How tiring is it to answer the same questions again and again? Your customer support team knows the feeling all too well.

You have to admit that answering FAQs is laborious, time-consuming, and frankly, a little boring. How amazing would it be to automate those FAQ answers and let your agents handle complex issues that need them?

Well, that’s exactly what a FAQ chatbot does. These bots offer 24/7 support and can handle 80% of routine customer questions. This way, they make your customers happy while boosting your business productivity and growth.

In this post, we’ll cover everything you need to know about FAQ automation chatbots: what they are, their different types, their benefits, and how to build a FAQ chatbot for your business.

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What is a FAQ Chatbot

FAQ chatbots are software tools designed to answer common questions about your products and services.

They function as virtual assistants, using a chat interface to provide instant answers around the clock. This around-the-clock availability is important – studies show that over 51% of people expect businesses to be reachable 24/7.

To build a chatbot for FAQ, you just have to gather frequently asked questions from your customers and write corresponding answers. So when a customer asks a similar question, the chatbot draws on this knowledge base to provide the right answers.

While bots excel at automating FAQs, they do have limitations. They may struggle with complex questions or provide incorrect and irrelevant responses. It all depends on the type of chatbot you use. Which brings us to…

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What are the types of FAQ Chatbots?

Not all FAQ based chatbots are the same. Some have limitations, while others are really advanced. Here are the three most common types:

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1. Rule-based Chatbots

These are the earliest types of chatbots. They let users select from a list of options or type a question and then provide a scripted answer.

For example, a rule-based bot might ask: “Are you interested in 1) Hours of Operation, 2) Return Policy, or 3) Product Information?” The users’ selection determines the next response.

As you can guess, these bots are somewhat dumb. If a user phrases a question differently, the chatbot may not find a match and may fail to answer. This feels rigid and less conversational.

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2. Keyword-based Chatbots

These are somewhat more flexible. They basically scan the user’s question for specific keywords and then match those keywords to answers in their knowledge base.

This way, they can deal with more complex inquiries compared to rule-based bots. For instance, a question like “Can I get a refund on a damaged item?” would trigger a response related to your return policy due to the keywords “refund” and “damaged.”

They can understand some variations in how a question is phrased. However, they are still rigid, and this can lead to misunderstandings if the query doesn’t contain relevant keywords.

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3. NLP Chatbots

Now these are rulers of the chatbot world. Powered by Natural Language Processing (NLP), they can understand the intent behind a user’s question, get the underlying feelings, and provide natural responses.

They use machine learning algorithms to continuously learn from their interactions and become smarter. For instance, Chatsimple's AI sales chatbot can provide human-like responses to complex questions, even if they are phrased differently.

These chatbots are great options to improve user experience and delight your customers. Let’s look in detail at how NLP-powered FAQ chatbots help. Let’s see an example of a NLP-powered FAQ chatbot…

A good example of a FAQ chatbot

FAQ bots are a great tool to keep your website visitors engaged and guide them down the sales funnel. Here’s a good example of an advanced FAQ chatbot used by CODE.

CODE is an innovative educational institution in Berlin that offers Bachelor’s programs in Software Engineering, Product Management, and Interaction Design. They use a FAQ automation chatbot on their website that welcomes visitors and invites them to share their queries.

This smart AI chatbot answers all the questions with clear, concise, and accurate responses. Since this is an NLP chatbot, it can understand the intent behind the user’s queries and provide hyper-personalized responses that sound human.

Apart from answering FAQs, this chatbot also asks engaging questions and drives the conversation in a certain direction. If visitors show interest in their study programs, the bot directly asks them to schedule a meeting in the chat window itself. This way, Code can convert website visitors into qualified leads while supporting them 24/7.

What are the must-have features of a FAQ chatbot?

Before we discuss how to build a FAQ chatbot, we must talk about the five essential features that make a chatbot effective and easy to manage. You should look for these features when creating a chatbot for your business.

1. Predefined responses

You don’t want the chatbot to provide wrong answers to your users. Predefined responses is the feature that would help you avoid that and make your bot more accurate.

With this feature, you can train your chatbot with the right answers to common questions your website visitors ask. Just collect those questions, write the perfect answer, and then feed them to the bot. You can keep updating these questions and answers as your business grows.

2. Personalization

A chatbot that sounds robotic can frustrate users. The personalization feature helps the bot to understand each user and provide relevant responses that address their unique problems.

Personalized bots can remember past interactions and make the conversation feel like a continuation rather than starting fresh each time. This leads to a smoother and human-like interaction. That’s important because 71% of buyers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions.

3. Lead generation

Advanced chatbots for FAQ can generate leads and improve your sales. While interacting with website visitors, it can request their contact details or prompt them to book a meeting. This doesn’t feel intrusive as visitors are engaged in the conversation.

The chatbot can automatically collect and store these leads in your CRM, giving your sales team valuable information to follow up on. It’s a really smart way to turn casual visitors into potential customers.

4. Multilingual support

This is an essential FAQ chatbot feature if you serve customers from different countries. A multilingual bot can detect the user’s language and respond accordingly.

With this feature, you can support your global audience easily without hiring support staff for each language. Whether the user is from Japan, Spain, or Germany, the bot can engage them in their preferred language, providing seamless support and making them feel valuable.

5. Ease of use

You don’t want to hire experts to build a bot from scratch. That would be time-consuming and costly.

A good chatbot platform allows you to create, train, and launch your bot quickly with no technical expertise. It should have an intuitive dashboard that allows you to view conversations and track user engagement. Also, it should be easy to change how the bot responds to questions and optimize its performance.

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What are the benefits of FAQ bots?

FAQ automation chatbots can enhance your customer service and help your business in multiple ways:

24/7 support

FAQ chatbots don’t need breaks. They are there to support customers even during off-hours or holidays, making the waiting time completely zero. This makes your brand more reliable and customers more satisfied.

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Efficiency and cost savings

By handling the bulk of repetitive questions, FAQ chatbots free up your human agents to focus on complex issues that actually need them. This improves resource allocation, leading to efficiency and cost savings. No wonder chatbots can save up to 30% in customer support costs.

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Supports international customers

Unlike human agents, FAQ chatbots can speak over 100 languages. This breaks down language barriers and creates a more welcoming experience for your global audience. That means you can scale your business to global markets without any hassle.

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Easy integrations

Chatbots for FAQ can be integrated with multiple messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. This way, your bot will be where your customers are, supporting them and making them feel valued.

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Increases sales

A good FAQ chatbot acts like an expert salesperson. They can answer product questions, address objections, collect inbound leads, and nudge people toward a purchase decision, bringing you more sales opportunities. In fact, studies indicate chatbots can increase sales by up to 67%.

So, happier customers, efficient processes, increased sales, and reduced costs all contribute to one thing – the growth of your business. That’s what makes these AI bots a powerful tool for your business. 

But how do you make a FAQ chatbot? Let’s see…

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How to build a FAQ Chatbot for your business

Building a chatbot for FAQ is easy. With the rise of AI, many chatbot platforms now let you create your bot within minutes. However, you need to be somewhat careful and put some effort into training the bot to make it speak your brand. Here’s what you have to do:

1. Define your goals

Yeah, that’s how we begin anything. Be clear about why you need a chatbot and what specific problems you want the bot to solve.

Apart from answering FAQs, maybe you want the bot to generate leads for your business, or maybe you want to book more sales meetings, or maybe you want to make personalized product recommendations to your prospects.

This way, you can pinpoint the chatbot features you need, which will help you with the second step.

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2. Choose the right Chatbot platform

Based on your goals, choose a chatbot platform that perfectly meets your requirements. 

If your FAQs are simple (e.g., store hours, basic product specs), a rule-based or keyword-based chatbot might be enough.

But we would suggest you go for NLP-powered bots like Chatsimple's AI sales chatbot. They not only are fast, effective, and affordable but also let you save big money.

Consider these factors while looking for a chatbot provider:

• Is the chatbot smart enough to handle complex queries
• Does it support multi-channel integration
• Can the chatbot support your overseas audience
• Is the chatbot easy to train, launch, and maintain

Schedule a meeting with the chatbot provider’s team to discuss your goals and explore their solutions. Don’t forget to try the free trial and see the chatbot in action.

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3. Collect the questions

Time to compile all those questions your customers usually ask. Here’s how you can do it:

• Check your email, support tickets, and phone call records for common concerns.
• Analyze direct messages, relevant online groups, and comments on your social media and blog posts for questions customers ask publicly.
• Talk to your sales teams and customer-facing employees about the common questions they hear repeatedly from customers.

Now, organize those questions and write the best answers.

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4. Train the FAQ Chatbot

This is where you prepare your bot to answer the FAQs effectively. Let’s see how you can train the Chatsimple's AI chatbot for sales.

On the Questions and Answers tab, you will see this window:

Click the Add button, and you will get the option to add questions and their response. If you want to do it faster, you can import FAQs from your website. You just have to put the URL of the FAQ page, and it will do it automatically.

Once you have listed all the FAQs, you can review and edit them to ensure they are all correct. Also, if you would like to get an email notification whenever someone asks a particular question, toggle “Escalate with Email.”

That’s it. Easy, right?

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5. Test it

Before you launch the FAQ bot, see how it responds. Just ask some questions to check its performance. You can also get feedback from team members, friends, and, if possible, a group of customers.

If you find any irrelevant responses or areas of improvement, you may fix the bot by providing additional suggestions at the Advanced section.

Pro tip: Inject personality to your bot to make it align with your brand. For example, if you make funky T-shirts and your target customer is Gen Z, your bot can be more playful and have a meme-savvy tone. It will make your chatbot more engaging.

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Go beyond FAQ Chatbots

Chatbots for FAQs are helpful, which is why so many businesses use them. But if you want to stand out, you have to go beyond FAQ chatbots. You may use advanced tools like AI copilot.

AI copilots like AI Nav help your visitors find what they need instantly, giving them a VIP experience. It not only provides personalized responses to complex FAQs but also understands your prospect’s needs to recommend the right products.

Unlike traditional FAQ bots with a chat icon in the corner, AI Nav appears as a unique search bar at the bottom of your website. It’s basically a search engine for your website that works 24/7 to keep your customer happy, increasing their lifetime value. 

AI Nav is fluent in 175+ languages, so you can reach your global audience effortlessly. Overall, it acts as your personal assistant who can collect leads, book meetings, and boost sales, taking your business to the next level.

Visit this page to learn more about AI Nav.