Instagram’s ever-increasing growth is the main driving force for brands to be actively present on the platform.
Globally, Instagram has over one billion monthly and 500 million daily active users. Moreover, around 36% D2C brands consider Instagram to be ‘very important’ or ‘crucial’ to their social media marketing strategy.
It's no more surprising that Instagram chatbots are coming to the spotlight. You know that, right?
But, a lot goes into creating a top-notch Instagram chatbot, from branding and purpose to cross-device compatibility and testing.
You've come to the correct place if, like many others, you've now realized the actual potential of automating Instagram DMs with chatbot technology but aren't exactly sure where to start. Read on for the ultimate guide to using Instagram chatbots for your business.
What is an Instagram chatbot?
An Instagram chatbot is a messaging system that addresses human inquiries using automated responses. Chatbots use artificial intelligence to communicate with people. They’re the ultimate system for automatic replies: they can answer questions, make recommendations, and even refer customers to a real human if they get stuck.
Have a glance at how the Instagram chatbots appears to an end user:
Why should you use an Instagram chatbot?
As aforementioned, Instagram has 1 billion active users every month. And 500 million users are using Instagram stories every day.
What is even better about Instagram, is that millennials & Gen Z are on it. 71% of the one billion users are under the age of 35.
Besides, 50% of Instagram users follow at least one company, so an extra incentive why should be on there.
But here is the most important reason why you should be on Instagram: 80% of Instagrammers decide whether to buy a product or service on Instagram.
With that many people on this platform, and users deciding whether to buy a product or not, you should be on there.
And it would be even better if you have a chatbot on Instagram, because people can then message you whenever they want. And you can use that opportunity to deliver a better customer experience and increase your sales.
Who can create an Instagram chatbot?
There are two types of accounts that can create Instagram chatbots:
Note: Personal accounts can’t create automated messaging experiences.
The benefits of using Instagram chatbots for your business
Isn’t it the dream to have a faithful sidekick to do your bidding? After all, even the most hardcore entrepreneurs and social media managers can’t be online 24/7, but chatbots most certainly can! So, here are some other reasons for you to explore the potential of Instagram chatbots.
Providing customer service your competitors will envy
Instagram has emerged as a dominant customer service channel. Therefore, managing this channel can be extremely resource-intensive, often requiring a range of dedicated agents.
As a first line of defense, chatbots reduce the strain on customer service staff. By using chatbots to automate responses, you can help your customers feel seen, even if it’s just to say you’ll match them up with a representative as soon as possible. People who feel heard and respected are much more inclined to buy from your brand.
Sales, sales, and more sales
With 80% of Instagram users using Instagram to decide if it’s worth purchasing a product, its vital brands make the most of this potentially lucrative channel.
Chatbots provide what influencers cannot, interactive engagement. They answer questions, put minds, and ease and generate excitement.
Instagram bots can assist your prospects and customers. Showing latest products, offering recommendations, discounts, coupon codes, etc. You can easily consider your Instagram chatbot as your AI powered sales agent that can speed up customers’ purchase decision-making process, boost conversions, and sales.
In short, chatbots are a personal shopper for every single follower.
Bring in leads that actually care
Almost every salesperson has the same thing to say which is, "10 leads with genuine interest are better than 100 that don’t really care."
Why? The sale will be simpler the warmer the lead.
Chatbots warm leads, breaking down the communication barrier through automated conversations.
Before passing leads to your sales team, it’s easy to create a chatbot that:
Responding to repetitive enquiries
Dealing with FAQs and repetitive enquiries is a chatbot's bread and butter. An Instagram chatbot can be trained on niche subject matters, enabling it to answer a range of complex FAQs.
All a brand needs to do is create their FAQs and then train the chatbot. This is where you tell the chatbot which type of questions respond to which answer, using AI and machine learning the chatbot will then start to understand many question variants and spelling mistakes.
For some, this may sound a little daunting. In reality, it’s as easy as creating a spread sheet with a list of questions and answers in.
Build a good reputation for your brand
In dating and in business, no one likes to be ghosted. Leaving your customers hanging is a bad look for your brand, and Instagram chatbots help to make sure that folks who message you feel taken care of. Advertising and marketing are awesome tools, of course, but nothing hits a consumer’s heart quite like a recommendation from a trusted friend. Using a chatbot’s prompt responses will improve your customers’ experience with your brand and make them more likely to talk you up or buy from you again.
Use Cases of Instagram chatbots
Turn Instagram stories into a stable revenue source
Instagram stories can be used to promote direct engagement. A brand can ask their followers to send them a direct message with a specific keyword or tag them in their stories along with the keyword to get rewards. When a follower sends this keyword, it will trigger a highly targeted conversation.
Below you can see an example of how it works:
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This enables brands to bring their social campaigns to life, following up campaigns with targeted conversations. These conversations can be as simple as providing discount codes to complex, get rewards, multi-branch conversations promoting a multitude of products. When you’re already taking time to curate social content, why not take the extra step that makes it more impactful and engaging?
There’s quite literally an unlimited number of routes a brand can take to use chatbots and Instagram stories to increase sales, here are a few ideas to play around with:
As every sci-fi film has taught us, robots aren’t perfect. While Instagram chatbots are useful for common customer questions, they’re not a guaranteed automatic answer to everything.
High-quality chatbot programs will always have an option to pass an inquiry on to a human if the request is too complex for the bot to handle. So do make sure you’re still keeping an eye on those notifications—every once in a while, your robot BFF is going to need some support.
That’s where live chat comes in. Your bot automatically routes the conversation to the agent best equipped to deal with that type of query. But wait, it gets better. The bot even lets you go multilingual without needing to hire agents that speak your customers’ language. With two-way auto-translations, live chat gets truly localized.
Automate Story replies
Got customers replying to stories with questions about your products? Your bot can pull context about the product in the story and answer your customers’ questions in a jiffy.
But that’s not where we stop when we’re talking about Insta stories. Your bot even helps you earn your customers loyalty. Let’s say a customer tries your product and shows your brand some love by posting a story and tagging you. That’s really good for you, but they’re going to get mighty frustrated if you don’t acknowledge and reply to their story.
Your Insta bot takes care of that too, allowing you to automatically reply to every story you’re tagged in.
Automatically respond to comments and post mentions
They say ‘engagement’ is king on the ‘Gram, but it only works if there’s one word in front of it - ‘quick’.
If you don’t reply to comments and post mentions quickly, you’re leaving your customers annoyed. Thankfully, you don’t have to deal with these replies manually. Your Insta bot can find out whenever you get mentioned in comments or posts and answer those questions on its own, at lightning speed.
ValueFirst & Surbo
Surbo (our in-house platform), offers best in class analytics which helps you track and capture consumer interests and trends.
Build unique, bespoke, and effective Instagram chatbots with Surbo. From simple FAQ chatbots to automate customer enquiries to complex workflow automation, do it all from one enterprise-grade platform.
Need more info? Book a demo today.
Can you create an Instagram chatbot with a personal profile?
No, if you want to create an Instagram chatbot, you need to have an Instagram business account or an Instagram creator account.
Why are chatbots on Instagram essential for marketing?
Chatbots are useful for any business. If you get hundreds of similar questions and deal with dozens of orders through your DMs on Instagram, you can make your work a lot easier with the help of a chatbot. You do not have to hire a person to reply to direct messages on Instagram — you can easily automate this routine process.
How do chatbots work?
First, you need to create a chatbot flow based on different actions your subscribers may perform, such as placing an order, returning or exchanging an item, or asking questions. Once you do, every time your users make a targeted action, a chatbot will interact with them and help them out with their queries. Moreover, Instagram chatbots can send information about your customers to your CRM according to the filters you apply.
Can I set up a chatbot for other social media channels with Surbo?
With Surbo’s chatbot builder, you can create bots for Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Line, and Тelegram.
How much does Surbo’s chatbot service cost?
Connect with us and learn more about subscriptions for chatbot services.
