Chatbots are intelligent automation tools that interact and respond to queries by customers like humans. It will save your time and the cost of a 24/7 customer service provider for your business.
Do you want to know how much it costs to develop a Chatbot?
Well, it depends on a few factors. What you want to use your Chabot for and what you want to achieve are two major factors determining the cost. It also depends on the chatbot type, features, integration, functionalities, and more.
Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered! We will tell you about the types of Chatbot applications available, the features to consider for a Chatbot, the benefits of using it, the factors that affect the cost, and of course, the cost of developing a Chatbot.
Let’s get started.
What is a Chatbot?
The simple answer is that a Chatbot is a program intended to simulate human conversations.
Years back, businesses reached out to their target with leaflets or door-to-door marketing. As the world progressed further towards a modern era, marketers communicated with their customers via calls, text messages, and email.
The world has progressed towards the digital era now. It is all about computer programming and instant messaging.
Chatbots hold the possibility to shake up the entire marketing process. Brands can directly reach their customers anytime, anywhere with instant responses and human-like conversations.
Increasingly brands are using Chatbots, and many companies are interested in developing their Chatbot.
Most large enterprises today use Chatbots or plan to operate them. As a result, it has a high demand across all industries, especially in e-commerce, financial, insurance, healthcare, travel, and telecom.
What are the Types of Chatbot Applications?
If you want to originate a Chatbot, you should first decide which type of Chatbot application to choose. Here are the three significant types of Chatbot applications that are best to integrate into web-based or mobile apps.
AI-Based Chatbots
AI-based Chatbots use the most advanced technology that uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to gather data and learn by themselves.
The bots upgrade the program’s response system regularly based on previous conversations. As a result, they provide a human-like conversation and ensure better customer satisfaction.
Button-Based Chatbots
A button or menu-based Chatbots are basic bots and are widely used for simple functionality. These bots have various options in menu or button form for their users.
The response depends on the user selection. However, these bots have limited pre-set responses. Therefore, it will not be helpful when the query does not match the bot’s pre-set questions and answers.
Rule-Based Chatbots
The rule-based chatbots use an if/then logic to help their users clarify their queries. These chatbots detect specific keywords in the questions, validate them with various other questions, and pre-set answers to respond accurately to the users.
What Features to Consider before Developing Chatbots?
Before developing a chatbot for your business, you need to select what features you need. Depending on your business model, requirement and need, you need to choose the components.
Here are a few features you need to consider for the best Chatbot applications.
Simple User Interface
Keep a simple and easy-to-use user interface or application design that will make your chatbots more appealing and engaging.
Conversational Maturity
Chatbots need to understand the user queries and provide accurate replies. This conversational maturity comes with the control or Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology.
Geo Location
If the Chatbot can track customers’ location, it will enable the bots to deliver more relevant responses in the conversation.
Emotional Quotient (EQ)
AI chatbots have an emotional quotient (E). Therefore, it will help the bot detect emotions and tone in queries or responses by the customers. Seeing the emotions and style enables the bots to send an appropriate human-like response.
Data Automation
Chatbots can explore vast data and find relevant answers to customer queries. It can browse through data from different sources and analyze the existing solutions to deliver a proper response.
Payment System
For e-commerce businesses, a payment system is integrated to allow chatbots to create a secured payment method.
What are the Benefits of Using Chatbots for your business?
Here are the benefits of using a chatbot:
Sales Automation
Along with answering queries, bots can automate the end-to-end sales process. In addition, brands use chatbots to strengthen their customer relationships.
For example, marketplace chatbots generate leads by analyzing customer search patterns and purchasing patterns.
Customer Experience
The best reason to use chatbots is that they instantly respond 24*7 and ensure an improved customer experience.
Customer Insight
Businesses can identify the products with more demand in the market based on customer queries.
You can get valuable insights into customer behavior from chatbot conversations. It will help make better business strategies for promotions.
What Factors Affect the Chatbot Cost?
Each Chatbot is unique and developed according to specific demands and requirements of buyers, which is one of the main reasons there is no fixed pricing.
Besides that, creating a chatbot is a lengthy and comprehensive process with several steps, affecting the cost. Now, developers need to examine different chatbot examples; they also have to acknowledge how various factors are why the final price varies.
A variety of factors affect a chatbot’s cost.
Custom Development
A custom chatbot development will most certainly affect the pricing, whether you hire a third-party company or decide to build it independently by yourself.
Of course, doing it yourself would be cheaper compared to a customs procedure, but it mostly depends on what you require out of the bot.
Business Goals
The most critical factor affecting a chatbot’s development cost would be meeting the business goals. According to the goals and uses of the Chatbot, you will need chatbot features which will, in turn, add to the difficulty and development scope of the bot.
One of the most common bots is a messenger chatbot which can be used as a FAQ chatbot, lead generation bot, customer support, marketing, appointment booking, information collection, etc. It can be of any type, but the prices will vary for every one of them.
Supported Platforms
The number of supported platforms also influences a chatbot’s cost; the more platforms developers need support, the larger the price.
You can choose to have messenger chatbots for Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, whichever fits your requirements perfectly.
Type of Integration
Another significant pricing factor for chatbot development would be integrating analytics, email, apps, websites, etc.
For example, if you want the bot to be integrated into a company’s or website because of customer service, the cost will vary.
Internal Processes
Businesses know the chatbot trends stats and get them built for internal use. For such bots to automate routine processes or handle customer databases, etc., the cost would depend on the difficulty and internal processes a business would want the bot to run.
The Complexity of Data Analysis
With the help of AI-powered tools like predictive analytics, machine learning, and data analysis algorithms, chatbots can talk like human beings and handle any complexity of queries. However, building such tools complex and time-consuming and will affect the price.
How much does it Cost to Develop a Chatbot?
The arrival of different tools, frameworks, and libraries has helped make chatbot technology easy to buy for many.
The chatbot development price may vary from $5,000 to $150,000 as the cost is calculated and varies for every case.
Most software agencies and companies charge about $15,00 to $31,000 for a customized bot. Some companies set a bottom price of $30,000 only for a simple bot.
An experienced AI chatbot for after-sale service costs about $20,000 to $80,000 more than average bots. Those bots are generated by NLP and ML technologies and provide much more helpful capabilities for absorbing and learning information.
They can query buyers through media and marketing campaigns, handle content distribution and personalized news, and more. Those chatbots get well with fledged business problem solvers when combined with payment services.
You can start with a normal chatbot app that will automate the routine procedures of your work and choose an AI bot later on if the first app displays its efficiency.
Summing Up
Every business owner knows the value of using chatbots. Chatbots are highly demanded because of their capabilities in recognizing and fulfilling the customers’ needs.
Most businesses have already applied chatbots for their business, and the rest are also inclined toward developing their own.
Now you know about chatbots, their benefits, features to consider, and of course the cost and what affects the price. These should answer your question ‘how much does it cost to develop a chatbot’ and help you develop a chatbot for your business.
Chatbots are relatively flexible and can be customized. There are many robust solutions for chatbot development to fit all your business needs.