Automation has become a necessary part of everyday life. This is especially true for brands that want to build meaningful connections with their customers, instead of the traditional spray-and-pray approach that might have worked before. Today, customers want fast, personalized, relevant interactions - and chatbots are one of the many tools brands can use to deliver these experiences.
As a super app, Rakuten Viber offers a robust chatbot solution that enables brands to simplify processes, fast-track communication, and most importantly - combine automation with the human touch. Read on to learn more about the key features and benefits of connecting your chatbot to Viber, and the ways you can use your Viber chatbot across the marketing funnel in different industries.
What are Viber Chatbots?
Viber Chatbots is a messaging solution that allows brands with a verified Business Account to engage with Rakuten Viber app users inside a user-friendly and flexible chat interface by integrating with an API.
The Viber chatbot interface offers various options to simplify tedious processes such as booking appointments, answering frequently asked questions, renewing policies, completing a purchase, and more. Whether it’s a customized keyboard design with predefined options, rich media, carousel messages, or plain text messages - businesses are met with endless possibilities to create a friendly chat experience for any flow.
And if you’re questioning whether or not a chatbot will do more harm than good for your customer service - think again. A recent study unveiled that customers prefer brands that have chatbots, with 96% stating they think businesses that use chatbots take good care of their customers.
When paired with the right tools and technology, you can transform your chatbot from an answering service into a proactive advocate for your brand. But before we get into the many ways you can do this, let’s look at some of the key advantages of implementing a chatbot on Viber.
What are the benefits of using Viber Chatbots?
Chatbots are known for their ability to speed up processes for both brands and customers. They enable businesses to set up automated experiences in a rich, engaging, and personalized environment.
But with so many channels available today, it can be hard to choose the right place to house your virtual assistant. As a rule of thumb, the most favorable place to build a chatbot is where most of your customers spend most of their time - and today, that’s on messaging apps. Rakuten Viber is one of the leading messaging apps in the world, and with new features and technologies on the horizon - it’s becoming a leading super app in many countries.
Here are a few key features and benefits of connecting your business chatbot to Viber:
- Reach: Rakuten Viber is available in over 190 countries and 44 languages, giving you the ability to adapt and scale your chatbot to your local or global brand strategy.
- Branding: With a Viber Business Account, your chatbot will be linked to a branded account enriched with your logo and colors - reassuring customers that they’re interacting with the right business in a secure environment.
- Verified account: Your Viber Business Account is manually verified with a blue tick, reassuring users that they are communicating with an official business on a secure platform.
- All-in-app solution: Gone are the days of having segregated solutions for each stage of the customer journey. With Viber for Business, your chatbot can be a part of your wider communication strategy. By connecting your chatbot to Viber Ads and Business Messages, you can give customers a cohesive end-to-end experience in one place, from product discovery to customer support and more.
- Customization: Set up custom chatbot buttons with predefined actions, specific inputs, and direct links to minimize frustration and improve the user experience.
- Rich media: Enrich your chatbot communication and speed up customers’ time to resolution by leveraging the power of rich media and different message types including cards, carousels, GIFs, emojis, images, videos, and more.
- Accessibility: Building a chatbot on Viber increases brand visibility through various entry points from within the app - including the search bar, Explore page, various ad placements, and more.
- Analytics: You can also track your chatbot’s success and identify areas of improvement by setting up multiple campaigns to see the status of your messages (delivered or read) - or be notified when a user joins or unsubscribes from your chatbot.
Viber Chatbots: rules of engagement
Depending on where your customers are on their journey - you’ll have different options to engage with them:
Welcome message
Viber chatbots are subscription-based, meaning you can proactively engage with users who have previously messaged your chatbot or subscribed to it. For a new user who has not yet subscribed but has entered your chatbot, you can send a welcome message to greet them before they subscribe. This is the first message they see and is often a short description of what the chatbot is and how it can help.
Chatbot session messages
Once a customer sends a message to the chatbot, a session begins. A session lasts 24 hours, and the number of messages your chatbot and subscribers can exchange within this window is unlimited and at no additional cost.
Chatbot-initiated messages
If there is no active session between your chatbot and a subscriber, but your chatbot sends a message, it’s considered a chatbot-initiated message. An example is sending a promotional message informing the customer of your latest offers, or a transactional message such as a notification about an upcoming payment. These messages are charged per delivery, and the price depends on the users’ destination country.
Viber Chatbots: use cases and examples
Chatbots can be adapted to various use cases across industries - from retail to banking to delivery, and more. Below are a few examples of how you can use your chatbot on Viber to simplify your customer journey and increase satisfaction, depending on the industry you operate in:
Retail and eCommerce
- Timely promotions and offers: Chatbots are notorious for sending personalized, timely notifications. Retail brands can connect their CRM or CDP to Viber using the chatbot API to send personalized offers such as birthday discounts, or timely promotions to influence purchases and increase conversions.
- Product discovery: Enhance your chatbot on Viber by leveraging the various rich media functionalities and message types the app has to offer. Add pictures to your chatbot answers about specific products, or share your new product catalog with direct links to your website to minimize time to purchase.
- Returns and refunds: Make returns and refunds a painless experience by connecting your Viber chatbot to your return management system (RMS) and enabling it to confirm package pick-up times, collect reasons for the return, validate damaged items via pictures, process payment refunds, and more in only a few minutes.
- Customer support: For cases that require more attention, you can connect your chatbot to your contact center for seamless transfers to a human agent. You can also offer your chatbot as an alternative self-service option when customers call your support team during peak periods to minimize call wait times and drop-offs.
Banking and finance:
- Opening an account: Guide your customers through opening a new bank account on the Viber app by programming your chatbot to collect the necessary information and connecting it to your database to complete the process. You can also share onboarding videos, important documents, branch working hours, and more using various rich messaging formats to make information accessible and easy to follow.
- Card renewal and delivery: A banking chatbot can be the perfect way to speed up card recovery, renewal, and delivery processes. Enable customers to share their delivery information, filled-out documents, and pictures of their expired card for a quick and seamless experience.
- Account balance checks: Customers want fewer apps and more options on the apps they already use. A Viber chatbot can give customers basic details about their bank account such as their current balance, limits, credit availability, and more in seconds - all while they continue to chat with their family and friends.
- Transaction notifications: Staying up to date with account activities such as recent transactions or upcoming payments is one of the key benefits of online banking services - and sending these alerts and notifications on an app that customers use increases delivery and read receipts, and ultimately customer satisfaction.
- Renewal and application processes: Automating tedious loan applications and policy renewals can decrease form abandonment, giving customers a clear and fast way to complete these processes while offloading repetitive tasks from your support team. You can also set up your Viber chatbot to provide helpful tips, share updated offers, and provide definitions of complex terms to improve the overall experience.
Delivery and logistics:
- Delivery updates: Provide clear and timely communication with automated delivery updates highlighting location, time, and driver contact information.
- Address changes: Enable customers to change their delivery address in seconds if they won’t be at the original location, or to share specific instructions on where to leave a package if nobody is home.
- Package pick-ups: Give customers an easy way to schedule a pick-up from a specific location or at a specific time - they can even send pictures of the delivery label and where the driver can find the package.
- Feedback: A Viber chatbot can be the perfect channel to collect quick feedback. Your chatbot can send a follow-up message shortly after a package is delivered or picked up, and customers can express their feedback or concerns clearly through text, star ratings, images, videos, and more.
Healthcare:
- Appointment management: Streamline appointment booking and rescheduling processes by providing patients with a list of available dates and times through your Viber chatbot. Connect it to your appointment management system to send confirmation notifications and reminders, minimizing cancellations or no-shows.
- Clinic location search: A Viber chatbot can help patients find the nearest clinic to their current location and can share details such as working hours, available doctors, and links to directions.
- Refills and reminders: Remind patients they need to refill their prescription or that they are soon due for a vaccination with timely, personalized alerts. Customers can then book their appointment or request a new prescription in the same chat.
- Connect with a healthcare professional: A Viber chatbot can seamlessly connect patients to a healthcare professional via Viber voice or video calls for a virtual urgent or routine check-up.
- Medical records request: Patients can also use your Viber chatbot to request and receive medical records from your clinic if they need to continue treatment or switch doctors elsewhere.
How to set up a Viber Chatbot for your business
One of the added benefits of deploying your chatbot on Viber is that the process is simple. There are two ways you can do this:
Connect your chatbot to Viber with our team
For tech-savvy companies and brands with independent development, the first option is to create a Rakuten Viber Business Account which our team will review and approve. Then, you can connect your services to Viber via direct integration to our chatbot API. Once you’ve launched your chatbot, our team will advise you on how to make it searchable and verified for increased visibility, along with any other Viber for Business solutions that might work well with your chatbot and fit your business goals.
Connect through an official Rakuten Viber partner
If you don’t have a dev team, that’s not a problem! We have a variety of official partners, especially for you. If you already work or are interested in working with one of our official partners, you can reach out to their team to help you apply for a chatbot, set it up for billing, and get it launched. They’ll also offer their extensive expertise, counsel, and management for the best results.
