Chatbots are an extremely useful but wildly underrated tool in the business world.

For a simple bot being so easy and quick to build, it’s a wonder more businesses aren’t taking advantage of this great software.

There are a number of things chatbots can do for business.

They’re incredibly useful for making your work week shorter and easier by automating many tasks that typically take up huge chunks of time.

They’re also available 24/7 to constantly be engaging with customers and pushing sales.

Keep reading to learn about 8 different things chatbots can do for business!

What can chatbots do for business?

1.   Set your business apart from others

The number one thing chatbots can do for business right now is to set businesses apart from the others.

Few companies are taking advantage of chatbot automation right now.

This means that those that are using chatbots have an advantage; they are novel, they are different, and they are more intriguing to potential customers.

Setting your business apart from the others as the more innovative business has a number of benefits. Customers may be more likely to use your business, even if only for the novelty of the chatbot experience.

Read on for more things that chatbots can do for business that will help set yours apart from the crowd and help you gain more customers!

2.   Automate daily tasks

Think about all of those daily marketing and business tasks that take up so much of your time.

It’s time that could be spent growing your business.

One thing chatbots can do for business is automating these daily tasks so that you can spend more time strategizing!

Some things that chatbots can do for business to help automate daily tasks are Facebook click-to-Messenger ads, Facebook sponsored messages, and comment guards.

Facebook click-to-Messenger ads look like your typical Facebook Newsfeed ad, but instead of directing the user to your business’s website, they direct the user to a Messenger chat with your chatbot.

This is a great marketing hack because as soon as a user responds to your chatbot, they are added to your Facebook Messenger contact list. This is also a great way to add contacts to your email list if you have a user provide their email address to the chatbot.

Once the user has engaged with your chatbot, you also have the ability to remarket to them.

For example, Facebook has a rule that allows you to reach out to a user once within 24 hours of their last contact with you.

After this, you can pay to send one extra message; this is a sponsored message. It’s a great way to remarket to users who may have run out of time to talk, forgotten, or were less-than-interested at the time of the interaction.

Finally, using a Facebook comment guard, you can add dozens of users to your contact lists at once. Simply set up a Facebook post with a Facebook auto reply bot and you’ll be raking in the contacts!

This works by creating an interactive Facebook post which asks users to comment on it to receive something; possibly a contest entry, a discount code, or access to a webinar. Then, your chatbot responds to those who commented with the things that were offered!

Before providing the discount, answer, or whatever the user is looking for, have the chatbot ask them a question to get them to engage. Then you can reap the benefits of Facebook Messenger marketing.

With these things chatbots can do for business, you’ll be collecting leads in your sleep!

3.   Cut down costs

Automating daily tasks to help your business grow without the hard scut work in your day-to-day is just one of the many amazing things chatbots can do for business. This automation also helps your business cut down on costs.

Not only do you save on massive organic Facebook ad campaigns by driving traffic to Facbeook Messenger, but you can also save on staff.

Instead of paying massive sales and customer service teams that only work during day hours, you can cut back on those costs and rely more on your chatbots that are available 24/7 to do a lot of this work automatically.

4.   Improve response rate

One thing that chatbots can do for business is to improve a business’s response rate.

Chatbots respond to 100% of messages sent to a business. That means no question or query goes unanswered.

Immediate and complete response is important to converting visitors into customers. A customer is more likely to go with a business that responds to their queries than a business that leaves them hanging without an answer.

Chatbots improve response rate by having automatic answers prepared for questions and presenting leading dialogues to users who interact with them. Include menus, buttons, and interactive ways to keep the conversation moving forward.

This is called a Facebook Messenger funnel.

5.   Improve customer service

Improving customer service is one of the many things that chatbots can do for business. Using a chatbot improves your customer service by automating certain aspects while cutting down costs and boosting availability.

In fact, chatbots are predicted to save businesses $8 billion in customer service costs by the year 2022. This is because businesses will be able to spend less on hiring and training massive customer service teams while having fast and helpful assistance available 24/7.

People tend to prefer messaging to any other method of communication, and they like when it’s fast — especially in terms of customer service.

Chatbots are great for customer service and support because they can be used for seamless Q&A. Simply set up some trigger words for the bot to initiate dialogues answering some of your business’s most commonly asked questions, like “hours,” “pricing,” “demo,” etc.

The best part? It doesn’t have to be fully automated or fully live — a live operator can take over the chat at any point. You can even set up email alerts to make sure a live operator jumps in as soon as they’re needed.

6.   Get better engagement and reach

Engagement and reach is one of the most important aspects of marketing for your business, but it can be incredibly difficult to attain with classic marketing platforms like Facebook Newsfeed and email marketing.

Improving your engagement and reach is another great thing chatbots can do for business.

The average open rates for Facebook Messenger messages is 50-80% with a 20% average click rate, compared to the 1 to 2% reach of organic Facebook traffic.

That’s a massive increase, and it can be achieved by using a Facebook Messenger chatbot.

Here’s the thing — 55% of people are more interested in using chat to interact with a business. It’s because chat is faster and easier for most people’s day-to-day. No one has time to sit for hours on the phone anymore.

But what’s great about using Facebook Messenger chatbots is that they are optimized for mobile from the start. And since most people are using their mobile phones to communicate these days, mobile optimization is what a business needs to increase their engagement.

Because who wouldn’t rather open an easy Messenger message than deal with clunky webpages and emails?

7.   Push products and make sales

Did you know that one thing chatbots can do for business is actually suggest products to customers and make sales? It’s true!

Chatbots are incredibly useful for suggesting products to wishy-washy customers or customers who don’t know exactly what they’re looking for. By simply asking a predetermined dialogue of questions, such as price range, size, product category, etc., the chatbot can provide a customer with a menu of options for the customer to choose from.

Beyond suggesting products, however, chatbots can continue on to make sales. This improves the sales funnel of your business by keeping it all contained in one platform — right in the chat!

Instead of having to navigate through the pages of products or payment processing, a customer can do it all from right within their conversation with a chatbot. From finding the right product, to purchasing, to shipment, it can all be done with chatbots.

Chatbots also have the ability to up-sell, suggesting similar products based on the customer’s purchase history and their combined chat history. Using chatbots can increase your sales while saving you money on huge sales teams!

8.   Get more conversions

In order for a business to grow, it needs to get customers. And in order for a business to get customers, it needs to convert social media users and website visitors into contacts and, eventually, customers!

One thing chatbots can do for business is to provide up to 100% conversion rates.

Here’s how.

Facebook Messenger messages convert 3 to 5 times better than Facebook Newsfeed ads. That’s because with most organic Facebook ads, users are redirected to a business’s website, where they might click around a bit, but ultimately exit the page. Then that contact is lost forever.

When using click-to-Messenger ads, the user is redirected to a Messenger chat window with your business’s chatbot. That means they are immediately added to your Facebook Messenger contact list. Then you can utilize previously discussed tactics to engage the user even further.

The reason that chatbots have better conversion rates is because of their lead-gathering capabilities. Instead of a user simply clicking out of your site, they interact with a bot and are therefore candidates for remarketing.

Time to use chatbots to improve your business

Now that you’ve learned what chatbots can do for business, it’s time to decide how you’ll incorporate chatbots to improve your own business.

These wondrous little pieces of software improve customer satisfaction, help make sales, make repetitive marketing tasks a breeze, and, overall, boost profits and help businesses become unicorns.

The things that chatbots can do for business don’t end here, however; build a chatbot today and see what you can come up with!

This guest blog article was written by Larry Kim is the CEO of MobileMonkey, the World’s Best Facebook Messenger Marketing Platform and free chatbot builder. He’s also the founder of WordStream, Inc., the leading provider of Google Ads, Facebook Ads and keyword tools used by over a million marketers worldwide. WordStream was acquired by Gannett for $150 million. Larry is ranked the #8 most popular author on Medium. He’s a contributor to CNBC and Inc. Magazine.