You might be ready to invest in chatbot development. But do you know which type of chatbot is the right fit for your business? How much it would cost? Should you get a free chatbot or build it from scratch?
We are here to help! This blog post breaks down everything you need to know, from cost, and types of chatbot, to factors that affect your budget.
A chatbot is nothing but a digital conversation partner who can communicate with you through text. Advanced bots can even understand audio and images. They don’t even need proper grammar or language to understand your words. You can even make them work for you like placing orders.
So, deciding the use cases of AI-based chatbots is the first thing to do. Otherwise, any investment you make will go to waste. If you are unsure where to use a chatbot, we have a few suggestions:
Figure out what is the most important thing you want the chatbot to do. It will help in deciding which type of chatbot would be good for your business.
Just like not every human is equal, not every bot is the same. They are built differently and have characteristics different from one another. Here are a few common types of chatbots.
Once you decide which chatbot you need, move to the next step i.e. cost of chatbot development.
It’s a big investment, therefore you must explore every option out there for accurate chatbot pricing. Here are the available options in the market.
If you want an AI-based chatbot that does specific tasks, opt for a DIY approach. Everything would be under your control, from ideation to deployment. However, it would require a dedicated team of AI experts, software developers, UI/UX designers, and project managers.
And within a few weeks or months, your chatbot will be ready to deploy. A DIY chatbot brings a medium upfront cost compared to other approaches. However, the quality of the bot would depend heavily on the expertise and experience of your team.
Chatbot builders are great if you cannot wait to implement a chatbot in your business. They offer pre-built templates that you can customize according to the workflow. You can even integrate the ready-made chatbot solutions into the tools often used by your team or customers.
For example, users can get details of their orders on WhatsApp when they place an order through a bot. Such bots are even less expensive than custom chatbots and start as low as $15 per month. Here are a few chatbot builders you can explore.
The above approaches are good if you are running out of time and money. But if you don’t know how to build a chatbot, hire a chatbot development company.They have experts who have been developing different types of chatbots for small, medium, and large enterprises.
You won’t have to worry about anything. They even help you identify which chatbot is good for your specific use case. From development to even maintenance, they will do it all. Outsourcing AI chatbot experts would tentatively cost you between $5,000 to $20,000 and more. This is just a monthly cost of chatbot development in 2024.
The features and types of chatbots you want will add additional cost. That would require a budget of up to $30,000 if it’s simple and if you are making something like ChatGPT, expect the cost beyond $50,000.
However, the final cost of chatbot development will revolve around these questions:
Lastly, the cost of a chatbot also depends on the industry it will be implemented.
Identify the actual cost based on the benefits of chatbot development. Again, you have to figure out answers to a few questions here especially if your chatbot is a query bot.
Ask your customer service team about repetitive questions they get from your customers. These questions should be automated as they waste more time for your agents.
Decide which queries need automation and which ones will be solved by live agents.
Calculate the amount of time your team spends on all the queries. For example, they may take 5 minutes to answer queries related to order tracking. Queries like order delivery issues take more time.
Calculate the average hours a live chat agent spends on queries per day. Multiply the amount by the number of working days to get a monthly cost estimation. Multiply by 12 for annual estimation.
Do a comparison between the cost of a chatbot handling queries versus the agents. You can do this by calculating the number of hours a bot will take to solve those queries. If the cost is lower than what you spend on a live agent, it's worth investing in chatbot development.
However, keep in mind that chatbots take time to learn and adapt to situations. So, initially, you may not see the benefit and working with chatbot-human collaboration. Once they adapt, you can switch the human resources for better tasks.
The final decision of developing an AI chatbot for your business is in your hands. It should be made on considering the above factors and after proper evaluation of your needs. Whether you develop it in-house or outsource a chatbot development company, make sure the investment delivers your expectations.
Subscribe to our newsletter