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Jesse and Rich chat about chatbots with Nick Julia the founder of MindHeros.com specifically about chatbots in e-commerce.

• Chatbot vs. Livechat
• Lead Acquisition
• Customer Support
• Post Purchase Follow-Up
• Facebook Messenger Ads

Jesse: Happy Friday, Rich.

Richard: The day it’s back. We’re here, the podcast day.

Jesse: It’s Friday podcast day, wherever people are listening. Maybe it’s Friday. Maybe it’s not.

Richard: Maybe Wednesday, maybe Monday, Thursday night. But just think of Friday.

Jesse: So we’re in our Friday mode, everybody. And today we’re very excited. I think if I was starting over on the Internet world, didn’t already have a job, didn’t already have websites and stuff, I think I’d probably fashion myself into a chatbot consultant. Try to add chatbots to different businesses and sites because I think there’s just a huge opportunity there. I really wish I had more time to focus on it because I see it but I’d run out of time every day. So maybe today if anyone else out there got that same feeling of like “I keep hearing about chatbots, I really want to learn more.” That’s why we brought on the guest today. Let’s bring on our guest Nick Julia from MindHeros. How is it going, Nick?

Nick: Hey, thanks guys.

Richard: Good to have you on. I’m super excited too. Just like Jesse, I’m super intrigued with chatbots but I also love the world of voice and I find them very similar because really it’s just conversational commerce, conversational marketing. I’m really looking forward to picking your brain and hearing more about your insights. It sounds like you’ve been doing this for a while when it got started. Why don’t you give us a little background on how you got into it and we’ll go from there?

Nick: Yeah, that’s right. I started really right when Facebook Messenger opened up the messenger API to everybody which was like late 2016 I think. Don’t quote me on that but…

Jesse: Wow, that’s amazing, it’s only 2019 right now. This really hasn’t even existed for that long.

Nick: Yeah, the whole concept has but when it got really effective for people I think was when Facebook started doubling down on this stuff. I started then and actually took a class right away from Andrew Warner. I don’t know if your audience is maybe familiar with him from the Mixergy podcast.

Richard: Yeah. We had him on another show.

Nick: Okay, sweet. So I was actually in his very first class about messenger marketing and I didn’t know who I was gonna work with. And it just turned out that e-commerce was a great fit. So we started with working with more and more e-commerce companies and actually now teach it at his class, Bot Academy.

Jesse: Very nice. Actually, I heard him speak at one of the conferences here recently. And then he had a little event where you could go drink bourbon with him. And I was like “All right, Rich, FYI”. I sent this message but then I didn’t make it. But I’m like “All right, you got me.”

Nick: A couple of reminders like “Hey, come to scotch tonight.”

Jesse: Yeah, that’s right. Scotch tonight, I’m like “I’m not really in the mood for X in the morning” but that seems like a good idea. So anyway…

Richard: Did you make it to that?

Nick: I’m sorry, did I?

Richard: Did you make it to it, Nick?

Nick: He has them occasionally when there’s events and all that, so I’ve been to a couple of them.

Jesse: Okay. See you saw the appeal.

Nick: We were all there but…

Jesse: Yeah, well, I’m not surprised.

Nick: Just kidding.

Jesse: Good, so now you hooked up with Andrew Warner doing chatbots, took a class and now you’re teaching classes. So now we know your advanced level. We’re gonna have to try to break it down to some actionable tips for people getting started on e-commerce. How would you tell somebody that has never… Maybe let’s start off with what the heck is a chatbot if people had no idea what that is.

Nick: Yeah. So I think how you guys touched on voice stuff. I think people are generally more familiar with that right away. It’s almost like Alexa and (mind’s going off now of course) but in Facebook Messenger. Plus all the stuff we can do that you would think you can do like in a traditional text message or Facebook Messenger. It’s just an automated version of messages you would send to friends but that can drive business for you.

Jesse: I like that, we like business.

Richard: Yeah. What’s the difference between that and a live chat? Cause I noticed some live chats have like pre-configured things. I mean there are a few similarities and I’ve heard some people use chatbots as a live chat too. How does that work?

Nick: Yeah. So you should absolutely be using chatbots with a live person. That is 100%. There should be somebody there if at all possible because bots are great at certain things. They’re not great at handling complex situations and that’s where if you have that live person that can step in when they need to. It’s a huge advantage for you. But versus just live chat on your website, a bot can automate things. So we’re starting to handle all the small pieces and bits that you don’t want to deal with. “Where’s my order?” is probably one of the biggest questions e-commerce companies get. Do you want to answer five hundred “Where’s my order?” emails a day?

Jesse: No, thank you. If you’re selling like two things a week, sure, you can handle that but once you start doing some volume, you don’t want to deal with that.

Nick: Right. So in the same thing with live chat, you would have to outsource that or do something. The quality of the answer is sometimes inconsistent. So in things that are a bit rote or FAQ-type stuff chatbots excel a lot. You can make them smarter but there are issues with that. So we try to stick to the basics at least at first.

Jesse: Ok. All right. That makes sense, basics. So you want to help people with the order emails. “When are you open?” What are some other basic questions that a chap can handle?

Nick: Honestly, think of anything you have in your FAQ section. That’s the sort of thing that is fairly easy. Like a one sentence answer or so. Or you can point people to there your shipping policy if it’s larger things like that. We don’t have to keep them inside messenger absolutely. We can link out to your website and provide other customer service avenues. But customer service is only one piece of what a bot can do.

Jesse: Ok.

Richard: So in a situation like when you said: “Where’s my order?”. That sounds like there’ll probably be some sort of integration that would have to get set up. Because I’m assuming if you’re saying that could be automated, “Where’s my order?”. You’re at the bare minimum are going to have to say “What’s your order number?” Would that be like the first reply back via the bot and you would try to get a little further down the line before a live person got involved or would you have to then have some sort of integration with order status?

Nick: Yeah. That’s right. The funny thing is like if I’m… not the funny thing. The nice part is if somebody opts in and orders, you do need a third party app to do this but you can actually track their shipment and do all that stuff without them even entering an order number. But if somebody hasn’t opted in and gone through that whole process, you’re right. We need to do is ask for the order number and then you probably use Zapier or something like that. Send it to a third, have something sent back to the customer. That one may be a little more advanced but it depends. Sometimes it can be as simple as just sending them to a status page, in the shipping integration.

Richard: Since most of the ������ users… although there’s quite a few that are far along in their journey of e-commerce and they have lead acquisition down and a few other things down. What are the things that you would recommend to a beginner in e-commerce? Use chatbots for… What are a few use cases in that they could get started relatively easy and find something useful in using chatbots? Kind of right away.

Nick: Yeah, fair question, probably, should have started there. So if I was just starting this now for somebody, I like to start at the bottom of the funnel because I think that’s where we can make the biggest impact. Most of these guys probably already, and I think you have a dynamic product ad retargeting setup with Facebook.

Jesse: �±������.

Nick: I would also split test Messenger retargeting ads. The advantage of using a messenger is that you would basically create. You’d need a bot first of all and you need to set up a messenger app. The same retargeting would apply. So you just have a pixel, you segment your audience based on people who have added something to a cart but have not checked out right. You can do it. Yeah. So that’s basic. But now instead of sending them directly to the product page where it’s basically purchased or don’t, you’re sending them to a chatbot. And usually, this looks like the ad has some sort of discount. So your first message is “Hey, click here to claim your 10% off discount” or whatever. And as soon as they interact and press that button, they’re now a messenger subscriber. Think of those, just the same way you would as an email subscriber. So you have these people captured on a list where you can keep talking to them and marketing to them. That’s the first big advantage. It’s not a take it or leave it thing. We have them on a list right away.

Jesse: OK. And so now how did they get on that list? You said they abandoned the cart. And now there are pixels that are firing there, that are making that happen in those. There are some steps there. So for people listening if you’ve never done dynamic product ads, you might want to do that first. But because we tie in a couple of things together here. So they opted in, did they opt in only when they see this in Messenger and they say “yes”, they want this discount or had they already opted in some other way?

Nick: No. So the ad is the exact same as you would see, a traditional in-feed ad but the call-to-action opens messenger. So when they click on the ad, Messenger opens up. Then they have to do something inside Messenger, just seeing the ad isn’t enough. They need to take some action, whether that’s saying “no, thanks.” Ironically, that also subscribes them, although you have to be careful with what you do with those people.

Jesse: Sure. “Leave me alone.” And then they’re subscribed.

Richard: Yeah, exactly right. So you need this segment that out. But you’re now creating that list as soon as they take any action inside messenger.

Jesse: Got it. OK. We’ve talked a little bit about chatbots with maybe previous episodes but this is a new one for me that I hadn’t thought of before. You’re not actually asking for the opt-in to the list. You’re actually really not asking for the opt-in, you’re kind of getting it. But it’s people that have senior products, now they see it on Facebook and then you’re asking for the opt-in, giving away a little bit of a coupon to do it but you’re building this really good list. That begs the question of why the heck do I want to build a messenger list? What’s the value in it?

Nick: Yeah. The same type of question, why would you want to build an email list? The traditional notion with the e-mail is you make about a dollar per subscriber.

Jesse: Per month.

Nick: Yeah, each per message sent out. It is true usually. I mean the rate varies a ton but…

Jesse: And I’ve heard that stat before so I just want to clarify it.

Nick: Yeah. And so what we’ve seen with Messenger is look, the open rates are a ton higher generally for like these first messages that you send out. It’s about 80%. If you compare that to your e-mail where you’re getting an open rate of I don’t know 20-30% maybe if you’re good. Then click through rates are usually also very high. Again before just talking these first couple messages they hover like 68% to 80%. Just having that alone increases the value of somebody on your list because they’re more likely to take action and more likely to see it and do something you want. They actually become more valuable and in a lot of ways than email subscribers.

Richard: I would imagine that a lot of this is really sitting down, getting a whiteboard out and saying “What is my customers” experience right now?” They just went to the website, I do a hypothetical even though I don’t have a whiteboard right now. So they just went to the website. I kind of go back to your initial thing. They got to the product page. But they didn’t get pixeled on the “Thank you” page. In other words, they didn’t buy anything. And now I have dynamic retargeting setup because we’ve already done that already and I’m now going to make an ad go up in front of the person who got to the product page but didn’t buy the product. So if I’m trying to think from the customer point of view in the world of e-commerce, I don’t know this as a hard stat because they might have just not bought because they’re at work and their boss came in the room. I don’t know why they didn’t buy but from what stats I’ve seen in, and experience we’ve had over time it’s usually some sort of shipping issue or some sort of trust issue. They’re probably sold on the product. And so in this case that you were referring to as an example maybe even putting a testimonial video. They don’t even know because now you’re looking from the customer’s experience. They were there, they see this product now, they see your brand name again and their messenger feed. Maybe it’s just a testimonial and it’s somebody showing themselves using the product and that little difference, that little teeny thing that could maybe down below say… I don’t know, it might be creepy to say “Are you still interested in this product?” Because then it’s like it’s following you around. But saying this ever been something your instrument or whatever, just something thinking out the actual what the customer was going through when they abandoned it. You don’t know for sure again, there’re many things that could have happened. But trying to really think out what were they thinking when they were there and why they might not have done it, so you can continue that conversation via messenger later.

Nick: Yeah. Then the really cool part with Messenger doing it. There are a couple of pieces of that. So you’re saying like “OK, yes let’s think of why the customer didn’t end up purchasing from us.” And you’re right. Shipping costs like unexpected things. Maybe some trust. The cool part about Messenger is we can just ask. And we can present a couple of different options, the most likely or ask somebody to type their answer in and you’d be surprised how many answers and how happy people get with you. There was a funny study that it’s not e-commerce at all but it was for therapy bot people were more willing to disclose personal information to a therapy bot than they were to an actual live human.

Richard: Huh. That’s amazing. That’s a good point though. I want to before you continue, you say you just ask “Why didn’t you buy?” Just straight to the point, maybe not that harsh but just something along those lines. “Hey, notice you here, you were at our site, saw you didn’t buy. We really like feedback. We want to improve what’s going on for our customers. Can you give us the reason you didn’t buy?” You could hear everything. They might say: “I was at work and I had to go” or whatever. And you’re actually not only potentially moving them back into the buying process but no matter what, they could be giving you more information to change things on your site or they’re giving you the questions to ask, to put in your bot for those FAQs like you were talking about.

Nick: Yeah, 100%. It doesn’t end there. Depending on their answer we can save all those, so the merchant can see them which is usually pretty easy from any… You need a chatbot platform but we can maybe add those or talk about them later but whatever response they give, you can also send that out to like a Google Doc. If that’s where you want to save all your stuff or tied into your CRM. There’s lots of stuff. It doesn’t have to stand on its own. You can figure out later. “Look, this is an issue for our buying process in general and here’s what a lot of customers are saying now.”

Jesse: I think that’s great. Yeah.

Richard: What about that… Go ahead, finish your thought here. This will slightly go off-topic. It’s still on chatbot topic but a different part of it.

Nick: I mean and then depending on the answer. If you come in and say that shipping was a little high. Well, maybe the bot can actually handle that and say “All right, we actually have a discount for 5% off” or whatever it is. But if you say something like “I didn’t see a trust symbol” or like we talked about something even more. “I didn’t quite find the right product for me.” Now we can automatically hand that off to a live person if it’s not a simple situation where they can instantly respond to those objections and barriers to the sale.

Richard: Yeah, that’s a great point. It’s actually going to say. This is great. These are good things right. These are either someone’s already on your site and they’re about to buy or they did buy and they’re trying to find their order. What about actually acquiring customers? Are there very many people that are using it in a way where someone can actually acquire leads or acquire customers?

Nick: Yeah. So that’s the other spot to start really. Top of the funnel, bottom of the funnel and the process is probably pretty similar. If you have a custom audience, I mean we would go back to probably using a Facebook ad. If you already have a ton of traffic from your site. There are things we can do on site but if we’re just talking about ads. You’re going to give something away. Could be a coupon. Doesn’t have to be. That’s probably the easiest thing to set up but you can also create quizzes to tell the user a little bit more about themselves and how the product would work for them. You really have to know your customer well for those to be effective as lead magnets or you can give something else away that’s a value. We would do the same thing. We’d get them back into the box so they see the ad they click. And we get them back into messenger and deliver whatever you promised. Right there though you can also ask a customer for their email address, either before or after giving whatever that lead magnet. You can also push people from your messenger bot into your email list, have them both places which you should be doing anyway. It’s not just about the bot.

Jesse: Got it. OK. I think that’s pretty interesting so. All right. We’re doing Facebook ads. So everybody listening there and hopefully done some Facebook ads if you haven’t. It’s not that hard but in the Facebook ad, you’re using that chat or a messenger conversation as the goal. Correct? OK. So using a messenger conversation I forget the exact term that they use inside the ad, Ad Manager but I like the idea of you have to offer up something of value. If you don’t have enough room for a little margin, a little coupon in your product, you should probably market your prices a little bit, so you can offer coupons. That’s part of the game here. So you’re offering up a coupon which means they’re more likely to buy anyway because now they have this coupon. But now you’ve sneakily added them to your list. So getting back to a conversation before, why do we want to do this when I want to build this list. So now when they are on your list if they buy then great. That’s awesome. That was your original goal but now you’re building this big list and then you can communicate to that list down the road just like you would an email.

Nick: Yeah, exactly. And you don’t even necessarily need to wait. So if they come, you offer them something, they go into messenger and then you send them back to your site to purchase get it. It’s a little more advanced but we can actually trigger if they add something to cart and then don’t purchase. We can actually trigger abandon card messages and Messenger and do lots of stuff along the way and try to re-engage those people. I would say one more thing. You never really want to try to trick people that they’re on your list. We tried to be pretty upfront about that. It’s a bot, that’ll actually eliminate a lot of frustration when they think they’re talking to a live person right away. You get some issues.

Jesse: Yeah. The trick was the… Probably the wrong word there but you’re trying to get people onto your list. However, you can…

Richard: You also said sneakily.

Jesse: Sneakily trick them. Let’s cut that part here. You are trying to build a list. I guess that’s the point I was trying to get at is that you have a goal here. Merchants have a goal of building your list. And the reason you want to build this list is because that’s the goal right there. And the messenger list is the new email list if you will. So there are a lot of ways to build it. And this is a good strategy to do so. No, it’s not a trick.

Nick: Exactly, so you can re-engage them later. Now I don’t want to get too far into this because it is a little more but Facebook just at F8 which was like a couple of weeks ago. There are some new limitations on how you can reach out to those people on an ongoing basis. You do have to be careful and get somebody who knows what they’re doing with a messenger to help you navigate that.

Jesse: Yep. So now we talked a little bit about third parties. Let’s dive into that a little bit because people are thinking “I know messenger. I have my phone”. You can get a messenger widget to put on your website but essentially that’s not a chatbot, that’s just a messenger. That’s essentially a live chat if you will. What do third parties offer in addition to just having messenger by itself?

Nick: The whole list part that we talked about, you need a chatbot platform, a third party to start building your list.

Jesse: Ok. So messenger by itself. If you went to Facebook and grab the little messenger widget code through on your site, you’re not building a list. Is that the case?

Nick: Pretty much. None of that can really be automated. So you could go back to your Facebook inbox and manually send everything but it’d be like sending a manual email to everybody on your list.

Jesse: Ok. Yeah, you’re not doing that. Please don’t do that. OK. Got it. So that’s where the third parties come in to start building that list.

Nick: Yeah, exactly. And then it also lets you automate some of this stuff. We talked about it. So click 10% off to get my coupon. OK, here’s your coupon, right messenger. Otherwise again how do you do that? There’s no way.

Jesse: You would be just typing all that or having people type that. The functionality that you mentioned, the chat but might notice the questions about shipping. That’s also… Let’s say for instance anybody asks anything about shipping, you want to have the chatbots bit back the link to your shipping policies page at a minimum. So is that fairly easy to set up in a chatbot platform?

Nick: Yeah. It’s the basic stuff, it is fairly easy. You do have to be a little careful because what you’re going to set up is called a keyword. We’d probably take one word out of there and say shipping. So if somebody mentions shipping or says “Where’s my shipment” you can do a phrase then. We can trigger your shipping policy to be sent to that person as a message and maybe a link to your website. But what happens if somebody says “Well, do you ship to Idaho or China?” or wherever. Are you going to handle that the same way as “track my order.” Like “where’s my shipment.” So that’s where it gets a little complicated. We tried to just send them to maybe a main FAQ type thing where they can navigate with buttons. We do try to stay away from keywords at a basic level because of that.

Jesse: Got it. That makes sense. And I’ve I have played with chatbots before and I think that was some of the issues. There was a lot of issues but I definitely see the need for having a live human behind it. We set up some sort of contextual question and then people would get frustrated with the answer to those times. I get it.

Nick: Yeah, I mean it can turn into a crappy experience pretty fast especially if they think that a human is powering any of it.

Jesse: Yeah, I get that.

Richard: Yeah, that’s where coming in, where we noticed at one point where we actually said. I can’t remember the exact name of the bot but we named the bot. And that actually helped a little bit. And one question I do have is on some of these platforms can you delay the response time so it’s not super fast? If it is that strange question that is a little bit off topic or maybe like you said: “Do you ship to another place?”. It’s not just spin ups policy page but it’s actually a question that live human should answer. Can you delay the response time of the chatbot so someone else might be able to do that in a minute or 30 seconds?

Nick: Yeah. That’s interesting. I hadn’t actually thought of that approach to it. Usually, what we do is if there’s something the bot doesn’t understand or can’t respond to, we notify the live person. Or just tell somebody: “Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that, we notified the team but here’s what I can help you with.” And that again probably leads back to FAQ or a main menu of stuff.

Richard: So how does it do that? Wow. Like how does it notify the team? Does it have a trigger that sends them an email or a trigger that sends them a text?

Nick: Yep. Exactly. So it can be an email. Or it could do for certain platforms. It can also do it right inside the messenger. Let’s say you came in like I said “Ship to China” and the bot doesn’t know the answer. “Sorry, we just notified the appropriate team member.” So anybody who’s on the chat board platform can be notified with many chats right inside messenger.

Jesse: So it’s to notify their messenger?

Nick: Correct.

Jesse: Got it. Can it send a message to Slack?

Nick: That’s a little more complicated but yes, you can set that up.

Jesse: Okay. If if it’s notifying their messenger I’m worried that they should already be in the messenger. I just went into a place they still are not going to see it, so.

Nick: Sorry, I guess I should clarify. It actually notifies the personal messenger, not just the business messenger page. So it would be like if, for your store, your personal profile would get a ping from the live chat platform saying, “Hey, this customer had x question, go check it out in our platform. Go answer them.”

Jesse: Got It. Okay. And it’s pretty hard to ignore messenger messages because your phone dings and it pops up on the top of your phone.

Nick: Yeah. But you’re right. Like wherever you, you handle that stuff, we can get it there. But at a basic level, either an email or write inside messenger are the out of the box solutions for that.

Jesse: Okay. It’s a messenger email. And you mentioned the third parties, ManyChat. Is that your preferred platform right now?

Nick: Many chat and Chatfuel or the two we use most.

Jesse: Okay. All right. And do you want to discuss them a little bit? You don’t work for ManyChat or Chatfuel. So speak freely. What, what should people be looking for when they’re looking at a third party?

Nick: Yeah. Either platform is actually really, they’re great. They both have some pros and cons. ManyChat is probably a little bit easier if you’re a marketer, it feels like a marketing automation tool that you’ve used before. Chatfuel is adding some of that in, but if your background is coding, that will probably feel a little more familiar to you because of the way it’s set up. They both offered templates at a basic level. I would highly caution people not to rely too much on these templates. It’s almost easier to set it up on your own because by the time you figure out what the hell the template is doing, sometimes that can be difficult if there’s not really good documentation to go along with it. But yeah, you’d be fine with either one. They both offer pretty deep insights into your audience members and can do pretty much everything we talked about here. And if they can’t, they also have integrations that work with them that that can help you do it.

Jesse: Got It. Okay. Now it makes sense. And so when we talked about those third parties, you have to work with one of those third parties to build up that messenger list. So for anyone listening, if you didn’t catch that, you need to work with a third party to build that list. And that is the goal here among the many other things we’re talking about.

Nick: Yeah, exactly. That’s the way that we can broadcast out messages. If we’re talking in terms of email, like push out a broadcast or even after somebody purchases a welcome sequence, like “Hey, welcome to the family.” Right from email. The big upside is people see them.

Jesse: That’s important. If you want to sell to that person again, which I hope you do.

Richard: You also mentioned you’re building these lists and you said you could segment, so I’d take it that this is another thing that these third-party apps do well. Do they actually help you segment the audience? Is that a truism or am I just dreaming up? Oh, these people bought from you, these people landed on this page but didn’t do anything else. Is there a way to start at least to segment that list in the whole list?

Nick: Yes is the answer to it. But if you’re starting out, you would just try to start segmenting what people have done inside of your Messenger Bot. So did they click on the 10% off coupon? You can create a segment of those people. Did they not? Well, maybe we have to follow up with them again inside messenger. Linking your website to what’s happening on messenger is a little harder. But yeah, it can definitely be done. It’s just not something out of the box.

Richard: Got It. So in your opinion, it’s why you probably said, you want to combine a live person with this? Because they might notice those little intricacies like this person actually just bought, I saw the order go through, so I’m going to apply a little bit different. But when it comes to actual marketing to your list on messenger, if you go off of the activities that they did on messenger, you’re probably gonna help that experience. Plus you’ll probably be a little bit better at making sure you’re keeping up with Facebook’s terms of services too. Because if you start combining too many things, you might start doing too much marketing. Quoting over here. I could see what you mean. Like they’ve done this in messenger. Don’t try to early on to combine your website. They clicked on this and messenger, they saw that welcome video in messenger. They haven’t opened something in the last three days on messenger, whatever. I’m making a few things up, but specifically kind of target them and market to them based on what they did there. More than what they did overall.

Nick: Great. We could do an example real quick. Let’s say that you have a tea company. So the first question might be, “Hey, let us help you try to find the right tee for you. If you’re not sure what tea you want. So are you looking for caffeine or you not?” Right. So then we could segment those people and send them to different answers, different places and start understanding customer preferences along the way. So we have one tag that says black tea, one that says green, one that says all that sort of stuff. So we can segment pretty deeply inside messenger.

Jesse: Okay. And then you could send them information based on that. That answer, right? Like okay, this kind of tea, here’s a video on the proper preparation or trying to not go immediately for the here’s the product you should buy and here’s a coupon.

Nick: Exactly.

Jesse: Cause really that’s what you want to do. But that’s not the appropriate way, it could scare you.

Nick: Yeah. But if you have a blog about the 10 best uses for black tea or whatever it is, you can pop something up on your website with a specific, like what we just talked about, quiz or finder or just some testimonials, things about the black tea that people would be interested in seeing and lead them down that path. And once they’ve taken enough actions and expressed enough interest in your bot, which would be essentially segmenting people, then you might offer a coupon if you think that person’s closer to that ultimate decision of buying.

Jesse: Got It. Okay. So now imagine I’m somebody that’s never heard of chatbots, really are just basically heard of chatbots. How complicated is it to set something like that up? Cause as we talked about a lot of different things and I’ve seen the back end of chatbot platforms. I’d say they’re a little complicated. How hard is that process to set up for somebody if they really dedicated like a couple of hours to it? Can they accomplish that?

Nick: Yeah, I would keep it basic. Don’t try to do too much in there. Don’t try to automate too much. All this stuff we talked about is cool and great, but I would have a live person taking a look at this and being able to respond if not right away then within a couple of hours ideally. So you set up a couple of things. One is going to be a welcome message. If somebody comes into your bot, what are they going to see? And your example is perfect of, “Hey, I’m whatever bot, here’s what I can do for you basically.” I’d set up a customer service flow. I need help with something so that I probably would go to the live person right away and then I would set up to others and those would just be your ads. Messenger ad, a little bit of flow, delivering the coupon or whatever it is. And I would do something slightly different for the top and bottom. And the last thing I would do is it default reply. So what that is, if somebody says something or does something that bot doesn’t understand what message should somebody see. And that’s usually like, “Hey, let me get you to a live person to start.” So those five things.

Jesse: Okay. I like that and also the live person I think is super important. I actually turned off my chatbot for a little bit because it was getting, people would ask questions on the weekend and then they wouldn’t get answered, so then it was super annoying.

Richard: Especially because they had just gotten the answers for a little while and then it’s a bot.

Jesse: Yeah. The clock turns at five o’clock, no one’s answering anymore. And then they’re like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. What happened? They were getting these instant answers and then nothing.

Nick: That’s something that can be dealt with you. We can set office hours if you will, but again, that’s a little more advanced.

Jesse: What is your thought on using a chatbot for, we’ll call it like live chat on the website. So we talked about different bots, but we didn’t necessarily talk about where they show up. Are you pretty much when you have a new client, first things first, put this chat a widget on your website or not, what are your thoughts on that?

Nick: It really depends on your goals with it. And then also where do you have traffic? Are you doing something already that’s working really well for you? Can we do that better with a bot? What sucks that you want to automate? And then are people actually going to see it? Is it going to matter to you? So if you have some traffic on your website and you’re already using live chat, yeah, absolutely. It’s a great idea because now you’re capturing people on the list. You have to be very careful in telling people or future communication with those people because they’re not expecting that. But if you’re upfront about it, then yeah, you capture those people, you at least have, you can segment them as well. A little bit more about their preferences and you can use it as a live chat so you don’t need one if it could be a replacement.

Jesse: Got It. And that’s how I used it at first as it was essentially a live chat replacement and then added a little bit of, added some chat to it. I think maybe there are customers that had weird expectations from it. I’m going to, I’m definitely going back into it and I’m going to redo it, but I was just kinda curious on your thoughts there.

Nick: The customer service piece is frankly the hardest piece to get right in a bot. So it depends on what the x, you need to set expectations if you’re trying to use it for that or just get people to a live person pretty fast.

Jesse: Okay. No, I think that that’s really helpful and makes a lot of sense. Like chatbots won’t solve all your problems right out of the box, but it can do a lot for you. And maybe customer support unless you’re ready for live chat might be, that’s a difficult one to chew. You don’t know what kind of questions they’re gonna ask, but they’re sometimes not happy either. They’re sometimes mad about something and you throw a chatbot at them that doesn’t make them feel better necessarily.

Nick: No, you got a pissed off customer that’s even more angry about having to go through. It’s like a phone menu almost. But yeah, when you’re already pissed, you don’t care. You’re just like, come on.

Jesse: Yeah, yeah. No, I get it. And I think that’s probably where I made a little bit of a mistake where I was trying to do too much. Or maybe I should have focused on the five options you mentioned before, which are maybe better for marketers and if you’re trying to build traffic and build sales, there are other things to focus on.

Nick: In terms of live chat on your website, it’s great and, but you can automate some of it like I mentioned, an FAQ type thing. So my first pop up thing might be like, “Hey, I’m this bot, here’s what I can help FAQ. Or do you need to speak to a live person?” And then handles most of those objections because right away they can get to where they want to go.

Jesse: That makes perfect sense.

Richard: To your point, people’s experience with chat so far. And what I mean by so far is like in the history of chat, it’s kind of a long time, but not with messenger. But it’s been customer service. So it’s kind of a tricky one because it’s always been a person sitting there. Sometimes it takes a long time and you can see I’m typing and they’re actually probably now, now they stopped for a second. They’re probably going to talk to someone like their experience has been coming up through customer service. So if you don’t keep that in mind and you’re trying to market while they’re thinking they’re trying to get customer service, it could backfire quick. I could see.

Nick: Yeah, that’s a perfect point. That’s what we really tailor our messages. The first thing we say to somebody based on how they get into the bot. So if we’re talking about like on site, the little messenger bubble or even from your Facebook page directly and they send you a message, those are usually customer service related.

Jesse: Got It. So with those customer support people, do you want to tag those, or like to use more of a, hey that goes to a live person, ideally. So that way you don’t end up in trouble.

Nick: It’s where we talked about, it’s like, let’s try to automate this a little bit. It reasons to automate some of it like with an FAQ because your live chats not going to be there 24/7. So if we can answer some of those questions, people are happier. If it’s like six o’clock and they can just say, “What’s your shipping policy?” Or click on that and get it. But yeah, pretty quick. They need to either be able to get a short answer from the bot or go to live.

Jesse: Okay. Yeah. I like that. And then I cut you off there a little bit, you’re going to give a marketing tip there.

Nick: Yeah. The expectation is different if they’re coming in from a Facebook ad because that’s marketing focused. They don’t have a customer service concern probably. Maybe if they have abandoned cart actually. So that’s something you do need to consider a little bit. You might want to give a live chat option there as well because your customer service person is probably going to handle that objection better than your bot could. The expectation is different. So that’s what we want to focus on. Creating messages that meet those expectations.

Jesse: Okay. That makes sense. So I want to come back a little bit to the Facebook example you mentioned because I think this is the one where if you want more traffic, more sales, how can we… Let’s take a look at a new merchant. They’re like “I’m getting some sales, got some traffic and everything”. But they want to do this strategy we’ve talked about, they want to have a Facebook ad that goes to the messenger and then delivers a coupon or something. So should they use other ads that they would use? What would be the advice to somebody getting started with this, what should their Facebook ads say? Do you want a coupon? Or how can we get how to help people visualize this? So they can do this next weekend.

Nick: Got it. If we’re talking about retargeting…

Jesse: Probably not retargeting because let’s think of they want to prospect and which prospecting is harder than remarketing. I get it, let’s go with a prospecting example.

Nick: Okay, perfect. Basically, you want to tell them a little bit about your product. A little bit, not about your product so much, but the benefit that you’re going to get. So focusing on the customer. Here’s X, Y, Z, like, use this tea, you’ll sleep like a baby at night. It’s a terrible piece of copy. But for first-time customers, try this, we’ll take 10% off your order or maybe get free shipping with whatever. And the call to action at the bottom is very similar to what you would see with a regular Facebook ad. It just has a little messenger icon on there and it’ll open in messenger so you don’t have to change a whole lot. You can mess it. Say something like “We’ll message you” if you really want to emphasize that. But frankly you don’t even need to, it just needs to be a good ad. And then it opens in messenger. You do have to be sure of is, let’s make sure that the ad copy and our message have a tight fit, meaning one leads very much into the next. The images are the same, the wording is the same. You’re delivering on the promise.

Jesse: Got It. Okay. Really the assets we’re talking about here is you need a picture. Okay, well you need a picture for a whole bunch of other things. So everybody, if you don’t have a picture of this, this is a problem. You want to go take a picture, take a picture of your product, have it in a good setting and everything and then a little bit of copy that talks about the benefits of your product. And then that messenger thing that’s built into the Facebook ad and then have your chatbot ready to deliver on that promise. That’s really not that many steps. So if you listen to all this stuff and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, that sounds like a lot.” It’s really not that hard. It’s a couple of things that you need.

Nick: Yeah, exactly. You got to build your ad on Facebook. Then you go over to your chatbot platform to build your message. And with ManyChat, they’re going to give you a little bit of code to paste into Facebook’s ads manager and then you basically live.

Jesse: Okay. See that’s not so hard, Rich.

Richard: No, sounds good. It sounds like should we build a chatbot this weekend? Yeah. Maybe it’s time. Are we almost done? Can we just get started?

Jesse: I think we’re almost done. Yeah, maybe we’re going to go. All right, we’re going to set up an account. Nick, do you have a place where people can go to set up an account with, already have a chatbot example you’d like to share?

Nick: Yeah. If everybody wants to go to MindHeros. So it’s MindHeros.com/������. I’ll have something for you guys there.

Jesse: All right, awesome. I like that. We can see all this in action because it’s a lot of words. Sometimes it’s hard to grasp what the heck a chatbot is. I do think people should see it live, go to that link. We’ll include in the show notes and on the page, check it out for yourself. Nick, I’m gonna mess with you. I’m going to go there and ask where my order is and see what comes up. We’ll see if you can break up.

Richard: I’m giving you some heads up.

Jesse: We’re going to try to break your chatbot, everybody else listening now. Don’t do it. Yeah. Rich, any last questions here?

Richard: No, I’m excited. I just wanted to get to work.

Jesse: We’re going to do it. Nick, thanks for being on the show. Appreciate it.