Chatbots, Robot and Me

Automation and optimization of the internal business procedures, reducing the time allocated for processing of documents, customers, reducing of the human factor - is exactly what any entrepreneur is striving for. It's clear that you cannot manage without employees in the company. But, at least, you can reduce the workload for them and for yourself in everyday business, constantly changing and supplementing the current set of actions without any problems.

The good automation of processes for reducing time is one of the most important options when choosing a CRM for business. A good example of this is Bitrix24 CRM with quite big instruments for improving the quality of execution of processes. The main options for optimizing routine or labor-intensive work in Bitrix24 are business processes, robots, triggers, chatbots, various rest-applications and modules. We will analyze robots and chatbots, and also see the examples of their implementation.

This option of automation is one of the newest. At the same time, the simplest, often not requiring any additional intervention after the initial implementation, and also, what is important, easily supplemented by the new functional.

What are robots in CRM Bitrix24? In fact, this is a set of specific actions that must be performed when a lead or transaction moves to a certain status. It looks something like this:

The robot can be launched as postponed (after some time, after the previous robot is executed); instantly (when changing status), and discharging the specified conditions:

What can robots do in Bitrix24 CRM? Literally everything, that you need for your business: to create reminders, tasks, goals, to plan calls and appointments, to send emails and sms messages, to send notifications, and much more in a standard set of actions. If this is not enough - no problems - there are two options for solving the task. The first is the built-in designer of business processes:

The second way is to create your own robot using Rest API Bitrix24. And here it is already possible to turn around and implement literally any functional that is lacking.

Chatbots are no longer so primitive. And although they are mostly used in the framework of some rules or specified actions, the look of AI chatbots is gaining in popularity, they will not only do the tasks assigned to them, but also will self-learn during the work process, will give the client everything with more accurate results and will bring it to the desired goal. The implementing of an AI bot is, of course, not simple and requires a lot of resources. But on the usual chatbots, you also can do a lot of things.

The main option for using chatbots for business is the communication with the client. For example, chatbot, asking a number of necessary questions to the lead, reduces the time of his real communication with the manager. And, at the moment of the beginning of communication, the employee of your company does not ask routine questions, but proceeds immediately to the matter, besides having processed a greater number of such chats in less time. In some cases, these bots conduct the processing of the client completely, and you only have to monitor the final process, not participating at the same time in ordinary affairs and not getting tired of the routine. Yes, of course, this is also not good to remove completely contact with the client: this is a sacred matter. But you can without problems to shorten his time, leaving only the main goal of communication.

This is expensive and resource-intensive to develop a separate application with a bot. It is much easier to use an already existing set of instruments of various services or platforms. Chatbots in CRM Bitrix24 allow you to implement your scenarios of client processing, reminders, mailing, processing and generation of documents without any problems and unnecessary costs.

But that's not all! If you want, you can integrate with various services or messengers, learn the weather, exchange rates, watch the horoscope, book the tickets ... And, if you want, it will tell you the joke. All this and all that is need to be done is possible thanks to the Bitrix24 Rest API and all this is possible without leaving your favorite CRM, without going to other sites and without installing the application for every desired service.

For some reason, in the robots’ standard action "Creating a task" the employee does not have the ability to set the time for the task, and sometimes it is very necessary. Let's fix it by creating your own action / robot using Rest API Bitrix24. Create as follows:

We go to the list of actions and choose our created one. We see that all the transmitted fields when creating the robot are present and work:

Creating a bot, the HANDLER parameter is set and it’s there, where CRM will send all data from the filled fields when the action is executed:

Now, having all the necessary data, it is not difficult to create a task using the Rest API task.item.add method, passing the TIME_ESTIMATE parameter, thereby solving the assigned task.

Of course, this is a simple example of implementing a robot, but you can always increase the required functionality for any requirements.

To demonstrate the capabilities of a chatbot, we realize the automatic coffee ordering, without attracting people for communication. The task is as follows:

• To offer a coffee order on behalf of a bot;

• Selection of coffee types;

• Indication of the number of cups;

• As well as requesting of a phone number and a shipping address;

• When there is a confirmation – to make an order.

The registration of the chatbot can be done using the Rest API imbot.register, and uninstalling imbot.unregister by hanging this code on the ONAPPINSTALL and ONIMBOTDELETE events, respectively. After successful registration of the bot, you can process all messages that are written to it in the ONIMBOTMESSAGEADD event, the whole code will be there, the user's parameters and messages will come there, and from there we will respond to the user, depending on what he will write to us and what he will choose in the variants proposed by us.

You can send messages to the user using the Rest method imbot.message.add:

The result is quite good: chat\bot, which knows how to sell and how to create orders:

The order was made out, there was no communication with the person, the task is completed. This is a very simple example of the capabilities of chatbots and you can expand their functionality almost endlessly and how much your imagination will last.

CRM Bitrix24 has a wide range of instruments for automating your business processes and reducing your time. At the same time, the choice of the method of such optimization is always yours. If you want a few actions when changing statuses, than choose robots. If you want less human factor in communicating with customers, than chatbots will be in a hurry to help your business. In any case, the automation is a must-have in any business.

And we will help you in this!