1. Natural Language Processing:

 All chatbots are not built equally. For the most part, most chatbots are able to pick up on questions that customers have. What separates chatbots is the quality of their natural language processing. Natural language processing refers to the ability of a computer to understand human language. This is typically on a scale, instead of a black/white or yes/no answer. The better natural language processing a chatbot has, the easier it will be for them to understand customer inquiries and give back a suitable reply. Custom chatbots have far more natural language processing abilities in comparison to traditional chatbots and this makes them far better at understanding communication from a customer. What separates chatbots is the quality of their natural language processing. Here’s how natural language processing works. Natural language processing refers to the ability of a computer to understand human language.

Custom chatbots are able to recognize different semantics, dialects and intentions of customers. This makes it very easy for them to converse with customers and respond to customer inquiries. This is a major upgrade from normal chatbots that rely on pre-scripted responses. The better the natural language processing is in your chatbot, the more it will be able to carry a conversation with your customers. This ultimately means that your employees will spend less time dealing with customer service and that you can focus on other parts of your business.

2. Use cases:

Chatbots today are far more advanced than they were just a few years ago. The average chatbot today surprises organizations with what it can do. The amount of use cases for a chatbot is what separates good chatbots from great chatbots. The more applications a chatbot has, the more it can help a business automate many of its repetitive tasks. For most businesses, chatbots serve as a customer service or live chat tool. This is helpful for most businesses, but custom chatbots can do much more.

With custom chatbots, you can solve complex tasks and automate even more functions within your business. Some of the use cases for custom chatbots include:

• Shopping assistant: A custom chatbot can help customers with their entire shopping journey. From greeting them as soon as they arrive on the website to helping recommend products and providing coupons, custom chatbots can close many sales by acting as a 24/7 shopping assistant.
• Conducting customer research: Your chatbot is one of the best places to get data on your customers’ behavior. A custom chatbot can be programmed to recognize frequently asked questions and common behaviors that customers perform when they land on your site. This can be used to help inform your user experience strategy and you can optimize it to increase conversions for your business.

3. Applicable platforms:

One of the main advantages that custom chatbots have over traditional chatbots is their extensive application across a variety of platforms. The average chatbot only works with a website and does simple tasks like answering custom inquiries or providing contact information. Although this is great, it doesn’t provide businesses with many platforms with a viable solution. Modern businesses communicate with their customers on a variety of platforms and they need a chatbot solution that will enable them to do so easily.

Custom chatbots are great for organizations like this. With just one custom chatbot solution, you can automate conversations on websites, mobile apps, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Shopify sites and more. Your chatbot will be able to support you on virtually any platform that your customer is on and that will help save you significant time and money. This makes custom chatbots far more versatile than the average chatbot.

4. Integration capabilities: 

A major difference between custom chatbots and normal chatbots is the integration capabilities. Most custom chatbots have several magnitudes of integrations more than the average chatbot. Instead of limiting your chatbot to the common integrations, custom chatbots allow organizations to leverage extensive integrations and this provides a more customized experience for customers. This allows for endless chatbot personalization for organizations.

Integrations typically fall into two categories for custom chatbots: API integrations and third-party integrations. API integrations enable chatbots to use data from other applications. By communicating with other applications, the chatbot is able to perform many more functions. The third-party integrations allow the chatbot to use applications that the organization typically uses like CRMs, SEO tools,  analytical tools and more. These tools allow the chatbot to leverage other data within the company to provide more tailored solutions for the business.

5. Maintenance:

The maintenance of a custom chatbot can be perceived as a con, but it’s needed in order to continue improving its productivity for a business. For most traditional non-custom chatbots, there’s little maintenance that needs to be done. Since the chatbot is very similar to thousands of others being used by other companies, bugs are typically found quicker and there’s little maintenance needed over the lifetime use of the product.

In contrast, a custom chatbot will need routine maintenance to ensure that there are no bugs and to implement new features into the chatbot. If the main use case for your chatbot was to answer custom service questions, you can update the code of the chatbot to allow for more functionalities. This includes other tasks like scheduling appointments, sending user surveys, scanning QR codes and sending drip campaigns.

The technical maintenance needed to be done for custom chatbots to allow current chatbot operations to go smoothly in addition to increasing the value for the business by continuously adding new features. The maintenance can be done by in-house developers, outsourced developers or consultants for your business.

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• Get buy-in from management and users

The first step that you should take before implementing any CRM tool is to get buy-in from management and users. Management is often the biggest hurdle for companies that are interested in using CRMs. If the management is used to using older operational tools, they may have more resistance to adopting a CRM. It’s important to sell management on the ROI of a CRM. On average, a CRM produces $8 for every $1 invested. Exhibiting the potential benefit and ROI of a CRM tool is crucial to getting buy-in from management.

In addition to management, you have to get buy-in from your employees who will be the main users of the CRM. Your business likely has certain software and other processes it follows; incorporating a new CRM will mean a significant change to their workflows. By adding your employees into your decision making process for a CRM, they will become active participants and stakeholders in the CRM you select. 

• Choose the right CRM

The single most impactful way to improve revenue and productivity is to choose the right CRM. All CRMs are not built equally and choosing the wrong one can be very costly for your business. To choose the right CRM, start by clearly identifying your needs and pain points. Consulting with your sales, IT and other teams is a great way to get feedback and pinpoint exactly what you are looking for in a CRM tool.

Once you have identified your key problems, you can start making a list of possible CRM solutions that can address your needs. Check out each CRM you’re interested in and jot down the features and benefits of each so you can make an informed decision on which one is best for your business. Once you’ve narrowed down your CRM options, demo each one and see how well it fits into your business and what results it generates. Most CRMs offer a free trial and you can use this to try several different options. 

• Create a CRM strategy

A vital mistake that most companies make is that they don’t have a CRM strategy. A CRM strategy is the blueprint for all the activities that your business conducts with a CRM. This includes setting goals, KPIs, how each team utilizes the CRM, outlining your sales funnel and more. Without a CRM strategy, your teams will likely underutilize the CRM and fall short of any goals that are set. 

A CRM strategy doesn’t have to be very sophisticated. You can create a simple strategy that outlines the specific goals you want to achieve along with the different processes in the CRM. Your CRM strategy should also include how often you look at your campaign performances and your general sales processes. Nailing down your CRM strategy will give you a roadmap of how your business should interact with people and how to manage clients relationship with a CRM tool

• Invest in training

Training your employees is vital to improving your outcomes with your CRMs. Since your employees will be the people who will use the CRM the most, it makes sense to train them on how to use it and what outcomes you are aiming to achieve. You can either invest your time into training your employees yourself or purchase training programs that can guide your employees. Regardless of which path you choose for training, it’s important to document how your team uses the CRM so you can have a manual to refer back to when issues arise. Some companies even use technologies like screen sharing to give live updates to employees who are being trained in a CRM. 

By training your employees sufficiently in the use of the CRM, they can help serve your customers better and improve their productivity significantly. Once they are well trained in the CRM, they can use advanced features that will allow them to collaborate with other departments in your organization and scale customer service operations. It’s also important to get feedback from your employees on training, so you can address any gaps in their knowledge and implementation of the CRM.

• Integration with other software

The utility of a given CRM can increase dramatically when it integrates with other software tools that your business uses. Although integrating with a number of software tools can seem productive, it can make your CRM more cluttered. You need to use software integrations that actually help service your customers better or improve your own internal operations. You can start by making a list of bottlenecks and issues you’re currently facing with your processes and customers.

Once you have your list, you can start listing software solutions that can address those needs and you can find a similar integration that you can use in your CRM. By adding a handful of useful software integrations, you can exponentially increase your productivity while reducing the bottlenecks in your systems. Some of the software tools you can integrate into your CRM tools include contact management tools, fulfillment tools,  sales forecasting tools, marketing analytics, lead management and more. 

• Leverage automated emails:

Automated emails is one of the best tools in a lot of CRMs. With automated emails, you can use your customer data to create personalized emails that are completely automated. Most CRMs allow you to create email sequences that are automated and you can personalize them further with the customer data you have. You can use the customer’s name, company, location, specific pain points and more to personalize your email outreach. 

For example, you can use automated emails to send personalized emails around life events of the customer. This could be birthdays, holidays, revenue milestones, etc. These personalized emails can be campaigns for your marketing team and you can personalize the email even more depending on how much data you have on your customer. These automated emails are extremely low cost and can generate thousands of dollars if not tens of thousands for your business. 

• Enable cross-team collaboration

CRMs are already powerful tools for companies, but you can take it to the next level by enabling cross-team collaboration directly from your CRM. During the lifecycle of your customer, they will interact with several teams within your business. This can include sales, marketing, customer support and more. Without a CRM, this can lead to a fragmented and poor experience for the customer. Many CRMs allow teams within businesses to work together directly on the CRM to provide a cohesive customer experience. 

There should be several feature options on your CRM to allow cross functional collaboration between teams. If it’s not apparent, feel free to ask your CRM provider. These features will allow your teams to communicate and work directly in the CRM to meet customer needs. This will all lead to more efficient sales, marketing and customer support for the company. 

• Use analytics and reports:

Analytics and reporting are underutilized tools by most companies who use a CRM. Depending on the CRM you use, there will be periodic analytics and reports generated that can give you insight into how your business is performing and how your customers are interacting with your teams. You can use this data to inform your operations and improve your processes on behalf of the customer. Your CRM will often provide you with customer profiles and indicate different patterns and behaviors they have when interacting with your company. You can use these insights to inform your marketing and sales strategy to help close on a client. 

• Continuously update:

It’s crucial to update your CRM to maximize the research and development work that your CRM provider is doing. The majority of CRM providers update their product routinely and they patch software issues along with any other complaints their users have. If you fail to update your CRM, you could be running on a legacy version of the CRM and that can cause significant issues for your employees and customers.

As you obtain more data from your customers, it’s even more important to update your CRM to utilize the further insights gained from the data. With up to date data on your customers in your CRM, you can accelerate your sales cycles, manage customer relationships better and maximize your lead nurturing efforts. 

The post 9 Best CRM Tips To Improve Productivity And Revenue appeared first on Botsify.

Although publishing content is great, building high domain authority links to your site is the highest leverage activity you can do to increase the impact of your SEO campaign. I know this first hand because I made this costly mistake myself. Earlier this year, I launched my blog alisquared. co. I used this site as a personal brand to gain more freelance writing work and eventually transition into monetizing it with ads and affiliate marketing.

In the first 6 months alone, I published 67 2,000 word blog posts on a variety of topics. From a glance, any business that invested that much time and money into content would expect a sizable return. What actually happened was I was getting less than 100 page views per month on all of my content. This was primarily because my site had no domain authority. 

Even though I was writing great content that was longer than most competitors, Google did not recognize my site as an authority in anything because I did not have links. Additionally, my site started on a new domain. This generally means that Google will place you in a “sandbox” to ensure you’re not a spam website. 

I recognized that I had to pivot. Publishing content alone would take years to see any ROI and it was not the best use of my limited time. I started to learn about link building and the impact it can have on your site. This led me to stop publishing content on my site and focus all of my efforts on link building and building the authority of my blog. This is what happened when I focused on link building for a month:

• My domain rank (DR) increased from 0 to 15
• I published 6 guest posts on high domain authority sites (DR 60+)
• My page views increased by 45% in a month
• More pages from my site were indexed by Google

You can get similar or better results by following just two link-building strategies: guest posting and using HARO. 

• Guest posting

Guest posting is the best way to get high-quality links to your site. With guest posting, you reach out to sites with a higher domain ranking than yours and write content for their audience. In your guest post, you can place any relevant links back to your site and this will increase the domain rank of your site. 

Make sure to reach out to sites in your niche and industry. For example, if you’re in B2B SaaS marketing, reach out to companies in SaaS, marketing, etc. It’s important to guest post for legitimate sites and avoids spammy sites because links from those sites can negatively impact your site. The quality of the site you guest post matters significantly. For my site to go from 0 to 15, I only needed 6 high quality guest posts. There are millions of other sites with a lower ranking than mine who have thousands of links. Their links are not as effective because they are not relevant and they are from low authority sites. To find high authority and quality sites for guest posting, consider joining a link building community.

The sites I guest posted on had a DR of: 78,77, 75,73, 66 and 51. I was able to get guest posts on those sites with 0 domain ranking due to personalizing emails and providing value. Here are some tips you can use to increase the effectiveness of your guest post outreach:

Personalization: A big mistake I made when doing my first few guest post outreach campaigns is lack of personalization. This led to low open rates and responses from sites. You need to make sure that the emails you send have personalized subject lines, intros and body. This takes more time to do, but it will skyrocket the effectiveness of your outreach campaigns. 

Value exchange: Since you have no leverage to exchange equivalent value links or guest posts, you have to be creative with the value that you are providing for. You can pitch them on topics that they are missing from their blog, content that their competitors are ranking for etc. This is easier said than done, but once you have your first few guest posts published, you can use that as samples of work.  

• HARO:

According to UppercutSEO, Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is a site that connects journalists with sources that have expertise in a given field. On HARO, you will find hundreds of journalists from reputable media companies and sites. Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is a site that connects journalists with sources that have expertise in a given field. On HARO, you will find hundreds of journalists from reputable media companies and sites. These journalists write stories and articles on different subjects and they ask for input from sources on HARO. When a journalist creates a request for sources, you can directly respond and provide your input.

If the journalist selects your response for their article, you will get a link back to your site and this can improve your domain rating significantly. There are journalists on HARO who work for big publications like Forbes, BusinessInsider, CNN, FOX, etc. Sites like this have extremely high domain ratings (90+) and a single link from them to your site is worth thousands of dollars. These publications are extremely hard to guest post for, so HARO is a great resource to get these invaluable links. 

Here are several tips you can use to maximize your chances of getting a backlink from HARO:

Enable email notifications and reply early:

One of the best tactics to increase your chances of a request being accepted on HARO is submitting it as early as possible. To do this, you can enable email notifications from HARO and you’ll get 3 emails per day with what journalists are looking for. You’ll get a batch of emails and you can submit your response directly from your email. 

Complete and well thought out answers:

Since you are dealing with journalists, it’s very important to show that you put in the effort for your answers. Having spelling and grammar errors in your response is a sure way to get your request rejected. Make sure to read over your writing carefully prior to submitting it on HARO. 

You should aim to have about 2-3 short paragraphs for each response to a journalist. This is manual and can be time-consuming, but it’s extremely worth it if you are able to get a backlink from a high DR site. 

Don’t apply to requests you’re not qualified for: When you’re searching through requests on HARO, you will see some requests requiring you to have credentials. Examples you’ll see are educational requirements or position requirements. If you don’t fit the criteria, don’t apply for those requests. You’ll waste your time and have your request rejected regardless of how good your pitch is. 

Utilizing guest posting and HARO to build valuable backlinks is a bulletproof strategy to building your domain authority. You won’t be subject to fishy links and Google penalties because these tactics are 100% ethical and white hat. To learn more about SEO technique, check out this guide. Amplifyed also has a guide on link building which you should definitely check out.

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