Complete Guide To Create Your Own Chatbot Free (2024)

Created time

Jun 3, 2024 04:14 AM

Author

Why Make an AI Chatbot for Your Business?

Many business websites, e-commerce stores, and SaaS startups use chatbots to connect with customers. The reason? Well, they’re fast, effective, and reliable.

Let us expound further:

68% of customers are satisfied with the promptness of chatbots. This isn’t surprising, as AI chatbots can provide answers to customer questions in seconds, eliminating waiting times for customers seeking solutions to their problems.

Unlike human agents, AI chatbots can operate 24/7. It doesn’t need rest, holidays, or bathroom breaks!

Chatbots can become experts on your help documents and knowledge bases. By training them with your web pages and internal documents, they can answer any business-specific question with high accuracy.

Most chatbots are designed to integrate with other CRM tools. This makes it easy to adopt an AI-human hybrid customer support model, allowing seamless transfer to human agents via a live chat platform if the AI cannot answer a query.

Among various feedback collection strategies, using AI chatbots can be highly effective. They can ask for feedback or suggestions at the end of every conversation and analyze these responses into actionable insights.

During the peak of the global pandemic, chatbot usage among brands increased by 92% This surge was driven by cost-cutting efforts due to temporary closures. Chatbots are cheaper to implement and maintain, yet they can provide high-quality support across websites, email, and social media platforms.

How To Create Your Own Chatbot For Free

Use our step-by-step guide below to create an AI chatbot without paying a dollar.

1. Define Your Chatbot’s Functions and Destinations

Making your website look cooler isn’t a good enough reason to add a chatbot. Instead, focus on specific business-related workflows that the chatbot can streamline or automate.

Here are some possible functions your chatbot can achieve:

Resolving customer queries using your internal content and help documents.

Lead generation by introducing your products to customers and collecting their contact information.

Generating support tickets.

Collecting customer feedback.

Booking meetings and demos with your sales representatives.

Smart routing to the appropriate sales or support representative.

Providing self-service options.

Assisting in drafting email responses.

Your chatbot’s functions can include one or more of the recommendations above. Once you’ve defined them, your next objective is to determine where you want these chatbots to perform their functions.

Some possible destinations include:

Official website: The AI chatbot can function as a live chat widget on your website.

Email: Some AI chatbots can act as email assistants, performing their functions within the email messaging environment.

Live chat support/CRM tools: Many chatbots support integration with live chat providers such as Intercom, HubSpot, Zendesk, Freshdesk, and more.

Social media channels: This includes platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter, or Instagram.

2. Pick a Chatbot Builder Platform

After planning your chatbot’s function and destination, it’s time to bring it to life using a chatbot builder platform.

Lucky for you, there are plenty of chatbot providers that offer free plans, though you may need to subscribe to their paid plans to unlock additional functionalities.

If you aren’t a dev wiz, we advise finding a codeless chatbot builder. These platforms typically only require you to upload your help documents, knowledge bases, and web pages to train the chatbot. Using Large Language Models (LLMs), the AI chatbot will then be capable of answering customer questions by pulling information from the content you’ve provided.

Here are some chatbot builder platforms where you can create an AI chatbot:

My AskAI

My AskAI creates AI customer support agents in the form of chatbots. Simply add your web pages, knowledge bases (Notion or Google Drive), or internal help documents and the platform will train the bot using your content.

Once your AI agent is ready, you can easily add it to a website using one line of code or to your existing live chat tool like Intercom, HubSpot, or Zendesk via their marketplaces.

All conversations with the AI agent are analyzed and summarized to provide you with insights about commonly asked questions and points of improvement.

Tidio

Tidio is a customer support platform offering no-code chatbot creation using drag-and-drop customizable templates that specify conversation flow. Tidio’s free plan offers over 35 templates and social media integration functionality.

HubSpot

HubSpot lets you create AI chatbots that you can integrate into your existing live chat workflows (HubSpot-hosted website chat widgets). HubSpot offers no-code chatbots that can be trained by adding knowledge base articles or web pages.

3. Customize Your AI Chatbot

It might take a few minutes for the chatbot builder to prepare your chatbot (by crawling your web pages or learning your help docs). In the meantime, customize your chatbot to match your brand.

For instance, My AskAI lets you edit the bot’s logo, name, theme color, and welcome message.

4. Configure The Chatbot’s Human Handover

Some questions might be too complex for AI to handle. Therefore, it’s essential to specify your current live chat provider (e.g., Tawk, Intercom, Zendesk, HubSpot, Zoho) to which the conversation can be transferred if the customer requests an agent handover.

5. Launch Your AI Chatbot

Finally, it’s time to see how your chatbot fares. Launch your AI chatbot on a website, social media channel, or CRM tool, and try asking it questions and requesting a handover.

Of course, your journey doesn’t end here. You must continuously monitor your chatbot’s performance using its data analytics. Determine conversation nodes where customers usually abort or check issues customers usually complain about.

Create Your Own Chatbot Free of Charge with My AskAI

With My AskAI, you can create free AI customer support chatbots without coding a single line. This chatbot can reduce customer support tickets overnight by responding to simple inquiries in seconds. You can add it to your website, support email, or live chat tool.

Complete Guide To Create Your Own Chatbot Free (2024)