Today, business websites need to be interactive. The simple web pages are now integrated with some interactive tools which can give the right and instantaneous response to users increasing engagement and making apps or websites more interactive. Read this blog to know more about how much it costs to develop a chatbot.

Each web development company is utilizing the advantages of chatbots. Chatbots have entered the IT world across industries by increasing the user engagement count to play a major part in the lead conversion process. Interactive chatbots are equally popular among enterprise-level huge firms and small startups.

The technology helps the organization in increasing its customer base. Looking at the progress and popularity, every company is running behind Chatbots, regardless of the industry.

Here in this article, we will understand:

• What is Chatbot?
• How much does it cost to build a Chatbot?
• Eagle view of the Chatbot development service.

Before understanding the technology, cost, and usable features of the Chatbot, it is better to look at the growing market.

Popularity Trend of Chatbot

Since the last decade, chatbots have been hugely popular. There are enormous numbers of Chatbot app projects handled by mobile app development companies, worldwide. The technology limited to eCommerce has now permeated every kind of digital identity of a business. Chatbot app development is gradually going hand in hand with AI, which makes them more marketable.

According to data, the Chatbot market size will expectedly increase to $134 billion, where growth figures are supported by AI and Machine learning infusion by mobile application development companies.  These chatbots are the chat system built to understand makes it engaging and the user intent and modify the set output per user behavior. These systems are highly lucrative for healthcare, automobile, e-commerce, finance, education, and other industries.

 

 

Chatbots are proven useful systems, which are expected to contribute $1250 million by the year 2025. Going to the growth of chatbots, it is pretty clear that chatbots are going to be the prominent business components and web development companies are promoting it to make a win-win situation for both clients and themselves.

Let’s understand some prominent facts:

Finance, healthcare, travel, and education are the most profitable industries from Chatbot

• More than 70 percent of businesses have integrated chatbots by 2021.
• A capable Chatbot system can save around 30 percent of the cost of customer support.
• In 2016, the cost of market value for Chatbot was $703 million.
• An efficient Chatbot can let users feel that the business is open for 24 hours, where the percentage of such users goes around 50%.
• In 2018, there are 300000 active chatbots on Facebook.

Benefits of Chatbots Development Services For Your Business

Around 35 percent of the users want businesses to use chatbots. This is why more and more businesses are looking to integrate the Chatbot into the process of offering superior customer service. Chatbots work as virtual assistants, who can engage the customer and improve the experience regardless of the number of visits and timings. A Chatbot system is accessible, scalable, and boosts satisfaction.

 

 

A good Chatbot system helps forge customer relations and is known as a proven tool for a strong connection. This happens through engagement, interaction, and proper answers using AI for website visitors. Here are 10 benefits for businesses:

1. Increase Customer Engagement

Chatbot increases customer engagement using personalizing the windows and offering real-time one-to-one responses. AI-enabled Chatbot understands the user’s behavior and responds to him in the most desired manner.

2. Lead Generation

Ecommerce sites like eBay are making business on chatbots. These services are routing the customer to the sales team or proceeding orders online. The most prominent reason for getting huge queries to website development service providers.

3. Reduce The Cost of Customer Services

While integrating the chatbots, you need not deploy the sales or customer support executive. For large businesses, companies spend the amount on outsourcing customer support. Chatbot reduces the overload considerably.

4. Consumer Data Monitoring

Using chatbots, it is easier to monitor the leads and customer data. IT companies recommend these chatbots for letting you understand which customers are interested and can offer options to engage.

5. Conversational Marketing Strategy

By engaging the customers in conversation, it is easier to bring them into the loop. Chatbots are an effective medium to share product details, offers, and discounts, and give a raw tour of the project.

6. Balance Automation Level

Everything cannot be automated even by the mobile application development company. Chatbots are an effective way to take the lead and route them to the respective departments. This balances the automation level.

7. Meet User Expectations

The user wants a business to respond and stay present at his available time. Manually it is not always possible and even with a big team, sometimes the line is not free and the user has to wait. Chatbots respond instantaneously and solve this problem.

8. Streamline Onboarding

Customers can easily find the way to their desired service using chatbots. Chatbot systems can take customer queries and provide active links for the same.

9. Smooth Customer Journey

With the proper mentor, quick responses, and real-time answers, chatbots offer a smooth journey.

Along with the benefits of 24/7 availability, Chatbot development services come with many advantages. It helps you in grabbing the lost deals and initiating new leads, changing the story of business growth.

 

 

According to the reports published by Juniper Research, the cost of building the Chatbot is significantly low than the cost incurred by loss of leads, low response quality, and delay in communication.

 

Types of Chatbot

Not every chatbot is the same. Every organization may need some exclusive features for specific needs from the chatbot development service. Therefore, there are several kinds of chatbots, according to demarcation on superset and subset.

From superset, two kinds of chatbots can invest in:

1. Bots in Own App

The chatbots working inside the mobile apps come under this category and are widely used by website development services. These apps perform a certain task for the automation of consumer interaction with the app. This saves cost and reduces the size of the team.

2. Bots Functioning With Messenger

These chatbots stay in messenger supporting the bot–user interaction, most prevalent among android app development companies. These bots are best recommended by software development company for businesses, which does not have any standalone apps and uses social media as the communication medium of the whole business.

Under the primary categories of the chatbot, which works with or without the dedicated app, there are other numbers of chatbots. Before you hire an iOS developer, let’s understand the types of chatbots:

• FAQ Chatbot: Every user wants to know some things from your website and it’s completely natural to get some doubts. To better answer the questions of the user, FAQ chatbots are built. FAQ chatbots give an automated response to the usually asked questions. Intuitive chatbots provide the best interaction with the user and keep him engaged in the loop.
• Conversational Chatbot: These chatbots are automated replacements for the customer support executive. It is not always possible to answer the question of users or communicate to them adhoc. Therefore, these chatbots take basic information about the user and keep him engaged till the executive is free.
• Transactional Chatbot: These chatbots are most frequently used by eCommerce websites or apps which sell something. Here, users interact with the chatbot and purchase things using the chatbot. This eliminates the need for an hour-long conversation with the customer support executive.
• Predictive Chatbots: These chatbots are advanced among mobile application development companies and are the most popular one of them all the time. These chatbots are designed for a specific purpose. Most of the time, the predictive chatbots are integrated with machine learning, for reading the user behavior and analyzing how the user reacts to certain situations.

However, the chatbots are structured the same, and the features are integrated for specific purposes. According to the survey by Oracle, around 80 percent of respondents said, that they had used chatbots already or planning to use them by 2020. For hiring a mobile app Development Company, you need to answer several questions to get the perfect chatbot:

• What are the things you need to do before building a chatbot?
• What are the processes involved in chatbot development by a web development company?
• What is the cost of chatbot development?

Here, let’s read next to the cost efficiency and the approximate estimate of the chatbot app development phases.

The Process of Chatbot App Development

Here in this article, we have traveled through the definition of a chatbot, the types of chatbots and now we have come to the process of development. Before determining the cost of development, the chatbot app development process is necessary to understand.

The development process is categorized into several phases. Knowing the development process helps you in estimating the cost of the chatbot. Here is a roadmap for chatbot app development.

1. Discovery Phase

Discovery phases are the primary and essential steps for the development process of any website development service. Here, the task is to determine the project purpose. Getting the proper understanding of the chatbot features and cost-affecting factors, it is easier to understand the development strategy. Here the target of the app, metrics, and expectations are set.

Here you need to sum up all the requirement-generating factors of a chatbot. List the points out, and what you want from chatbot integration. This helps in ascertaining the development strategy. Also, the technology stack can be decided, whether you are an android app development company or an iOS development service provider.

The following things are focused on in this phase:  

• Describe the size of the business.
• Are you building a chatbot for entertaining the clients or for replacing customer support?
• Which processes do you want to be automated such as customer support; post-sales request handling or any other?
• How many messaging platforms are you providing support for? What are those platforms?

The above questions are truly simple but extremely important to answer for an in-depth understanding of the phase and go through advanced stages.

This phase of chatbot app development is all about identifying the requirements and functional chatbots features such as:

• Flow of conversation
• Control panel
• Interaction channel
• NLP
• Backend

You also need to decide whether you want a

1. Custom-built solution: These bots are built by web development companies with customized preferences, plans, and needs. These chatbots are perfect for custom requirements but they also come with the responsibility of support and maintenance.
2. Build the app over another platform: This is a cost-effective solution. These services are available on a subscription basis along with the additional customization fee. Here, you need not worry about support and maintenance.

Choosing between two is your choice, as both are perfect for specific use cases. The final consideration is to determine the timeline, budget, and team ability on documentation.

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2. Prototype and Evaluation

A prototype is a model which can be called the skeleton of the actual product. The prototype model tells what the product will look like. It can be functioning using code, or may mockups with the specific design. Here, designs, functions, and conversational routes are verified.

Every prototype is discussed with the client, for validating the requirement, making changes, outlining alternate options, and assessing the cost and risk. The idea is to catch the sense of risk and loss associated with the product and solve it at the early stages. The early stages of the development are less complex and it is easy to solve the issues here.

However, here at this stage, you can hire dedicated developers to make things smoother. Here the actual cost of the product development starts for website development companies. Usually, the cost of chatbot prototype development goes between $3000 and $5000.

3. Minimum Viable Product

Sometimes the prototype is wrongly considered to be the same as the prototype. Here it is worth knowing that the prototype is just a simple mockup with the least possible functionality, built for reading the cash flow and making changes as per user interference. Whereas Minimum Viable Product is a product with limited features, usually essential ones.

An MVP product contains the basic functionality, which can be said to be the lighter version of the chatbot. MVP product is ready to launch, is saleable, and marketable. It works with actual data and is exposed to user feedback, critics, and market responses.

The cost for building the minimum viable product by a good website development company could be between $10000 and $20000.

4. Software Release

The product with the list of competed set of features is launched in the market. The customer feedback is attained with the software MVP, and the respective changes are made. We elicit the risks and bugs in the early stages and therefore it is easier to launch the final product with the lowest possible risk.

The cost of this phase is determined in the early stages.

5. Continuous Development

Every product becomes better with time and experience. The effectiveness of the chatbot depends upon knowledge and training. Machine learning and Artificial intelligence are like a small kid, whose knowledge increases with experience and teaching and he gradually becomes a learned, knowledgeable guy.

Similarly, Continuous development makes the AI-powered chatbot more capable, intelligent, faster, intuitive, and communicate with a human. Overall it could be a good replacement for primary customer support.

How Much Does It Cost To Develop a Chatbot?

The AI-enabled chatbots are considered expensive and not affordable for small enterprises and ventures. With the help of various libraries, frameworks, and affordable technology, today, chatbot app development is easier and quite low cost.

The final cost estimation of a chatbot from a good mobile app development company goes between $8000 and $14000.

 

 

If your chatbot requirement is complex, while requiring a high level of computation and machine learning, it can go between $13000 and $23000. Often these kinds of chatbots handle a full range of business solutions.

You can start with the simple chatbot software and then automate the flow. A simple chatbot may also go between $5000 and $15000.

Summing it up

Hardly anyone will refuse the capabilities of any app integrated with the chatbot.  No user today wants to queue up in calls to customer care. Spending time over a phone call is the talk of the past today. The chatbot is not just a conversational flow for a website; instead, it expands the customer base, lets you collect data, and leads to better business terms. IT companies appreciate the ease of the self-serving tool and use it to correspond with customers anytime.