How To Use Chatbots Correctly in Practice + 7 Benefits

The healthcare industry is a serious business, which often understandably makes some health professionals sceptical about introducing artificial intelligence (AI) into their practice. The question people tend to ask is, “Is this technology effective and safe for patients?” Nevertheless, if you learn how to use chatbots effectively in your healthcare practice, you can use this technology to improve your patient’s experience.

A chatbot is an automated program that engages and converses with your prospective and existing clients. Health practitioners can use bots to remind clients about their appointment, advertise their services, collect feedback, or check up on their patients. In other words, understanding how to use chatbots will help you get more clients, improve the quality of your services, improve your clients’ satisfaction and improve health outcomes. Also, it will save you costs of communication and, even more importantly, save time.

In this article, we will be highlighting:

• The top five chatbots in the market
• 7 ways to use chatbots to get more clients and improve the quality of your services
• Common chatbots mistakes and how to avoid them

If you’d like some help with implementing some of ideas in this post, check out our chatbot services.

The Top 5 chatbots for client acquisition and satisfaction

There is a variety of chatbots available in the market. Thus, when you decide to use bots, you’ll be faced with the problem of choosing the right chatbot for you.

Therefore, we have selected the top 5 chatbots you can use on your website or Facebook Messenger.

ManyChat

Manychat is one of the most popular chatbots available. It is undoubtedly our favourite bot. We use it on our website and Facebook Messenger, and we use it for all our clients.

The developers have done a remarkable job of greatly reducing the mystery of how to use chatbots. It is a no-code bot and easy to use with visually appealing representations of your bot as build it. This makes it popular with people without coding skills.

Its inherent Growth Tools help you to convert Facebook users to subscribers. Like many other bots, you can also use it to collect and store users information. It seamlessly integrates with other programmes commonly used in business, such as Calendly.

ManyChat has a free plan for up to 500 subscribers. After you hit the 500-subscriber mark, you can upgrade to the paid plan, which starts from $10/month.

ChatFuel

Chatfuel is said to be the most popular Facebook Messenger chatbot. There are more Facebook Messenger chatbots made with Chatfuel than with any other bot.

Chatfuel uses “blocks” to build a coherent bot. The only reason we choose Manychat over Chatfuel is that, in our opinion, it has a steeper learning curve than Manychat. This makes it a less appealing option to our clients.

However, once you get used to Chatfuel, it is a powerful tool as well. Their free plan gives you up to 1000 subscribers.

Watson Assistant

Developed by one of the leading AI companies, IBM, Watson Assistant, is also popular. It is one of the most advanced bots available in the market. Watson Assistant can manage your mobile apps, website, messaging platforms, and customer service channels.

It can direct your patient to human representatives and recommend the training to improve its performance.

Watson Assistant can perform research on your database and analyse your chat history and call logs. You can rest assured that data on the bot is secure.

Bold360

Another popular chatbot is Bold360. It has made the list of our top 5 chatbots because it helps businesses interact easily with clients, without having to integrate keywords.

Bold360 keeps clients engaged, using natural language to deliver the most appropriate answers to their questions. Furthermore, it is conversational and can run on most messaging channels.

Ada

Ada is another chatbot ranked amongst the top 5. It is used by popular brands like Mailchimp, Medium and Shopify. Moreover, you can add GIFs to it and use it to store your client’s details.

Ada integrates easily with other messaging channels and can be used to get client feedback. It is effective in saving time and cost. According to the developers’ website, Ada has saved customers 1 billion minutes of customer service effort and over $100 million in savings!

Finally, there are plenty of other chatbots out there, but if you use any of the above correctly, you’ll get a lot more clients and keep them happy as well.

If you’d like some help with implementing some of ideas in this post, check out our chatbot services.

7 ways to use chatbots to get more clients and improve the quality of your services

1) Keeping your practice open 24/7

Chatbots are a great way to offer 24-hour service to your clients, especially when there is an emergency. You can keep your patients engaged when they need to make enquires at awkward hours.

For example, if a client has an emergency and calls your practice after closing hours, they would be discouraged if no one takes their call. Since customer care representatives cannot be available 24/7 without a huge budget, opting for bots is the best way to keep your practice open and your clients engaged.

Bots can collect and store requests, respond to client’s queries and schedule appointments. Also, chatbots can check up on clients, remind them about their appointments, advertise your business, and collect feedback.

Having a bot for your practice could significantly reduce the burden on your staff. They can focus more on offering quality care to patients/clients.

2) How to use chatbots to achieve quality conversations

According to research, 51% of customers will not return to patronise your services if they have a negative experience. Clients’ negative experiences could be as a result of miscommunication, poor communication, or a poorly addressed issue.

For example, if your staff is stressed or experiencing emotional issues, they may not represent your brand well or engage in quality conversations with patients.

However, if you use bots correctly, you won’t have to worry about these issues. You can use a bot to achieve quality conversations with clients. It treats your patients nicely, giving them the best experience with your practice.

Besides, if you don’t want your practice to be entirely dependent on bots, you can make a switch. As such, any member of staff can take over any time they want.

3) Attending to multiple clients at the same time

Chatbots can significantly improve the efficiency of your business, allowing you to attend to multiple clients at the same time.

For instance, during rush hours, some client’s trying to reach you online may be left unattended. If they experience this delay over and over again, they may give up or write damaging reviews online about your services. This could damage your practice in the long term.

On the other hand, a good understanding of how to use chatbots in your practice and where could help to reduce cost and the delays clients experience. Instead of hiring more hands, use bots to attend to multiple clients at the same time.

You can design your bot to be proactive in approaching clients instead of waiting for clients to come to you. As such, you will improve efficiency and streamline customer processes.

4) How to use chatbots to create brand awareness

Healthcare service providers can use chatbots to create brand awareness. Good services may create word-of-mouth, but words about good services travel slowly.

Thus, an excellent complement to word of mouth is bots. You can learn how to use chatbots to generate awareness about your practice creatively. Or, you can let professionals handle it for you.

All you need to do is decide who your target audience is. For example, if you are a paediatrician, your bot will be targeted at parents. Then, you will add a few sample questions to help your clients engage. You can include further information about your practice when setting up your bot. By so doing, you are providing solutions to client’s needs, at the same time, strengthening your brand.

If you would like to learn more, feel free to contact us.

You can learn about how to grow your health practice rapidly.

5) Collecting and storing data for better insights

You can use bots to get data insights into your patients. Every business needs to grow and to do that they must understand their numbers. To retain existing clients and get new ones, you must give your patients the best experience with your brand. To achieve this, you will need to engage with your clients and get data and insights about them.

By learning how to use chatbots and incorporating them into your practice, you will be able to gather essential information about your clients — for example, age, gender, location and their various preferences.

Furthermore, bots can help you conduct surveys to evaluate your client’s experience with your practice. By so doing, you can optimise chatbots based on the data collected. More importantly, you can use the data to redesign and improve your services.

6) Use chatbots to interact with clients

Another effective way to use chatbots is in interacting with clients. Bots can be programmed to sense the mood of clients and respond to them accordingly. They can be tuned to be humorous, friendly, or technical with clients. These bots can “sense” the mood of clients based on what kind of words they use when engaging in a conversation with your brand.

If you understand how to use chatbots, you will have no problem keeping clients engaged with your brand. You can easily inform them of special offers, change of location, adjustments in opening and closing hours, etc. You can reach out to clients with frequently asked questions and answers about your brand.

There are several ways you can interact with your clients using bots. You may decide to send a personalised message, a well-thought-out welcome message or simply tell them your brand story.

7) How to use chatbots to provide added comfort to clients

Research has shown that clients feel more comfortable discussing their health issues with a non-human. For example, clients may think that they will be judged if they ask their physician about something. They will avoid such questions which may be vital to their treatment and outcome.

Healthcare practice owners/managers can use bots to provide added comfort to clients while ensuring that their privacy is guaranteed. This will help clients feel relaxed, less embarrassed and free to carry on with the conversations.

Therefore, it is safe to say that understanding how to use chatbots correctly and incorporating them into your health practice will significantly reduce patient’s anxiety. By so doing, you give your patients room to disclose their health challenges honestly and openly. Also, interacting with bots relieves patients from the fear of guilt and embarrassment.

Although every patient’s health condition is unique and requires unique attention, bots can provide the added comfort that patients need. Moreover, health service providers can use this AI technology to motivate their patients during waiting hours, as such improve the quality of care.

If you’d like some help with implementing some of ideas in this post, check out our chatbot services.

Common chatbot mistakes and how to avoid them

Many people make many mistakes while using chatbots. To help you avoid these mistakes, let’s highlight the common chatbot mistakes and how to avoid them.

Spammy chats

One of the common mistake brands make with chatbots is being overly pushy and spammy. Don’t use bots to overdo sales offerings and send spammy promotions. This could make users report you as spam, and platforms like Facebook may ban you from sending messages.

To avoid this common chatbot mistake, programme your bot to respond only when someone sends a message. Resist the urge to send unsolicited messages to your clients. Facebook allows you to send a promotional message only if the audience has interacted with your bot in the last 24 hours, the so-called 24-hour rule.

Not running tests

It is crucial to perform robust user tests before launching a bot. You may want to invite existing users to do a beta test before launching the product to the public.

By so doing, you will be able to understand how to use chatbots better and enhance technical faults likely to occur with your bot.

Misleading clients

Another chatbot mistake is not clarifying that your bot isn’t human. The worse case is deliberately pretending that your bot is a real human.

Don’t mislead your clients and potential clients by making them believe that they are chatting with an actual human being. You can’t fool anyone. You’ll only make your audience resent you for trying to mislead them.

You can avoid this mistake by including ‘bot’ or ‘assistant’ to the name of your bot. You can also make your bot specify that it is not a human at the beginning of its conversation with your clients.

Poor audience targeting

When using bots, make sure you are targeting the right audience. A few well-targeted people in your audience are better a large crowd of untargeted people.

Target people before you invite them to subscribe. Also, after subscription, carry out occasional cleaning of your subscriber lists by removing people who are not responsive to your messages. Giving subscribers plenty of opportunities to unsubscribe could also help you keep your subscriber list clean.

Poor communication  

Avoid unnecessary, ambiguous messages. Such messages may be tiring to read and may end up frustrating your clients. A bot is supposed to eliminate waste, especially the waste of time. Hence, make sure your interactions are simple, fast, and straight to the point.

“Me-too” chat name

Another common chatbot mistake you must avoid is not having a unique findable name. Your bot name must be unique and findable. This is because it is one of the factors that inform potential client’s decisions to check you out.

Ensure that your bot name is easy to pronounce and spell. If you choose a generic name for your bot, users may not be able to find you at all.

Not listing in directories

Most brands do not list their chatbots in bot directories, and this is one of the chatbot mistakes you can definitely avoid.

Listing a chatbot is free and easy to do. Some of the bot directories you can list your bots on are BotPages, Slack Directory, and Botlist.co.

If you’d like some help with implementing some of ideas in this post, check out our chatbot services.

Conclusion

Chatbots are here to stay. The top 5 in the market are Manychat, Chatfuel, Watson Assistant, Bold360 and Ada.

Incorporating bots into your practice can help you to provide added comfort to your clients. You can also use them to get insightful data into your clients, create brand awareness and to attend to multiple clients simultaneously. You can essentially keep your practice open 24/7 and interact with clients.

Understanding how to use chatbots and deploying them in your practice will give you an unfair advantage over your competition. If you need help setting up a bot to handle the many tasks of client communication, please contact us.