What You Need to Know About Salesforce Einstein Chatbots

What you need to know about Einstein Chatbots

If you’ve surfed the web in the past ten years, you’ve probably had the opportunity to start a conversation with the company whose site you’ve visited. Maybe you wanted to get a few questions answered before buying a new pair of Chucks on converse.com. Perhaps your iPhone has been acting up and you’re looking to get support from an Apple specialist directly through their website.

Or maybe you’re testing a Salesforce product and you just need some help getting logged into your free trial.

The cool thing about this chat technology is that in many cases, you’re able to chat directly with someone at the company who has the knowledge to help you with your request. This can be invaluable when you’re trying to make a decision or when you’re in need of some support.

It’s also very possible that on the other end of that chat conversation, there wasn’t a human being, but an AI-powered computer program built on transistors and 1’s and 0’s. It’s possible you were talking to a chatbot.

What’s a chatbot?

Chatbots are computer programs that can simulate human conversation. With the development of artificial intelligence, technologies have arrived which allow digital devices to process incoming questions and statements, then reply with answers or next steps. When you’re interacting with a chatbot, it can feel like you’re communicating with a real person.

What can chatbots do for me?

If you’re a customer, the scenarios mentioned at the beginning of this article are just a few examples of how chatbots can help you find what you’re looking for.

If you run a business, chatbots can have a massive impact.

In a 2020 survey, Salesforce found that 81% of service leaders said they were accelerating digital initiatives like chatbots. Self-service options like chatbots can help customers quickly get the information they’re looking for, which can reduce call volume. Chatbots can also be used to automate tasks like giving order status updates, allowing your support agents to focus on more complex tasks.

Einstein Chatbots

If your business runs on Salesforce, you can unleash the power of chatbots with Einstein Bots.

Einstein Bots can do cool things like:

• Gather a customer’s order number and provide the status of that order
• Allow a customer to reschedule an appointment through chat without needing to interact with a chat agent
• Search your Knowledge base for a self-service solution to a technical issue or support question asked through chat, and open a case in Salesforce if further assistance is needed

To get a taste for other things Einstein Bots can do, be sure to check out the Einstein Bots Basics module on Trailhead, as well as Salesforce’s Einstein Bots Developer Cookbook.

Before you set up Einstein Bots

There are some prerequisite tasks that will need to be taken care of before Einstein Bots can be set up in your Salesforce environment, and these should be taken into consideration when you’re figuring out if Einstein Bots is right for you and your business.

• Obtain a Service Cloud license. Einstein Bots are available in the Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions of Salesforce.
• Obtain a Chat or Messaging license.
• Enable Lightning Experience. If you’re still using Salesforce Classic and haven’t made the switch to Lightning Experience, talk to your Salesforce Administrator and/or consulting partner to plan a proper rollout of Lightning Experience.
• Run the Chat guided setup flow. This flow is available from Service Setup in Lightning Experience.
• Enable Salesforce Knowledge if your bot is going to be serving Knowledge articles to customers.
• Publish an Experience Cloud site or a Salesforce site.
• Provide an Embedded Chat button for your customers on your community or site.

At this point, customers would be able to go to your site and start a chat with one of your agents, as long as an agent has made themselves available in Omni-Channel.

Setting up an Einstein Bot gives your customers a digital assistant to interact with before speaking to a live agent. Depending on what functionality you set up, the Einstein Bot could help them look up their order status or serve a Knowledge article to help them with their technical issues.

When you’re ready to create your first bot, all you need to do is go into Setup, enter “Einstein Bots” in the Quick Find box, then select Einstein Bots from the available options.

From here, a setup wizard will guide you through a few screens to gather basic information about your bot. After you’ve built your bot, you’ll be taken to the Einstein Bot Builder.

This is where you’ll be able to customize the behavior of your bot and add functionality to help your customers.

What should I be thinking about if I want to implement Einstein Bots in my Salesforce environment?

One of the most important things when it comes to getting a chatbot properly implemented is setting the right expectations. There’s a human being on the other end of the chat, so it’s important to let them know they’re interacting with a digital assistant. This doesn’t have to feel inhuman; you can customize your chatbot’s welcome greeting with a name and a personality that stays on brand.

You’ll also want to put together a list of routine issues or repetitive tasks a chatbot can help resolve for you. Maybe your bot can provide order status or your business locations and hours when asked. For frequently asked questions that may become some of the primary functions of the bot, your chat window can include a persistent list of menu options.

It will also be important to have a menu option available for your customer to be transferred to a human agent for those who would prefer.

There are lots of other things to keep in mind when getting Einstein Bots up and running (like all the specific ways a customer could word a question about their order status), and here at Roycon we’re ready to guide you through the right questions and successfully implement a bot that helps you reach your goals. Let us know through our contact form if you’d like to know more.