Why Choosing a Chatbot Platform is better than Readymade Solution or Building From Scratch

If you run a business and heard about chatbots then you might have thought about creating one for your business. Those tiny chat windows that you see in the bottom of many websites answer an array of topics from basic to complex ones. Unfortunately, sometimes a seeming simplicity of a technology results in overlooking its downsides and lends us in regretting the hasty decision.

As chatbot is a new technology, many tools, platforms, frameworks and agencies as well as readymade products are emerging to provide solutions for various businesses. But wide range of choices often doesn’t help. Especially, if you have small scale business, you should verify the goals of your business and its capabilities before you choose either to build a chatbot from scratch, buy a readymade solution or create a chatbot using platform like Frontman. In this story we will discuss the same thing so that you make informed decision about your business.

Identify goals of your company

Today, the millennials are very choosy. People research so much about a product before buying it. Similarly, if you run a business you need to figure out the real problems and the objectives you are going to achieve with the chatbot. The objectives of your chatbot will directly reflect the goals of your company.

Ask yourself does your business focus more on providing information about the products and services? Does your business is more inclined towards promotion of the products? Are you going to simplify the purchasing or booking process or you need just a simple FAQ answering chatbot? Besides, you also need to assess what volume of user interactions you expect from the chatbot; hundred, thousands or in millions.

Moreover, the target audience and cost factors are other important aspects you need to consider to have proper understanding what is right for you. These are the questions you need to put to yourself before choosing a chatbot platform or building it from scratch.

Time required in building a chatbot

Once you have identified your goals and assessed other aspects, the next big question is that how much time would it require to build a chatbot? Actually, this again too depends on your business size and type and complexity of the project.

Talking about the readymade solution, they are not time consuming, just purchase them and start working with them. Building a chatbot from scratch will need immense time and money and a lot of technical knowhow. Through chatbot building platforms such as Frontman, a simple chatbot can be built within 5–10 minutes while adding more details and conversational dialogues can take few hours to a couple of weeks, depending on the nature of the project.

Should I buy a readymade solution, build from scratch or use a platform?

Though, chatbots are relatively new, there are tons of options available in the market that are keen on solving business needs. From readymade chatbot solutions catering specific needs to platform providers and building a chatbot from scratch, you might want to get 100 percent sure which one is the best fit for your business.

Depending on the company size and nature of the project you may choose one of the three options mentioned below.

Choosing a readymade chatbot

Just like there are several readymade solutions available at Google Play Store and App Store, similarly you have several options in terms of chatbots that are offered to solve different business problems. But are they the right solutions for your business?

While for handling short term and simple business queries such as gathering personal details, email subscription, etc. these chatbots might benefit but there are certain drawbacks which may hinder achieving the 100 percent of the business requirement. The biggest con with the readymade solution is that you won’t be able to customize it to meet your business needs. They are just simple bots made for handling very simple conversations. And in most cases, they are irritating and lack that human touch we would expect during a natural conversation, especially in case of lead generation and getting more and more users onboard.

Then we should create a chatbot from scratch

If people aren’t able to customize their product, then another option they choose is to build that product from scratch. While it is good to have complete control over your product but building such things from scratch is not that easy and charming.

Chatbots like other type of products such as softwares and mobile applications needs immense technical knowhow and outsourcing such projects will cost your business a lot. And the amount of time spend in building from scratch is another problem, especially if your business don’t want to lose customer for a second.

Why not first try using chatbot building platform?

Self-service platforms give you plethora of opportunities to create your own customized chatbot without spending million bucks on it. Platforms such as Frontman provides simple to understand interface through which you can build your own fully working chatbot within an hour without writing a single line of code.

All you need is little skill of stacking message & logic cards from the story builder, some drag and drops and styling, that’s it. Your chatbot is ready to serve your customers. The biggest advantage of building chatbot using these platforms is consumption of less time, less money and less complexity, all which perfectly fits most business requirements.

Another crucial advantage of building chatbots from these platforms is that you don’t need to worry about server side configuration which needs a lot of brainstorming. All you need is to enter your business website name and copy paste a few codes on your website and all the configuration is done automatically.

In short, chatbots made through these platforms are build faster and with minimal or no cost at all.

Final thoughts

In this tech savvy world with cut throat competition, it’s always better to play around with a product before making a final decision of purchase. A readymade product or building a chatbot from scratch may have their own advantages, but the efforts and benefits out of it are either not exciting or is just an exercise in futility.

So, it’s better to choose a platform which gives the best of both the worlds. And for businesses where requirements and scope are more demanding, choosing a platform provider is a most cost-efficient option as such services are generally based on subscription basis, even some basic functionality are offered free of cost.

Makerobos in the form of Frontman gives you a capable platform through which you can create a customized chatbot, refines its scope of working and then implement in your business as and when you like.

Start building a chatbot for your website in less than 5 minutes to automate your sales & marketing routines. Give it a try today 👍🏻