Digitization has opened various doors of opportunities for businesses. It has allowed every industry to grow at an accelerated pace and hence provide solutions to the global audience.

Considering the current obsession where people require to get their queries answered instantly, chatbots serve as the perfect solution! According to a survey by Oracle, 80% of respondents (including chief strategy officers, senior marketers and sales executive) said they either already use chatbots or are planning to utilize them by 2020.

To improve customer service, chatbot development solutions were introduced to not only solve communication problems between a brand and its visitors but also deliver a personalized user experience. Over time, chatbot services become intelligent and efficient thus able to get more relevant information about their customers in a short time.

However, before investing in chatbot development you need to know why you need a chatbot solution for your business? By purpose, it means what task it will handle. The chatbot can work in two ways:
In rule-based methodology, a chatbot can only provide answers only to pre-defined rules. Another one, Custom-built chatbot option is based on artificial intelligence which will work as per your specific needs.
Why are the enterprises building Chatbots?

Chatbots are trending and its not just about the buzz around, in fact it’s the impactful usage of what it brings to the customers. Enterprises are deploying chatbots to deliver helpful, personalized messaging to customers at scale, limiting the need to expand & employ more customer support executives. A lot of companies are searching for the chatbot development cost estimate and it’s nothing new for the industry where people are curious to adopt new technologies and get benefits from the same.

What Chatbot Market Concludes?

– Business Insider experts predict that by 2020, 80% of enterprises will use chatbots.
– According to Drift, 27% of adult clients in the United States are ready to purchase basic goods through a chatbot, 13% of adults in the US have at least once bought expensive items using chatbots.
– According to Opus Research, by 2021, 4.5 billion dollars will be invested in chatbots.
– According to Lauren Foye, by 2022, banks can automate up to 90% of their customer interaction using chatbots.
From the above-mentioned statistics, it is evident that chatbot proves profitable to every industry. Let’s look at the business benefits of chatbot development services.

The Power of Chatbots
To summarize here are some of the incredible benefits of deploying chatbots as a part of your business strategy.

1. An Excellent Tool to Process Volume of Requests
A well-built chatbot allows the brand to face all types of questions. It can process as many requests at a time without increasing team capacity for receiving queries.

2. Reduced Maintenance Costs
Chatbots allow companies to save a huge amount of money and are comparatively easy to configure. Once the chatbot is built the costs of keeping and updating them are low. Thus, considered as a one-time investment for companies.

3. Personalized User Experience
Customers are #1 priority for any business. Chatbots record data, analyze latest trends and monitor interactions to give responses accordingly. Also, a chatbot can send notifications related to their interests, location, needs, etc., making them feel how precious they are for the company.

4. Better Lead Generation and Higher Conversion Rates
A chatbot ensures the flow of chatbot development is in the right direction to get maximum conversions. It assists ‘buyer’s journey’ and asks related queries to customers and generates leads for you. Moreover, it determines the unqualified leads through identified parameters like budget, timeline, resources, relevancy, etc.

While investing in a chatbot solution, you must also be aware of types of chatbot development solutions. It will help you explore various options and make the right choice for your business.

5. Lower Operational Cost

The biggest operational cost in business is the number of incoming calls. Users wish to get the answers of their queries at the earliest and the best way currently is making a call to the customer support agent. In case of having a chatbot at work, customers won’t find a need to make calls and get their queries sorted through chatbot.

Types of Chatbots

1. FAQ Chatbot
On the basis of frequently asked questions, the chatbot is trained to give automated responses to the customers. The instant reactions can be intuitive or basic as per specific needs.

2. Transactional Chatbot
These types of chatbot solutions provide assistance while completing payments through an app. Mostly the transactional chatbots are used by banks and digital e-commerce stores.

3. Predictive Chatbot
One of the most expensive chatbot types is a predictive chatbot. Designed and developed on different case scenarios and incorporated by heavy machine learning, predictive chatbots are used to analyze how users might react next.

4. Conversational Chatbot
The conversational chatbot uses language understanding services to maintain easy flowing conversations between end users. Thus, gives a great user experience without the intervention of human executives.

No matter which industry you belong to, if you have a budget and are willing to provide best-in-class services to your customers, chatbot solution is something that you should go for. A reliable chatbot development company can help you build a smart chatbot for your enterprise. To get an approximate cost of chatbot development solution, you also need to consider at which stage of the development cycle of chatbot you are at.

1. Development Phase
This phase is the beginning of chatbot development where business owners and technical team will identify the objective of building a chatbot. During this time of discussion questions like, need for chatbot development, features required, type of chatbot, etc. are answered. It roughly takes 5 to 6 days to move to the next phase.

2. Prototype Implementation
If your prototypes are ready, it enables business owners to check the basic functionality of a chatbot. It allows them to verify that their bot is in line with the business plan or not. Starting from this phase can cost you around $2000 to $4000, varying from company to company.

3. Minimum Viable Product Release
The MVP phase is to launch the lighter version of the application which helps to identify bugs and errors in the chatbot. Once MVP is launched, beta results are gathered thus gives an opportunity to business owners to launch the product with minimum or no risks. The phase can cost you around $10,000 to $15,000, depending on the development team cost and features incorporated.
How much time does it take to build a Chatbot?

Apart from the trending search of how much to build a chatbot, there is always a question on the timeframe it takes to build a chatbot. Basically, it depends on the type of chatbot you prefer, along with the components that come together to develop them. App integration generally takes up around 40-56 hours and the further business logic stage (where product is already existing) takes 120-160 hours, in case of making the developments from scratch, it takes around 160-192 hours.

Before we move on to the next section, let’s find out what does it take to build a chatbot and the aspects that impact the chatbot development cost 2020.

Factors and Variables That Defines the Cost of Chatbot

Though finding the chatbot development cost 2020 can be tough, there are multiple factors that need to be considered while finalizing a chatbot platform. Most importantly, the cost of chatbot depends specifically on the business requirements. Let’s find out some of the main variables that affect the cost-

a. Industry Type

The cost of chatbot may differ from one industry vertical to another. Suppose your company deals with healthcare and banking services, it is very important for you to have a secured database since these industries may have sensitive records. Developing chatbots for such sectors may need implementation of security protocols, which will increase the AI chatbot cost. For travel and retail companies that need customer engagement, you need chatbot that can incorporate a diverse range of dialogs and a robust design, which will add up the cost.

b. Channel Support

The requirements of each business vary from one another! It is completely your choice to pick the desired channel or build the bots that can be deployed to the website or mobile apps. Additionally, the channel will come with the user interface that can be customized as per needs such as SMS, e-mail or social media. The channel you opt for the development of your bot will impact the AI chatbot cost.

c. Capabilities Needed

One question that may strike upon your mind is – will the capabilities of the bot impact its chatbot development cost 2020? Yes!! Based on the capabilities like retrieving basic information for flight status, update, etc. the development cost will be lower. However, if you want your bot to do complex things like book a flight or place an order, the cost will be high as it needs a deeper integration with the back-end systems.

d. Backend

For the development of chatbot, a backend is needed to manage messages coming in from multiple channels, which is processed with NLP offerings. This backend is responsible for business logic and integration within the current systems. The conversational intelligence will be developed using backend according to the type of conversation that happens with the end-users. The backend type is what can add the cost of chatbot.

e. Desired Interaction Level

Another factor that impacts the AI Chatbot cost is the level of interaction. If you want to build a basic chatbot that follows a menu-driven approach with a simple & predefined set of rules, the cost will be less. The cost of chatbot may increase if you opt for advanced bots that incorporate a Natural Language Processor (NLP) that depends on underlying tone & emotions underneath words. The more complex you want to build the bot, the more costly it will be to develop.

The above section must have given you a basic understanding of what factors to look for that impact the chatbot development cost 2020.

How Much Does Chatbot Development Cost?

Depending on the requirements, the cost to develop a chatbot is directly influenced by the processing power and learning of a chatbot. However, to make an informed decision we have built an easy-to-use chatbot estimation tool that helps to find an approximate value of your chatbot project.

Let’s take a tour to know how you can access our chatbot estimation tool.

Step 1: To get started, click on ‘Get an Estimate’ button placed on the top-left side of the website www.clavax.com

Step 2: Click on ‘How Much a Chatbot Project Cost’ to calculate the cost of your chatbot development

 

Step 3: Select the Industry Type
No matter which industry you belong to, an interactive chatbot solution can change the way you interact with your customers.

 

Step 4: Select the Features you Want for Your Chatbot
On choosing the right features for your custom bot, you can get a step closer to start your chatbot development journey.

 

Step 5: Choose the Chatbot Type

There are different types of a chatbot, select the desired type suiting the needs of your business.

 

Step 6: Custom built or Ready-Made Chatbot Solution
Choose the right channel to deploy your chatbot. Finding the right option for deploying chatbots can affect your digital strategy.

 

Step 7: Get the Estimated Value
Based on the selections you made, you can see the approximate cost of your chatbot solution. For further assistance, you can also fill up the form and talk to experts.

 

Closing Statement
While moving in the era of chatbot development, it is important to make wise decisions and smart investments. Working closely with chatbot developers, you can get the advanced chatbot solutions which will grow the organization’s profit.

Chatbot Cost Calculator