Top AI chatbots for business in 2022: Benefits and platform integrations
- Chatbots are blowing up across industries ranging from banking and fintech, to digital health and insurance.
- The chatbot market size is projected to jump from $2.6 billion in 2019 to $9.4 billion by 2024
- Do you work in the Tech industry? Get business insights on the latest innovations, market trends, and your competitors with data-driven research.
Chatbots are blowing up across all industries, as they provide a better user experience at lower business costs—appealing to both consumers and companies alike.
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And as younger generations demonstrate an increasing desire for quick and efficient 24/7 service, the opportunity for chatbots continues to grow. The chatbot market size is projected to jump from $2.6 billion in 2019 to $9.4 billion by 2024 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.7%.
With a multitude of chatbot providers making their way into various industries, it can be difficult to keep track of the best ones. To help you navigate this exploding market, we put together a list of the top AI chatbots for business.
Benefits of Chatbots for Business
Companies are using chatbots to put customer satisfaction and engagement at the forefront of their business models. Because chatbots can answer common questions and simulate human agents using artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP), each interaction and additional piece of customer data collected improves their ability to understand a user's intent.
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As a result, chatbots can boost operational efficiency as staff is freed up to deal with fewer trivial, repetitive tasks and more revenue-generating ones, such as customer acquisition. Chatbots can help businesses interact with consumers, qualify leads, send mass messages, and more easily run drip campaigns.
Popular Chatbot Messaging Platforms
Different types of chatbots can be standalone and embedded onto your company website or app, or integrated into existing messaging platforms where your customers communicate. The top chatbot messaging platforms are:
- Facebook Messenger
- Slack
- Shopify
- Skype
Best AI Chatbots for Business
Here is a list of the top AI chatbots for your business:
MobileMonkey
MobileMonkey is a multi-platform chatbot builder that unifies Facebook Messenger bots, native website chatbots, SMS marketing and live chat into one platform.
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MobileMonkey comes with built-in live chat and integrations powered by Zapier automation. Zapier integrates with more than 1,000 applications, including Gmail, Slack, Twitter, Asana, WordPress, Shopify, and Zendesk.
Price
Free: Includes instant messaging and live chat tools for 1,000 sends per month
PRO: $21.75 per month allows businesses to sell notifications and reengagement campaigns to scale and automate customer care
Unicorn: $51 per month gives companies analytics, integrations and Facebook Ads to supercharge marketing and growth
Team: $299 per month provides collaboration tools for agencies and teams managing multiple chatbot locations
Learn more about MobileMonkey.
Drift
Drift is an AI virtual sales assistant software designed to help salespeople automate processes such as lead qualification. Drift stores individual conversation data that can be accessed for future chatbot interactions—it qualifies leads and connects businesses with these leads when they are at their highest intent.
Drift built dozens of native integrations, connected data with Zapier, and opened its developer platform so anyone can build. Some integrations include Saleseforce, Marketo, Okta, Slack, Zendesk, Office 365, Google Analytics, and Zoom.
Price
Free: Users can generate qualified leads through conversations with website visitors
Premium: Allows users to generate sales pipeline and revenue by engaging prospects and customers with personalized experiences in real time
Enterprise: Accelerates revenue, improves sales productivity, and gets more ROI on marketing investments with a platform that's customized to each business
Learn more about Drift.
ManyChat
ManyChat allows businesses and users to create chatbots for Facebook Messenger. Businesses can also use ManyChat to send SMS appointment reminders or promotional messages to consumers, or connect to Shopify to remind customers about cart abandons or order updates.
Like Drift and MobileMonkey, ManyChat can connect to Zapier to access over 1,000 apps. Some of the most popular integrations include Google Sheets, Shopify, HubSpot, PayPal, MailChimp, and Stripe.
Price
Free: For $0 a month, users can engage up to 1,000 contacts and gain access through Facebook Messenger.
Pro: Users can engage an unlimited number of contacts for $10 per month through Facebook Messenger, email, or SMS.
Business: ManyChat's Business subscription gives users access to all ManyChat features in Pro, plus custom services.
Learn more about ManyChat.
Chatfuel
Chatfuel offers businesses a centralized platform to create AI conversational chatbots. It uses third party integration and analytics technology to provide users with an easy bot-building solution. Users can build a chatbot to serve as an event assistant or customer service advisor.
Chatfuel
Chatfuel integrates with applications such as Facebook and Twitter, and users can also integrate their chatfuel bot with Zapier.
Some integrations include Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Gmail, Shopify, Stripe, and Evernote.
Price
Free: A free subscription to Chatfuel gives businesses and individuals essential tools to automate messages. This plan is limited to 50 users.
Pro: For $15 a month, this plan comes with no user limits, the same features as the free subscription, and access to A/B testing, conversation handover, Shopify cart reminders, and targeting with Facebook Ads.
Premium: This plan includes all of the features of Pro, in addition to VIP support, synced cloning, bot-building help, Facebook Ads setup, and white-labeled dashboard to customize what consumers can see.
Learn more about Chatfuel.
LivePerson
Known for its development of Conversational Cloud, a platform that allows consumers to message with brands, LivePerson develops AI software for conversational commerce. LivePerson can act as a standalone bot or can be integrated with brands' mobile apps or websites. It can also be integrated to social media platforms or messaging channels, including Twitter, Facebook, Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp, LINE, and WeChat.
Price
LivePerson offers a free trial and subscription service. Because packages are developed around clients' specific needs, LivePerson needs to identify what AI interactions are best suited for their business. Customers need to speak to a conversational specialist to determine the cost of their subscription.
Learn more about LivePerson.
Intercom
Intercom produces messaging platforms that allow businesses to communicate with prospective and existing customers within their app, on their website, through social media, or via email. Intercom offers a multitude of apps and integrations. Some include: Salesforce, Stripe, Slack, Facebook, Zendesk, and Google Analytics.
Brian Elliott
Price
Intercom offers different price models for small businesses vs other businesses. Small business pricing includes:
Start: $39 per month, this subscription gives businesses live chat capabilities and targeted outbound chat, and Slack integration.
Grow: For 99$ per month, this subscription allows businesses to chat, send targeted emails, and self-service support. It also comes with HubSpot and GitHub integrations.
For other businesses, Intercom offers three different packages starting at $499 per month—conversational marketing, conversational engagement, and conversational support—so businesses can choose which conversational solution is right for them.
Learn more about Intercom.
Azure
The Azure Bot Service is Microsoft's AI chatbot that enables companies to develop enterprise-grade chatbots. Azure Cognitive Services allows developers to create AI-powered chatbots, which have NLU abilities to enhance customer support. Chatbots created on the service are capable of carrying conversation with users autonomously and can be deployed to popular channels including Skype, Slack, and Facebook Messenger.
Azure integration allows users to integrate on-premises and cloud-based applications, data, and processes across an entire company.
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Price
Azure pricing is broken down by product—and there are many. For Azure Bot Services specifically, pricing models include:
- Standard channels for both typical business subscribers and large-scale enterprise applications are free for an unlimited amount of messages.
- Premium channels for free subscribers are limited to 10,000 messages per month and for large-scale enterprise applications, it costs $0.50 per 1,000 messages.
Apart from the above pricing, businesses also pay for resources following the App Services pricing model. For more information on Azure Bot Services pricing, click here.
Learn more about Microsoft's Azure Bot Service.
More to Learn
Chatbots will continue to improve in the coming years, and will likely be adopted by more than major enterprises. As machine learning and natural language processing become more sophisticated, they are disrupting the way companies interact with consumers, and as chatbot architecture evolves, interactive AI will become standard for customer service across every industry.
Do you work in the Tech industry? Get business insights on the latest innovations, market trends, and your competitors with data-driven research.