Chatbots are becoming a staple of digital marketing for many businesses today, and it looks like they’ll soon be a standard – just like paid ads, pop-ups, and special offers. If you haven’t implemented them yet, then it’s good you’re reading this.
They offer a great way to automating processes you don’t want to do while still saving you money you’d otherwise spend hiring a VA to handle it.
I’ve used almost every app on this list on my own websites, so they’re my personal recommendations. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend anything I don’t know if it works, and anything I haven’t personally implemented here are still things I’ve personally seen being used by someone close to me.
In other words, I’m recommending these chatbot apps because I know they’re good.
Kai Product Recommender
It’s pretty much an AI sales agent. It engages directly with your customers from your website, and it starts the conversation by itself. It acts just like a sales agent, and the sequence of questions it asks are just what you’d expect.
It questions visitors about their interests: the types of products they’re looking for, their preferred price range – all with multi-option answers. The visitor then sees product recommendations matching their answers.
You can also keep track of every interaction thanks to the useful dashboard, and the data updates continually.
You can try it for 14 days, and it costs $20 monthly.
Akohub Messenger Chatbot
If you want to tackle Facebook Messenger with your Shopify store, it’ll be difficult to find a better option than this one. As a bonus, it also works for stores on WooCoommerce and other platforms.
It’s an efficient and intuitive way to help your customers browse and purchase from you from their Messenger chat. The developers claim 85% of users manage to reduce customer service to around 3 hours thanks to this app.
It’s similar to Kai in that it works with predefined questions and guidelines. You can set up auto-replies via text messaging, carousel templates, and direct web links. The app is also customizable to a nice degree: color palette, buttons, messages, and action layers.
You can also link to your different pages to start talking to your visitors as soon as they type certain keywords.
Another nice feature is the inbuilt FAQ page you can link with Akohub. This section can include your policies and order tracking, among other interesting features. It also allows you to send special offers to your visitors or direct them to your best-sellers.
The free trial lasts for a month, and it’ll cost $12 monthly afterwards.
SallyBot
This is a very similar app to Akohub, and it comes with a few additional features like app integration with your emails for customer support. For instance, you can link customers to your bot, and once someone messages you, you can send them their order status automatically.
You also have notifications you can use to communicate with your customers through Messenger, email, or even SMS depending on their order location: in-process, shipped, or delivered. It also works for customer follow-ups
Sally also adapts to customers’ time zones, so don’t worry about ill-timed messages annoying your clients.
It works with over 600 different shipping vendors, and it also comes with the FAQ section feature. You can even have Sally offer different upsells to your clients after confirming their deliveries.
You can also access the development road map to check out which features will be added in the future.
The app offers a 14-day free trial. After it’s finished, you can either pay them $0.20 for every sale or access one of the monthly plans for $19, $59, and $259.
Messenger Abandoned Cart Bot
This app works by adding a checkbox to your add-to-cart button, and it activates once someone clicks on it. You can then communicate them through Messenger if they failed to complete that purchase after some time – which you can set up.
It might appear annoying to have someone remind you that you didn’t buy something, but it can actually do wonders for your conversion rates. It’s not as annoying when that reminder comes with a special discount for their purchase.
Other features are fairly standard: follow-ups, upsells, and questions. However, the main attraction is how it’ll always work as long as people add something to their cart. There seems to be some confusion regarding its “legality” on Facebook, but it’s compliant to the guidelines.
You can try it for 30 days before subscribing to one of the 4 paid plans, starting from $9 to $299.
Conclusion
All of these chatbots offer different features, so make sure to check out their free trials before settling for one.
If you don’t know how to set up your chatbot, don’t worry. You can find resources on YouTube, and Franklin Hatchett’s eCom Elites has an entire module on the matter, so I’d recommend you check it out.
