Introduction 

A chatbot is a software application that can simulate human conversation through text or voice interactions. Chatbots are increasingly being used by businesses to automate customer service and provide quick responses to common questions. One popular chatbot platform is Freshdesk, which offers an AI-powered chatbot specifically designed for customer support teams. In this article, we’ll take a detailed look at what the Freshdesk chatbot is, its key features and benefits, how to set it up, tips for creating an effective chatbot, and some examples of companies using Freshdesk chatbots to improve customer experience.

What is the Freshdesk Chatbot?

Freshdesk is a customer service software that provides businesses with solutions for managing customer support tickets, phone calls, chats, and social media interactions. The Freshdesk chatbot is an artificial intelligence-powered conversational bot offered under the Freshdesk product suite. It enables companies to automate their customer service by handling common queries, directing users to help articles, gathering customer information, qualifying leads, and routing chats to human agents when needed.

The Freshdesk chatbot uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to understand conversations, remember context, and improve its responses over time. It can be integrated with the company's support ticketing system so that every interaction is logged as a support ticket. The chatbot is customizable to match a brand's voice and tone. It also offers real-time chat analytics to analyze performance.

Key Features and Benefits

Some of the key features and benefits of the Freshdesk chatbot are:

• 24/7 automated support - The chatbot can manage simple, repetitive customer queries at any time of day or night. This improves customer satisfaction by providing instant responses.

• Natural language processing - The bot uses NLP to understand context and intent behind customer questions. This enables more natural conversations.

• prebuilt content library - Freshdesk provides a library of prebuilt content modules around common support topics that help train the bot.

• Chatbot builder - The chatbot builder interface lets you easily create conversations, build flows, and customize responses without coding.

• Integration with business systems - Seamlessly integrates with support ticketing, CRM, analytics making it easy to track and manage conversations.

• Chatbot analytics - Real-time analytics provide insights into chatbot usage and performance. Helps identify areas for improvement.

• Omnichannel support - Chatbot works across multiple platforms like website, mobile app, social media, sms allowing consistent customer experience.

• Lead generation - Bot can collect customer information through conversations to generate and qualify new leads.

• Scalability - Cloud-based platform allows chatbot conversations to scale up or down flexibly based on demand.

• Role-based access control - Manage access and permissions by assigning roles to chatbot users in your team.

By leveraging these capabilities, the Freshdesk chatbot enables round-the-clock automated customer service, reduces human workloads, increases agent productivity, provides a personalized experience, and ultimately drives customer satisfaction.

How to Set Up and Customize a Freshdesk Chatbot

The steps to set up and customize a Freshdesk chatbot are:

Install the chatbot

• Sign in to your Freshdesk account and go to the App Store. Search for “Chatbot” and install it. This adds the chatbot capability to your Freshdesk instance.

Choose deployment channels

• Pick where you want the chatbot - website, mobile app, Facebook page etc. Install relevant channel extensions.

Create bot persona

• Configure a persona for your bot with name, avatar, background, voice tone etc to match brand identity.

Build conversations

• Use the bot builder interface to create conversational flows around common customer queries and support topics.

Integrate with data sources

• Connect the bot to business systems like your ticketing tool, CRM, help portal to access customer data.

Customize responses

• Refine bot responses using prebuilt content from Freshdesk or add your own custom replies.

Set up skills

• Add skills like lead qualification, surveys, account information collection to enhance bot capabilities.

Analyze performance

• Use built-in analytics to identify bottlenecks, monitor usage, analyze conversations to improve the bot.

Test and deploy

• Thoroughly test the bot before deployment. Start with a limited release, gather feedback, keep improving the bot.

Tips for Building an Effective Chatbot

Here are some tips to keep in mind when building a chatbot on Freshdesk to maximize effectiveness:

• Clearly define the chatbot goals and use cases upfront based on customer service needs.

• Maintain a personalized tone but avoid too much casual language or slang.

• Program for small talk and humor to make conversations more engaging.

• Build conversational flows with simple language and account for commonly misspelled terms.

• Develop fallback responses for when the bot does not understand a query.

• Integrate with knowledge base so bot can point to help articles.

• Enable seamless handover to human agents when needed.

• Make the bot easily discoverable on website or app with a greeting message.

• Add quick reply buttons for common questions to guide customers.

• Use analytics to identify weak spots and keep improving bot responses.

• Notify customers when handing over to an agent for transparency.

• Periodically review conversations logs to improve the bot’s performance.

Examples of Freshdesk Chatbots

Here are a few examples of companies using Freshdesk chatbots to improve their customer experience:

• AirAsia - The low-cost airline uses chatbots on its website and Facebook page to provide flight-related assistance to customers such as answering booking and baggage queries, flight status updates, and check-in reminders.

• DENSO - The automotive company deployed Freshdesk chatbots on their website and Facebook page so customers can get product support easily. The bot even makes product recommendations based on previous purchases.

• PolicyBazaar - The Indian insurance aggregator uses chatbots to provide policy-related information to interested customers. The bot also assists with claim-related queries.

• Vodafone - The telecom brand offers customer support via chatbots on their website and Facebook page. The bots handle billing questions, data usage inquiries, and general support issues.

• BookMyShow - The Indian ticket booking platform uses a Freshdesk chatbot on its app and website to help customers easily search events, compare ticket prices, and complete purchases.

Conclusion

Freshdesk provides an intelligent and user-friendly chatbot platform to automate customer service workflows. Powerful features like NLP, seamless integrations, omnichannel deployment, and role-based access control enable scalable, customizable, and effective bots. Following chatbot best practices around conversation design, testing, analytics usage helps maximize ROI. Companies across industries have successfully implemented Freshdesk chatbots to improve customer experience and satisfaction. As chatbot and AI technology continues advancing, the Freshdesk platform offers robust capabilities for businesses to optimize customer support.