We all want to know what our customers want. Even better, what would convert potential customers into real clients. But you cannot just ask them. Among other reasons because they will tend to tell you what they think you would like to hear.
So if we cannot ask them, what can we do? Until now, the best option was to observe them. And try to infer what they wanted from what they were doing when visiting our site. Techniques like heatmaps and A/B tests were developed to gather more empirical data that could help us draw out our own conclusions.
But there is a big gap between seeing what users do and infer what they want. These techniques helped but only to a certain extent. And the data was driven by our initial experiments (this is clearly the case for A/B tests) so we can only confirm our hypothesis.
So, we cannot ask them, we cannot just observe them. Then, I repeat, what can we do? The answer is to add a chatbot to your site. If a client comes to your site and can’t find what they came for, they will not waste their time to write you an email, or filling a form. Or a waiting for a live agent to become available for that matter.
But if there is a bot, they will try to ask the bot the question, as this is fast and the answer is immediate, even if it’s a “sorry I don’t get your question”. That client may leave unhappy, but if you do your homework and monitor your chatbot you’ll be able to learn from it and make sure your site evolves to add the information (or even products) clients want. Or make that information easier to find, if in fact it’s already part of your site. You can even decide to pin the question to make sure clients quickly find that answer.
The bot shows the questions clients wanted to know. It could be FAQ-like questions that you should clarify (as the refunds policy in this image) or requests for new products or brands you’re not yet selling (but you should!(
One way or the other, chatbots are a great way to collect info from your clients without then noticing they are helping you. So no biases. No problematic inferences from observational data. Just clear questions clients actually have. Yet another benefit of chatbots for web and ecommerce sites!
