Having a chatbot is now nothing new for many companies. And the fact that the chatbot has to be monitored, i.e. that the KPIs have to be observed, is also clear and somewhat self-evident for most people.
But what most people ignore is the holistic approach. Chatbots must be integrated into the entire customer journey in the long term.
This is comparable to a newsletter. Most online stores or other newsletter senders have understood that they need to send personal newsletters based on customer behavior and even create personalized landing pages.
Chatbots must be viewed in the same way in the future – as part of the whole. As one part of the entire marketing automation chain.
So far, a customer journey has looked something like this:
– User sees display ad and clicks on it
– User reaches personal landing page matching the display ad
– User clicks through the website
– User enters his e-mail address and orders a white paper
– User receives whitepaper via e-mail incl. Link
– User clicks on link and is taken to next personal landing page
If you have set up the journey well, you can already track all user actions in a shared system, for example in your CRM system or in a marketing automation platform.
However, the customer journey should now look like this:
– User sees display ad and clicks on it
– User reaches personal landing page matching the display ad
– Chatbot greets users personally depending on the display ad
– Chatbot conducts individual conversation and directs the user to a landing page
– User reaches personal landing page based on their answers in the chatbot
– User orders personal whitepaper and enters his e-mail address
– User receives whitepaper via e-mail incl. Link
– User clicks on link and is taken to next personal landing page
The customer journey can be extended at will. It is important to understand that the bot activities are also taken into account in the second journey and these are also saved in the higher-level system.
I spent a long time looking for suitable tools that make it possible to take chatbots into the entire customer journey and track all the data or carry out actions based on the bot interaction.
In the end, I came across mautic. Mautic is a marketing automation platform with a CRM system. Mautic is opensource and free for everyone (apart from hosting costs, which are usually minimal). Mautic can be hosted on your own servers. And best of all, Mautic is open to any interface and can integrate chatbots created with landbot.io or aiaibot.com, for example, without any problems.
Some development know-how is required to set up mautic, after which the tool runs, is customizable and has no running costs.
There are companies, such as idea2.ch, that specialize in consulting and implementing mautic projects.
What’s the next step?
As with any bot project, I recommend that you start with a concept workshop. But instead of just looking at the individual chatbot, you should look at the entire customer journey and check where a bot can be used and where other communication media make more sense.
I would be happy to support you with this workshop or answer any questions you may have about mautic or chatbots in the customer journey.
Click here to go to my contact page.
Update 12.02.2020: I am also offering a new workshop on this topic. All information here.
