kick off the process and meet your bot. You can always edit its settings on the Bot Overview Page!
Best Practices for Using Salesforce Chatbot
AI chatbots are indeed smart – but they’re still not as smart as the humans behind them. You still need to provide clear, concise answers that directly address your potential customers’ queries.
Similarly, while chatbots can handle many customer inquiries, always offer escalation options. There will be times when human intervention is necessary, so ensure that customers can escalate their questions to a human agent. Don’t make them run around trying to find a way to get through.
Once configured, your chatbot will still need updates from time to time. After all, your customers are ever-changing, and so should their support sources. Keep your chatbot sharp by regularly adding new info and tweaking its knowledge base.
Finally, monitor goal performance to identify areas for improvement. The more often your customers reach goals, the better your bot is meeting your customers’ needs.
In a moment, we’ll guide you through how to measure the success of your Salesforce chatbot, step by step.
Integrating Salesforce Chatbot with Other Systems
Want to keep customers happy and coming back for more? Meet them where they’re at, regardless if they’re on desktop, mobile, SMS, Facebook messenger, or other channels. All you need is the right integration.
With Salesforce, an AI chatbot fits like a glove into any part of your business in all departments. Here are just a few related SF products you can boost with Salesforce Chatbots:
- Contact Center: Bring all your communication channels under one roof and get the most out of your CRM. Integrate your data and AI into the platform, turning your customer support hub into a bright, user-friendly center.
- Service Cloud: Use AI to enhance customer interactions with personalized responses, suggestions, and helpful information based on existing CRM data.
- Self-service: Share the most useful information, suggest what to do next, and provide customers with the tools they need to handle everyday tasks on their own. Help customers find quick, reliable answers without pinging your team!
How to Measure the Success of Your Salesforce Chatbot
The Model Management page is your go-to spot for understanding how well your bot reads and understands user interactions.
To improve your bot’s performance, feed it with quality data. Then, keep an eye on the Model Management menu to supervise your bot’s quality (or a lack thereof).
You’ll notice that Salesforce uses an F1 Score for quality assessment. This metric indicates the effectiveness of your bot in predicting accurate responses. It ranges from 0 to 1 – the higher the score, the better your bot’s performance and conversation accuracy.
Here’s a step-by-step on how to measure the success of your chatbot:
- Head over to the Bot Builder menu and navigate to Model Management.
- Next, access the “Model” tab to view intent model metrics.
- Then, click on a specific intent to access recommendations.
To improve F1 scores, include more chat snippets and make sure the intents are clear. Regularly update your bot with fresh customer chat data – you’ll need a minimum of 20 snippets to build the model, but more snippets will enhance accuracy.
To act on recommendations, click “Edit Intent.” For a visual representation of your bot’s performance, explore the Intent Assessor AppExchange tool.
If your bot operates in different languages, click “Download Model Metrics” to see performance across languages and global performance.
Skynet Isn’t Here Yet, But…
Keep in mind that 60% of people would still rather have a – slower, imperfect – human interaction than get mediocre answers from a bot, however technologically advanced it may be.
A bad interaction with a bot can be more time-consuming than talking to the right agent. That’s why your escalation options should route customers to the most skilled available agents. In this case, Salesforce’s Service Cloud with omni-channel capabilities would be the relevant product for your needs.
Lastly, note that pop-ups can be annoying and often disrupt the browsing experience. So, whenever possible, opt for non-intrusive placement and minimizing options.
Follow the above tips, and you’ll have a handy, customer-centric AI chatbot ready to smash all objections and keep customers happy!
