What is a Chatbox
A chatbox is the user interface of a given chat application. A common use for chatboxes is a popup window on a business website through which the user interacts with a live agent or AI bot.
The Difference Between Chatboxes, Live chats, and Chatbots
These 3 terms are often used interchangeably, but all refer to slightly different parts of a website’s chat experience. When a user clicks on the icon or bubble to begin a chat interaction, the window displayed is referred to as the chatbox. This interface is often branded with company colors and sometimes even pre-populates with quick select prompts.
Once a user clicks a prompt or types a message, they can connect with a human agent. This session is called a live chat since they communicate with someone in real-time. Typically a business has to employ a team of representatives to ensure they respond to the chat. Answering questions and messages can make live chat expensive if the website drives high volume or sporadic traffic.
A chatbot refers to a user who interacts with an artificially intelligent program that leverages natural language processing to understand and address user intent. AI-powered chatbots like Capacity can solve the costly and inefficient problem of maintaining a chatbox solution.
The best bots often provide superior service compared to a human because of their ability to instantly query data within integrated software like Salesforce, transactional databases, or internal knowledge bases.
3 Chatbox Best Practices
1. Make the chatbox visible
Most chatboxes exist in 2 states: minimized or open. When the chatbox is minimized, it interferes less with the user experience–but risks being overlooked. To avoid blending in with the background, ensure the chat icon is a bright, visible color that doesn’t blend into the background of your website. It’s important for users to know the icon will open a chatbox interface immediately.
Another strategy to avoid missing potential user interactions is showing clickable prompts while the chatbox is minimized. If these prompts are relevant, quick actions can reduce the friction for users to engage in an entire chatbox interaction.
2. Create a branded experience
When choosing a chat solution for your website, it is crucial to pick one that allows you to apply your org’s branding. Chatboxes are an extremely visible aspect of your website and often interact with high-intent leads, so creating a branded experience is critical. First impressions can make or break high-quality leads from moving further down the pipe.
With platforms like Capacity, it’s easy to apply your company’s brand colors and logo to provide website visitors with a seamless, cohesive experience. However, you can also implement aspects of your brand voice in the prompts and responses. Capacity’s ability to match your website’s aesthetic and content style truly sets it apart from other website chat applications.
Get Started with AI
Capacity’s customized AI Assessments can help:
- Identify opportunities for using AI
- Prioritize use cases that fit your goals
- Build an action plan for implementation
3. Provide intuitive chat prompts
Website visitors often get overwhelmed with the information they need to parse through a business’ website. Providing them with a clickable list of prompts can often help them find the right question to ask amidst a flood of new information.
Creating these chat prompts is a mixture of art and science. With a tool like Capacity, you can intelligently query past chat conversations to begin bucketing them into categories. From there, you can select the 2-4 questions or prompts that address most of the user inquiries. The bot can intelligently answer the most common questions users ask 24/7/365.
With Capacity, you can also create quick answers to the questions that the AI will ask the user. If done correctly, the user can complete a multi-step interaction without typing anything into the chatbox. This can dramatically improve conversation speed and user satisfaction. Users can instantly find accurate answers, and support teams save valuable time.
Top 4 Benefits of Chatboxes
There are several advantages to chatbox solutions. They provide users with a place to go when they need assistance or guidance. Here are four ways chatboxes can help your business:
1. Scalable customer service
One of the main benefits of communicating to users through a website chatbox is how scalable it is. An alternative solution, such as providing a phone number to call, constrains the agent to one conversation at a time, often placing callers on hold. Similarly, answering user email inquiries can result in conversational inefficiencies and longer resolution times.
Chatboxes tend to give companies the best of both worlds, offering superior customer service through faster resolution times and a cheaper alternative to hiring large, expensive teams as volume grows.
2. Faster answers to questions
When trying to answer many types of inquiries, some websites resort to a long list of FAQs or troves of helpdesk articles. In contrast to these static methods of information delivery, chatboxes provide a dynamic interface for inquiries. This dramatically reduces the number of places a user needs to look for an answer and increases the speed of resolution.
Common FAQs are answered within seconds compared to waiting for a live agent to respond. Support agents can step in if a complex issue arises in the chatbox. Thanks to AI-powered chatbot technology, support agents have more time to spend on intricate problems that require their attention. Faster responses lead to more satisfied current and potential customers.
3. Increased user insights
There is tremendous value in listening to how someone phrases a question. For example, “Does this product have a “free tier” vs. “Enterprise pricing information” might both result in a user visiting the pricing page of a website. However, you should serve these users very different information and ideally capture additional contact information for high purchase-intent questions
A platform like Capacity gives you the tools to view all user queries, build specialized flows for each one, and seamlessly transition from guided conversations to a live chat with an agent. These capabilities can help maximize the insights a company gathers from those precious few customer interactions. Analyzing key questions asked can help your org determine different strategies to test.
4. Improved employee experience
Have you ever spent countless hours answering customer or prospect questions that could easily be found on your website? If you answered yes, chatbox technology could help. AI chatbots can answer questions and inquiries in seconds, not hours. The customer experience is pleasant, and employees are happy to have more time to focus on strategic initiatives.
Save time and money with Capacity
Capacity’s interactive AI chatbox experience provides users with exceptional support, all while your team is sleeping or off the clock. If your org struggles with scaling, overworked support staff, cost savings, or all of the above, Capacity is the right choice for your team.
Capacity answers over 90% of FAQs for both internal teams and external customers. Employees get time back in their day to focus on more important work, and customers receive superior service and instant answers. It’s a win-win!
Get Started with AI
Capacity’s customized AI Assessments can help:
- Identify opportunities for using AI
- Prioritize use cases that fit your goals
- Build an action plan for implementation
