How to Do Market Research: A Guide and Template

Today's consumers have a lot of power. They can research your product or service and make purchase decisions entirely on their own.

Moreover, rather than talking to one of your sales reps, they're more likely to ask for referrals from members of their networks or read online reviews. 

With this in mind, have you adapted your marketing strategy to complement the way today's consumers research, shop, and buy?

To do just that, you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are, your specific market, and what influences the purchase decisions and behavior of your target audience members.

Enter: Market Research. 

Whether you're new to market research, this guide will provide you with a blueprint for conducting a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more.

What is market research?

Market research is the process of gathering information about your business's buyers personas, target audience, and customers to determine how viable and successful your product or service would be, and/or is, among these people.

Why do market research?

Market research allows you to meet your buyer where they are. As our world (both digital and analog) becomes louder and demands more and more of our attention, this proves invaluable. By understanding your buyer's problems, pain points, and desired solutions, you can aptly craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them.

Market research also provides insight into a wide variety of things that impact your bottom line including:

• Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product or service research
• Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
• What's trending in your industry and in the eyes of your buyer
• Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
• What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience 

As you begin honing in on your market research, you'll likely hear about primary and secondary market research. The easiest way to think about primary and secondary research is to envision to umbrellas sitting beneath market research: one for primary market research and one for secondary market research.

Beneath these two umbrellas sits a number of different types of market research, which we'll highlight below. Defining which of the two umbrellas your market research fits beneath isn't necessarily crucial, although some marketers prefer to make the distinction.

So, in case you encounter a marketer who wants to define your types of market research as primary or secondary — or if you're one of them — let's cover the definitions of the two categories next. Then, we'll look at the different types of market research in the following section. 

Primary vs. Secondary Research

There are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products including primary research and secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market. It's useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas. Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets: exploratory and specific research.

Exploratory Primary Research

This kind of primary market research is less concerned with measurable customer trends and more about potential problems that would be worth tackling as a team. It normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.

Specific Primary Research

Specific primary market research often follows exploratory research and is used to dive into issues or opportunities the business has already identified as important. In specific research, the business can take a smaller or more precise segment of their audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from(e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business). Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors. The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:

Public Sources

These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They're often free to find and review — lots of bang for your buck here.

Government statistics are one of the most common types of public sources according to Entrepreneur. Two U.S. examples of public market data are the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor & Statistics, both of which offer helpful information on the state of various industries nationwide.

Commercial Sources

These sources often come in the form of market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew, Gartner, or Forrester. Because this info is so portable and distributable, it typically costs money to download and obtain.

Internal Sources

Internal sources deserve more credit for supporting market research than they generally get. Why? This is the market data your organization already has!

Average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data on the health of old and new accounts can all help you draw conclusions on what your buyers might want right now.

Now that we've covered these overarching market research categories, let's get more specific and look at the various types of market research you might choose to conduct. 

1. Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions (in-person and virtual) so you can allow for a natural flow or conversation and watch your interviewee's body language while doing so. 

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that you can have test out your product, watch a demo, provide feedback, and/or answer specific questions.

3. Product/Service Use Research

Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service, and specific features of that item. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service's usability for your target audience. 

4. Observation-Based Research

Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX, what roadblocks they hit, and which aspects of it could be easier for them to use and apply. 

5. Buyer Persona Research

Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, what they need from your business and brand, and more. 

6. Market Segmentation Research

Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics — this way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs, understand their pain points and expectations, learn about their goals, and more. 

7. Pricing Research

Pricing research gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for, what your target audience expects to pay — and is willing to pay — for whatever it is you sell, and what's a fair price for you to list your product or service at. All of this information will help you define your pricing strategy. 

8. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses are valuable because they give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what's doing well in your industry, what your target audience is already going for in terms of products like yours, which of your competitors should you work to keep up with and surpass, and how you can clearly separate yourself from the competition. 

9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research give you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g. loyalty programs, rewards, remarkable customer service). This research will help you discover the most-effective ways to promote delight among your customers.

10. Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness research tells you about what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations your audience members make when they think about your business and what they believe you're all about.  

11. Campaign Research

Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. It requires experimentation and then a deep dive into what reached and resonated with your audience so you can keep those elements in mind for your future campaigns and hone in on the aspects of what you do that matters most to those people. 

Now that you know about the categories and types of market research, let's review how you can conduct your market research.

Here's how to do market research step-by-step.

1. Define your buyer persona.

Before you dive into how customers in your industry make buying decisions, you must first understand who they are.

This is where your buyer personas come in handy. Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

Use a free tool to create a buyer persona that your entire company can use to market, sell, and serve better.

They help you visualize your audience, streamline your communications, and inform your strategy. Some key characteristics you should be keen on including in your buyer persona are:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Job title(s)
• Job titles
• Family size
• Income
• Major challenges

The idea is to use your persona as a guideline for  how to effectively reach and learn about the real audience members in your industry. Also, you may find that your business lends itself to more than one persona — that's fine! You just need to be  thoughtful about each specific persona when you're optimizing and planning your content and campaigns.

To get started with creating your personas, check out these free templates, as well as this helpful tool. 

2. Identify a persona group to engage.

Now that you know who your buyer personas are, use that information to help you identify a group to engage to conduct your market research with — this should be a representative sample of your target customers so you can better understand their actual characteristics, challenges, and buying habits.

The group you identify to engage should also be made of people who recently made a purchase or purposefully decided not to make one. Here are some more guidelines and tips to help you get the right participants for your research. 

How to Identify the Right People to Engage for Market Research

When choosing who to engage for your market research, start by focusing on people who have the characteristics that apply to your buyer persona. You should also:

Aim for 10 participants per buyer persona.

We recommend focusing on one persona, but if you feel it's necessary to research multiple personas, be sure to recruit a separate sample group for each one.

Select people who have recently interacted with you.

You may want to focus on people that have completed an evaluation within the past six months — or up to a year if you have a longer sales cycle or niche market. You'll be asking very detailed questions so it's important that their experience is fresh.

Gather a mix of participants.

You want to recruit people who have purchased your product, purchased a competitor's product, and decided not to purchase anything at all. While your customers will be the easiest to find and recruit, sourcing information from those who aren't customers (yet!) will help you develop a balanced view of your market. 

Here are some more details on how to select this mix of participants:

• Pull a list of customers who made a recent purchase. As we mentioned before, this is usually the easiest set of buyers to recruit. If you're using a CRM system, you can run a report of deals that closed within the past six months and filter it for the characteristics you're looking for. Otherwise, you can work with your sales team to get a list of appropriate accounts from them.
• Pull a list of customers who were in an active evaluation, but didn't make a purchase. You should get a mix of buyers who either purchased from a competitor or decided not to make a purchase. Again, you can get this list from your CRM or from whatever system your Sales team uses to track deals.
• Call for participants on social media. Try reaching out to the folks that follow you on social media, but decided not to buy from you. There's a chance that some of them will be willing to talk to you and tell you why they ultimately decided not to buy your product.
• Leverage your own network. Get the word out to your coworkers, former colleagues, and LinkedIn connections that you're conducting a study. Even if your direct connections don't qualify, some of them will likely have a coworker, friend, or family member who does.
• Choose an incentive. Time is precious, so you'll need to think about how you will motivate someone to spend 30-45 minutes on you and your study. On a tight budget? You can reward participants for free by giving them exclusive access to content. Another option? Send a simple handwritten 'thank you' note once the study is complete. 

3. Prepare research questions for your market research participants.

The best way to make sure you get the most out of your conversations is to be prepared. You should always create a discussion guide — whether it's for a focus group, online survey, or a phone interview — to make sure you cover all of the top-of-mind questions and use your time wisely.

(Note: This is not intended to be a script. The discussions should be natural and conversational, so we encourage you to go out of order or probe into certain areas as you see fit.)

Your discussion guide should be in an outline format, with a time allotment and open-ended questions for each section.

Wait, all open-ended questions?

Yes — this is a golden rule of market research. You never want to "lead the witness" by asking yes and no questions, as that puts you at risk of unintentionally swaying their thoughts by leading with your own hypothesis. Asking open-ended questions also helps you avoid one-word answers (which aren't very helpful for you).

Example Outline of a 30-Minute Survey 

Here's a general outline for a 30-minute survey for one B2B buyer. You can use these as talking points for an in-person interview, or as questions posed on a digital form to administer as a survey to your target customers.

Background Information (5 Minutes)

Ask the buyer to give you a little background information (their title, how long they've been with the company, and so on). Then, ask a fun/easy question to warm things up (first concert attended, favorite restaurant in town, last vacation, etc.).

Remember, you want to get to know your buyers in pretty specific ways. You might be able to capture basic information such as age, location, and job title from your contact list, there are some personal and professional challenges you can really only learn by asking.

Here are some other key background questions to ask your target audience:

• Describe how your team is structured.
• Tell me about your personal job responsibilities.
• What are the team's goals and how do you measure them?
• What has been your biggest challenge in the past year?

Now, make a transition to acknowledge the specific purchase or interaction they made that led to you including them in the study. The next three stages of the buyer's journey will focus specifically on that purchase.

Awareness (5 Minutes)

Here, you want to understand how they first realized they had a problem that needed to be solved without getting into whether or not they knew about your brand yet.

• Think back to when you first realized you needed a [name the product/service category, but not yours specifically]. What challenges were you facing at the time?
• How did you know that something in this category could help you?
• How familiar were you with different options on the market?

Consideration (10 Minutes)

Now you want to get very specific about how and where the buyer researched potential solutions. Plan to interject to ask for more details.

• What was the first thing you did to research potential solutions? How helpful was this source?
• Where did you go to find more information?

If they don't come up organically, ask about search engines, websites visited, people consulted, and so on. Probe, as appropriate, with some of the following questions:

• How did you find that source?
• How did you use vendor websites?
• What words specifically did you search on Google?
• How helpful was it? How could it be better?
• Who provided the most (and least) helpful information? What did that look like?
• Tell me about your experiences with the sales people from each vendor.

Decision (10 Minutes)

• Which of the sources you described above was the most influential in driving your decision?
• What, if any, criteria did you establish to compare the alternatives?
• What vendors made it to the short list and what were the pros/cons of each?
• Who else was involved in the final decision? What role did each of these people play?
• What factors ultimately influenced your final purchasing decision?

Closing

Here, you want to wrap up and understand what could have been better for the buyer.

• Ask them what their ideal buying process would look like. How would it differ from what they experienced?
• Allow time for further questions on their end.
• Don't forget to thank them for their time and confirm their address to send a thank-you note or incentive.

4. List your primary competitors.

List your primary competitors — keep in mind listing the competition isn't always as simple as Company X versus Company Y.

Sometimes, a division of a company might compete with your main product or service, even though that company's brand might put more effort in another area.

For example. Apple is known for its laptops and mobile devices but Apple Music competes with Spotify over its music streaming service.

From a content standpoint, you might compete with a blog, YouTube channel, or similar publication for inbound website visitors — even though their products don't overlap with yours at all.

And a toothpaste company might compete with magazines like Health.com or Prevention on certain blog topics related to health and hygiene even though the magazines don't actually sell oral care products.

Identifying Industry Competitors

To identify competitors whose products or services overlap with yours, determine which industry or industries you're pursuing. Start high-level, using terms like education, construction, media & entertainment, food service, healthcare, retail, financial services, telecommunications, and agriculture.

The list goes on, but find an industry term that you identify with, and use it to create a list of companies that also belong to this industry. You can build your list the following ways:

• Review your industry quadrant on G2 Crowd: In certain industries, this is your best first step in secondary market research. G2 Crowd aggregates user ratings and social data to create "quadrants," where you can see companies plotted as contenders, leaders, niche, and high performers in their respective industries. G2 Crowd specializes in digital content, IT services, HR, ecommerce, and related business services.
• Download a market report: Companies like Forrester and Gartner offer both free and gated market forecasts every year on the vendors who are leading their industry. On Forrester's website, for example, you can select "Latest Research" from the navigation bar and browse Forrester's latest material using a variety of criteria to narrow your search. These reports are good assets to save on your computer.
• Search using social media: Believe it or not, social networks make great company directories if you use the search bar correctly. On LinkedIn, for example, select the search bar and enter the name of the industry you're pursuing. Then, under "More," select "Companies" to narrow your results to just the businesses that include this or a similar industry term on their LinkedIn profile.

Identifying Content Competitors

Search engines are your best friends in this area of secondary market research. To find the online publications with which you compete, take the overarching industry term you identified in the section above, and come up with a handful of more specific industry terms your company identifies with.

A catering business, for example, might generally be a "food service" company, but also consider itself a vendor in "event catering," "cake catering," "baked goods," and more.

Once you have this list, do the following:

• Google it: Don't underestimate the value in seeing which websites come up when you run a search on Google for the industry terms that describe your company. You might find a mix of product developers, blogs, magazines, and more.
• Compare your search results against your buyer persona: Remember the buyer persona you created during the primary research stage, earlier in this article? Use it to examine how likely a publication you found through Google could steal website traffic from you. If the content the website publishes seems like the stuff your buyer persona would want to see, it's a potential competitor, and should be added to your list of competitors.

After a series of similar Google searches for the industry terms you identify with, look for repetition in the website domains that have come up.

Examine the first two or three results pages for each search you conducted. These websites are clearly respected for the content they create in your industry, and should be watched carefully as you build your own library of videos, reports, web pages, and blog posts.

5. Summarize your findings.

Feeling overwhelmed by the notes you took? We suggest looking for common themes that will help you tell a story and create a list of action items.

To make the process easier, try using your favorite presentation software to make a report, as it will make it easy to add in quotes, diagrams, or call clips.

Feel free to add your own flair, but the following outline should help you craft a clear summary:

• Background: Your goals and why you conducted this study.
• Participants: Who you talked to. A table works well so you can break groups down by persona and customer/prospect.
• Executive Summary: What were the most interesting things you learned? What do you plan to do about it?
• Awareness: Describe the common triggers that lead someone to enter into an evaluation. (Quotes can be very powerful.)
• Consideration: Provide the main themes you uncovered, as well as the detailed sources buyers use when conducting their evaluation.
• Decision: Paint the picture of how a decision is really made by including the people at the center of influence and any product features or information that can make or break a deal.
• Action Plan: Your analysis probably uncovered a few campaigns you can run to get your brand in front of buyers earlier and/or more effectively. Provide your list of priorities, a timeline, and the impact it will have on your business.

Lastly, let's review a resource that can help you compile everything we just discussed in a simple yet effective way (plus, it's free!).

Market Research Report Template

Within a market research kit, there are a number of critical pieces of information for your business's success. Let's take a look at what those different kit elements are next. 

Pro Tip: Upon downloading HubSpot's free Market Research Kit, you'll receive editable templates for each of the given parts of the kit as well as instructions on how to use the templates and kit, and a mock presentation that you can edit and customize. 

Download HubSpot's free, editable market research report template here. 

1. Five Forces Analysis Template

Use Porter's Five Forces Model to understand an industry by analyzing five different criteria and how high the power, threat, or rivalry in each area is — here are the five criteria: 

• Competitive rivalry
• Threat of new entrants
• Threat of substitution
• Buyer power
• Supplier power

Download a free, editable Five Forces Analysis template here. 

2. SWOT Analysis Template

 

 A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis looks at your internal strengths and weaknesses, and your external opportunities and threats within the market.

A SWOT analysis highlights direct areas of opportunity your company can continue, build, focus on, and work to overcome.

 

Download a free, editable SWOT Analysis template here. 

3. Market Survey Template

Both market surveys and focus groups (which we'll cover in the next section) help you uncover important information about your buyer personas, target audience, current customers, market, competition, and more (e.g. demand for your product or service, potential pricing, impressions of your branding, etc.).

Surveys should contain a variety of question types, like multiple choice, rankings, and open-ended responses. Ask quantitative and short-answer questions to save you time and to more easily draw conclusions. (Save longer questions that will warrant more detailed responses for your focus groups.)

Here are some categories of questions you should ask via survey: 

• Demographic questions
• Business questions
• Competitor questions
• Industry questions
• Brand questions
• Product questions

Download a free, editable Market Survey template here. 

4. Focus Group Template

Focus groups are an opportunity to collect in-depth, qualitative data from your real customers or members of your target audience. You should ask your focus group participants open-ended questions. While doing so, keep these tips top of mind:

• Set a limit for the number of questions you're asking (after all, they're open-ended). 
• Provide participants with a prototype or demonstration.
• Ask participants how they feel about your price.
• Ask participants about your competition.
• Offer participants time at the end of the session for final comments, questions, or concerns.

Download a free, editable Focus Group template here. 

Conduct Market Research to Grow Better

Conducting market research can be a very eye-opening experience. Even if you think you know your buyers pretty well, completing the study will likely uncover new channels and messaging tips to help improve your interactions.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

How to Do Market Research: A Guide and Template was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

26 About Us & About Me Pages + Templates to Make Your Own

Building a website is, in many ways, an exercise of willpower. It’s tempting to get distracted by the bells and whistles of the design process, and forget all about creating compelling content.

It's that compelling content that's crucial to making inbound marketing work for your business.

So how do you balance your remarkable content creation with your web design needs? It all starts with the "About Us" page.

For a remarkable About page, all you need to do is figure out your company's unique identity, and then share it with the world. Easy, right? Of course not. Your "About Us" page is one of the most important pages on your website, and it needs to be well crafted. This profile also happens to be one of the most commonly overlooked pages, which is why you should make it stand out.

The good news? It can be done. In fact, there are some companies out there with remarkable "About Us" pages, the elements of which you can emulate on your own website.

By the end of this post, you'll be introduced to:

• The best About Us page examples (and what makes them great)
• The best About Me page examples (and what makes them great)
• Tips on how to write your About page
• The best About page templates (across multiple platforms)

1. Yellow Leaf Hammocks

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It tells us a story.

When you have a great story about how your product or service was built to change lives, share it. The "About Us" page is a great place for it to live, too. Good stories humanize your brand, providing context and meaning for your product. What’s more, good stories are sticky -- which means people are more likely to connect with them and pass them on.

Yellow Leaf Hammocks tells users about its product by describing how the hammocks empower artisan weavers and their families. The company breaks down different pieces of the story into sections that combine words and easily digestible graphics, painting a picture instead of big chunks of text. They're clear about why they're different: "Not a Charity," the page reads. And then: "This is the basis for a brighter future, built on a hand up, not a handout."

Every company has a story to tell, so break out your storytelling skills from that random English class you took years ago and put them to work on your "About Us" page. Using descriptive and emotive copy and gorgeous graphics, an "About Us" page with a story works harder for your business than a generic one.

2. Eight Hour Day

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It's human.

People tend to think that "About Us" pages have to sound formal to gain credibility and trust. But most people find it easier to trust real human beings, rather than a description that sounds like it came from an automaton. Trying to sound too professional on your "About Us" page results in stiff, “safe” copy and design -- the perfect way to make sure your company blends in with the masses.

Instead, Eight Hour Day showcases the people behind the company and humanizes its brand. Introducing the founders by name and featuring the photos of them on the "About Us" page drives home the point that Nathan and Katie are -- as they so astutely put it -- "two individuals with a passion for creativity -- creativity makes us happy."

When you’re designing your "About Us" page, avoid industry jargon and replace it with an authentic voice -- yours -- to describe your product or service. Sure, it needs to be polished and free of errors, but it should always sound friendly and real.

3. Apptopia

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It skips the business babble.

We know -- no industry jargon. If you think it makes you sound super smart on your "About Us" page, think again. People want and appreciate straight talk about what your business does. After all, if people can't figure out what you do, how will they know they need your product or service?

So, skip the industry lingo -- that's what Apptopia does on its "About Us" page. The startup's simple but polished language effectively communicates the company's offering while still allowing the Average Joe to understand it.

The moral of the story: Try to get rid of jargon on your "About Us" page whenever possible. Use short and punchy sentences to explain complex products and ideas in a way that isn't patronizing, but rather, is empathetic.

4. Moz

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It's humble.

Instead of following the classic "About Us" script and writing a few paragraphs about the company's mission and origins, try something different -- there are plenty of ways to make your brand more compelling to someone who doesn't know about you.

Take Moz, for example. A lot has happened since it was founded in 2004, so the company chose to share those milestones using a fun and clean design that incorporates clear headers, concise blurbs, and little graphics to break up the text.

We especially love the humble references to how Moz received funding, how it switched its brand positioning -- and most importantly, how it switched back to its original model. This speaks volumes to the value honesty and humbleness can play to your customers. Don't be afraid to talk about your ups and downs; your customers will trust what you say that much more.

5. Yokel Local

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: Personality, personality, personality.

Yokel Local does a few things well on their About Us page: They call out who they work with, they tell their story and mission, and they showcase the team behind the brand. This last element is key because Yokel Local knows that their "vibe" wins over prospective clients. After all, when you hire an agency, you're hiring its people. And people have personality.

Because "Yokel Local" is a bit of a kooky name that gives people pause, they poke fun at it by providing the definition, which then leads into photos of the team at work (and at play), the agency's story, their mission and values, and the people who make the magic happen. This magic is included all over the about page as their employees make goofy faces, wear ugly Christmas sweaters, and work/play hard.

6. Nike

Why the About Us Page Rocks: It knows its audience.

Nike might seem like a company that's too big to inspire smaller businesses. You might even wonder if Nike even still has an "About Us" page. As a matter of fact, it does, and it hasn't forgotten the company's roots.

Nike began on the campus of the University of Oregon by the hand of the college's track coach, Bill Bowerman. And even though he no longer works at the company, one of his beloved quotes still brands the bottom of Nike's "About Us" page below: "If you have a body, you are an athlete."

This bold sentence, referenced by the asterisked "Athlete" in the words right above it, sheds important light on Nike's audience. The brand may be big today, but Nike is all about the rising stars -- who Nike depends on to, according to the rest of its "About Us" page, "expand human potential."

The takeaway for marketers? Know your audience, and make it obvious to that audience the instant they read about you on your website.

7. Refinery29

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It tells you what's most important.

Here's another instance where any area of your website -- not just the "About Us" page -- is an opportunity to break the mold.

Many companies add just a simple mission statement or company profile, but people often don't want to ready a wall of text explaining what you do. So, Refinery29 broke it down to convey the intangible qualities that are tough to include in a basic "About Us" page.

Although Refinery29 does introduce its page with a description of its business, its goes out on a bang -- four bangs, to be exact. The organization is on a "mission," sure, but there's also an "essence" of Refinery29, a "promise" it keeps, and a "vibe" it gives off.

These aren't company traits you'd think to include when starting out, but they're what your customers often make gut decisions on when buying.

8. Bulldog Skincare

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It's lovable and memorable.

What's the difference between "average" marketing and lovable marketing? It's the difference between creating generic webpages that provide great information, but in a straightforward, black-and-white kind of way -- versus creating webpages that provide great information and are infused with color, personality, and stay true to a company's unique brand voice. When you create lovable marketing, you can start a movement of brand evangelists and advocates who will help you grow.

Where does this fit into a company's "About Us" page? The folks at Bulldog, a men's skincare company that was named for the colloquial "man's best friend" -- a dog -- could have typed up a few paragraphs about where the brand came from and how they were one of the first in the space to redefine and eliminate stereotypes around men's grooming. But that text alone would have been a bit, well, average.

Instead, the "About Us" page is pithy, colorful, and leads with the lovable mug of an adorable bulldog -- fitting the name and the brand. And it states the purpose of the products -- to help customers from waking up with the (admittedly adorable) wrinkly face you see when you visit Bulldog's website.

Play on your own words -- it's okay to have fun and pun with your brand, as it helps to inject personality and humor into your "About Us" page. It primes visitors for a story in a way that makes them immediately feel something. That's how you create memorable, lovable marketing.

9. Doomtree

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: Its shows, tells, and has a soundtrack.

One minute of video is worth 1.8 million words, according to Forrester Research's Dr. James McQuivey. But what about audio and visual, too, all combined with a really cool story? Well, that's one way to tell your story in an engaging way -- through multimedia.

Doomtree is built on a bit of an innovative concept: That a group of talented artists can each have thriving solo careers, but can still come together on a regular basis to create great music. It's not a band -- it's a crew. It's an unconventional concept with an equally interesting backstory that "started as a mess of friends in Minneapolis, fooling around after school, trying to make music without reading the manual." And as soon as you arrive on Doomtree's 'About Us' page, you're greeted with big, bold photos of those friends.

As you scroll down, users are treated to even more interaction with the crew's tracks and music videos. That makes sense, because it gives visitors an instant sample of Doomtree's product. What's more, the entire "About Us" page is responsive, including the video. That's important -- not only because it offers site visitors a great mobile experience, but also for Google search ranking -- especially now that such mobile usage has surpassed desktop.

10. Acciyo

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It gets at their prospect's pain... with a fun pop culture tie-in.

Acciyo is a company committed to "empowering news readers to tack back control of their news diets." With that in mind, their big headline gets to the heart of their prospects' pain: "Reading the news today is like opening a book at chapter three: You're instantly lost." This headline implies that Acciyo will help eliminate that "lost" feeling and get clarity on the news that their audiences consumes.

Best of all, it asserts this simply and elegantly with a Harry Potter tie-in. The headline's concept deals with books, then asserts that the name was derived from Harry Potter, and lays out the team members as "Wizards Behind the Magic" with their Hogwarts Houses proudly displayed.

This provides the About Page with a cohesive theme that visitors can relate to while adding a touch of personality.

11. Ceros

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It's interactive and funny. 

Ceros' About Us page is interactive and engaging. As you scroll, the text slowly moves up the page, with bold — and humorous — statistics, like "4 beers on tap". Additionally, Ceros' uses images of their impressive, unique office space to further personalize the page. 

Best of all, Ceros' keeps the text on the page short-and-sweet, with powerful statements like "We exist to unlock creativity". The Culture section further demonstrates Ceros' playful brand voice, with core values like "We wear our chicken suits".

12. Marketive

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It's compelling, with fun scrollable features. 

Rarely have I seen a more powerful opening statement than the one Marketive uses in their About Us page: "Got a solid product? We tell your target audience that you exist." 

Additionally, Marketive's About Us page displays original designs rather than photos to support the text, and the page is simply fun to scroll through. Plus, I appreciated Marketive's layout — starting with what they do, moving into which types of industries they help, and ending with the company's earlier milestones. 

The interactive milestone calendar at the bottom is especially impressive. It authentically represents some humble beginnings (including two unsuccessful startups that inspired present-day Marketive), and features a fun scroll element that highlights various dates throughout the calendar. 

13. Sweet Loren's

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It's playful and reflects the brand's personality. 

Start-to-finish, Sweet Loren's About Us page is playful, engaging, and colorful. The page starts with a 60-second video, and even incorporates cookie dough-scooping gifs. As you scroll, you'll move through some of Sweet Loren's impressive values, including inclusivity and refusing to compromise. 

Best of all, Sweet Loren's yummy products are last on the page, ensuring you're fully primed to purchase only after learning about Sweet Loren's mission and differentiating factor: creating non-GMO, gluten-free, plant-based, and delicious cookie dough. 

14. TalEx

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It focuses on social responsibility. 

TalEx has an interesting origin story, in which two women left a major recruiting firm to build their own and ended up landing AOL as a major client of theirs — which was previously their old employers' client. 

TalEx has since seen unprecedented growth at 4,900% in the three years since it began. You'll learn all this and more on their About Us page, but what really makes their page stand out is the company's emphasis on social responsibility, which takes up nearly half the page and explains the company's dedication to giving 5% of its net profit annually to various philanthropic organizations. 

15. SkinnyDipped

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It's authentic and down-to-earth. 

SkinnyDipped's About Us page features a few sweet, polaroid images of the employees (including three of the co-founders as young children), and a moving nod to Josh Dickerson, a family friend whose death inspired the family to start the business. 

Their About Us page is well-written and inspiring — for instance, they write, "We decided to start a business … That it would be centered around food was obvious. For us—family, friends, food and love are all tangled up." By the time you finish reading their story (and the individual employee bios), you'll be as impressed by SkinnyDipped's brand values as you are by their delicious products. 

16. LoveBug Probiotics

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It's playful and informative.

LoveBug Probiotics' About Us page features an image of the founder's four young children wearing "Chief Fun Officer", "Chief Giggle Officer", "Chief Silly Officer" and "Chief Humor Officer" t-shirts. I'll admit — there aren't many About Us pages with cuter introductions than that. 

The page effectively includes all the information you'd need on the company to make an informed purchasing decision — including how the founder came up with the idea, her personal ties to her vision, the science behind her probiotics, and even an opportunity to find local stores that carry LoveBug probiotics. 

Plus, while the products are science-backed, the About Us page doesn't confuse visitors with difficult-to-understand facts: instead, the page is simple, straightforward, and helpful. 

17. Brown and Coconut

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It's simple and no-fuss. 

Sometimes, simpler is better — as is the case with Brown and Coconut's About Us page, which features a photo of the two co-founders alongside a few paragraphs of text, outlining the purpose and vision behind Brown and Coconut. 

Plus, the opening sentence is incredibly relatable and draws the reader in: "After years of suffering from severe acne and frustrated by the lack of effectiveness and further damage they experienced with popular skin care products, Brown and Coconut founders and sisters, Letisha and Zeena Brown embarked on a journey to heal their skin from the inside out."

What I liked best about this About Us page is the simple, no-fuss language they used to describe their business. Plus, rather than ending with a CTA directing visitors to their products, the co-founders instead choose to include a CTA to follow their business on Instagram, promoting a likely more effective, long-term lead generation strategy that starts with brand awareness. 

18. Kuno Creative

Why the "About Us" Page Rocks: It focuses on people rather than products. 

Kuno Creative's About Us page effectively focuses on what makes the company different: its people. While the first paragraph describes the origin of the digital marketing agency, the majority of the page is taken up by black-and-white shots of all its employees along with descriptions of each member, like a modern day yearbook. 

Plus, the page looks sleek and clean, with plenty of white space and large blue lettering to draw attention without overwhelming visitors. If you're unsure what you want to include in your About Us page, consider taking note of how Kuno Creative focuses on its people, rather than its product, in the About Us page — a great way to humanize your brand.

1. Joe Payton

Why the "About Me" Page Rocks: It's confident, creative, and easy to skim.

"About Us" pages might encompass the values of more than one person or entity, but they're no more important to the image of a business than your personal about page. Take Joe Payton's "About Me" page, below.

Not only does Joe's illustrative self-portrait give him a personal brand that customers will remember, but it also demonstrates his expertise as a designer and animator. His website visitors can learn not just what he does, but why he does it, in an easily digestible way. Being able to express his values as a creative professional in such a well-organized page is something to be desired by anyone creating their own about page.

2. Kero One

Why the "About Me" Page Rocks: It's multilingual.

Kero One is a hip-hop artist and DJ from San Francisco, and his "About Me" page carries a valuable lesson to personal brands who cater to more than one audience -- especially if those audiences speak different languages.

Kero One's story starts at his childhood, when he was six years old and first discovered a passion for hip-hop. Knowing how old and genuine his love for the genre is adds tremendous value to his own music in the eyes of his listeners.

While this entrepreneur's childhood interests help to deepen his audience, the second screenshot below helps Kero One widen it. His "About Me" page first tells his story in English, then in Japanese, then in Korean, then in Chinese. Accommodating these Southeast Asian audiences makes his brand more inclusive of all the audiences he identifies with.

...

3. Aja Frost

Why the "About Me" Page Rocks: It's data-driven.

Alright, we might be biased in highlighting this professional, as Aja is our very own SEO strategist at HubSpot. Nonetheless, the ingenuity she brings to the company isn't lost on her website's "About Me" page.

Being a data-driven professional, Aja knows her own clients as a freelance writer and strategist don't just want to see what she's written -- they want to see how her content has performed. With that in mind, her "About Me" page tells a story of her career growth, which peaks -- no pun intended -- at an impressive line graph showing the result of an SEO strategy she implemented for the HubSpot Blog. (The graph's sharp decline at September simply indicates when she stopped collecting data.)

Following the impressive chart, Aja closes out her about page with a personal note on what she does in her spare time -- always a good way to humanize yourself in the eyes of your potential customers.

4. Madison Butler

Why the "About Me" Page Rocks: It welcomes the audience into a conversation.

Madison Butler is an HR change maker "committed to deconstructing the status quo and rebuilding corporate America, one organization at a time." She does this through her DEI work and her advocacy.

The About page, which doubles as the site's homepage, calls this out at the very top in one bold statement: "I'm here to ensure organizations know how to make space for everyone." It's simple, effective, and to-the-point. Then, "You belong here." This second sentence in the headline underscores the inclusivity of Butler's mission and work. It's even emphasized further where the phrase is repeated in the footer.

5. Sara Dietschy

Why the "About Me" Page Rocks: It has variety but still aligns with her personal brand.

This professional YouTube content creator has an eclectic collection of videos related to technology and culture, and expresses that diversity all over her "About Me" page.

In addition to the vibrant self-portrait at the top of the page, Sara's first sentence tells you just how many people subscribe to her channel: 350,000. This is an important number to know for her potential video advertisers and collaborators who want to know how much exposure they'd get by working with her or advertising on her channel.

The colored tiles lining the page -- starting with the red one, as shown below -- also do a terrific job segmenting her work by the types of projects she takes up and for whom she's done them. That Intel logo in the second photo of Sara, below, is sure to turn some visitors' heads as they're perusing her website.

6. ShaDrena

Why the "About Me" Page Works: The combination of brand voice and monochrome palette breaks the mold.

ShaDrena is a graphic artist whose mission is to "visually build creative rebellious brands beyond a logo." She exemplifies this mission for her own brand on her About page.

In three sections — About, Bio, and Random Facts — the audience gets the full ShaDrena experience, which is more than just design. It's also about voice and personality. As a self-described "creative hustler," "rule breaker," and "designer of dope brands," the language ShaDrena uses on her site comes across as edgy and authentic, a perfect way to make copy mirror personality.

All of this is presented in blacks, whites, and grays when it's not common to see monochrome color palettes, which subverts the expectations one would have for a graphic designer.

7. Marc Ensign

Why the "About Me" Page Rocks: It's funny but professional.

This branding expert does two things super well on his about page: He takes his work seriously, but doesn't take himself too seriously. Marketers know there's value to keeping a casual tone in the content they create, but in order to attract customers, you need to prove you have discipline and integrity. That's a tough balance to get right.

Marc Ensign nails that balance between friendly and formal with a confident opening statement, followed by an amusing smiley photo of himself to set an inviting tone.

8. Miracle Inameti-Archibong

Why the "About Me" Section Rocks: It has dynamic angles and clear storytelling.

With excellent design that emphasizes her copy, Miracle Inameti-Archibong's site is a masterclass at how to do a one-page website well. The content is presented with large clear images, cool and bold colors, dynamic angles and blocks, and simple typography.

This design supports the story in her About Me section, which spans over a decade but is clearly laid out in just four sentences. The reader knows her career span without being overwhelmed with too much information. That's when she dives further into her expertise and the meat of the About section, which is thoughtfully paired with testimonials on the right that provide social proof for it.

How to Write an About Page

1. Establish a mission statement.
2. Outline our company story.
3. Reveal how you've evolved.
4. State your "aha!" moment.
5. Explain who you serve.
6. Explain what you're offering them.
7. Cite examples of who you've served.
8. Describe your values.

It's tough to establish one all-encompassing template for your "About Us" page -- there are just so many ways you can go about telling your company story. But, per the real "About Us" pages we've just highlighted, there are some steps you should keep in mind when getting started.

Here are five steps to writing an "About Us" page based on some of the things that impressed us about the examples above.

1. Establish a mission statement.

Your "About Us" page can and will be much longer than a single mission statement, but in order to draw people in, you need to succinctly state your goal in the industry up front. What are you here to do? Why should your website visitors care?

2. Outline your company story.

You might not have a long history of changes and growth your company has endured (yet), but it's a nice touch to talk about where you came from in your "About Us" page. So, isolate the milestones prior your company's founding, and use them to give readers some backstory on your current venture.

3. Reveal how you've evolved.

Even if you're a young company, there's no shame in admitting your business strategy -- or even personal way of thinking -- has changed since you began. In fact, in about pages, these evolutions can improve the story you tell to website visitors.

About pages are perfect spaces to talk about where you started, how you've grown, and the ideals that have helped your organization mature. Use these moments to further your company story and show people that you're always ready to change and adapt to the needs of your industry.

4. State your "aha!" moment.

Every good company was founded on an idea -- something the current marketplace might not yet offer. What was your idea? Use this "Aha!" moment as a pivot point when telling your company story. What was a challenge you faced while developing your company? How did this challenge or discovery shape what you are today?

5. Explain who you serve.

As much as you want as many eyeballs on your "About Us" page as possible, you won't do business with every single one of them. That's why it's crucial that you identify and mention your core customer. Who should care you exist? Which eyeballs are you here to serve?

6. Explain what you're offering them.

As you're explaining who you serve, make it clear what it is you're offering. Too often companies generalize their product or service in the language of their website, making it hard to understand what it is the customer is actually paying for. They're afraid literal explanations of their products aren't interesting enough, or will sound unappealing in writing. And that's a fair concern.

However, by investing just a sentence or two into telling your potential customers exactly what they'll receive can keep them on your website for longer and interested in learning more.

7. Cite examples of who you've served.

Got some loyal customers in your portfolio? Use your about page to let the world know who already trusts and benefits from your work.

Knowing about your company's past successes can influence your prospects' purchasing decisions because they will be able to envision their success in the success of your past customers. Even if you don't yet have case studies to expand on the problems you've helped buyers solve, it's in your interest to briefly mention who you've done this for. And your about page is the perfect platform for it.

8. Describe your values.

Customers want to be treated like human beings. For that to happen, they need to feel that they're being treated by human beings. When finishing your "About Us" page, describe who you are as a person or a team, and what your personal values are. What's your company culture like? What bigger picture in life drives your business?

An LED lightbulb maker might sell 10 different lamp styles, for example, but that might not be the most important characteristic to its primary audience. Maybe this lightbulb developer was founded on a commitment to environmental protection, and every bulb the company makes was built by people who are dedicated to making the world more energy-efficient.

Keep in mind a secondary audience of your company's "About Us" page consists of your future employees. This is another reason describing your personal values is a good idea -- the key to your job candidates' hearts is to show them you have one too.

About Us Page Templates That Rock

Copy is an important element of an About page. However, you'll also want to keep user experience in mind as you showcase your brand story and identity to the world. Here are some of the top About Us and About Me page templates to use or draw inspiration from:

1. Sodium v2 (HubSpot)

Tell your prospects about you using bold color and by telling your story. This template can help with that with its bold color (that can be customized) and timeline-like layout. Website visitors will know where you've come and where you're going.

2. Touraza Template (WordPress)

If you want something with a little flavor, the Touraza template is a good choice. With the "meet the team" section near the top with geometric designs and striking typography, you'll be able to showcase the humans behind your brand.

3. Logan Template (Shopify)

This template makes use of large images in a modern layout to break up the ample white space. The result: A clean and enjoyable reading experience. The top of the page puts the brand story (or other introductory text) first, supported by a large image that speaks for itself. The pops of color can be customized to your brand style, drawing emphasis to the most important elements you want to highlight.

4. Mercuric Modular Premium (HubSpot)

Make a statement with a stylish slider and smooth 3D animations. This template can be edited using user-friendly modules and other effects to catch your website visitors' attention. It comes with counter boxes, progress bars, and animated images for you to customize. There's also a full template pack for the other pages of your site.

5. Coax Template (WordPress)

The advantage of the Coax template is that it's powered by Elementor, a page builder that makes customization easy. Even if you want to keep some of the defaults, though, this template is beautiful, letting the typography and copy take center stage. Ideal for a personal brand, you can choose to lay out your content similarly to a resume with big subheads on the left and descriptive text on the right.

6. Clean (HubSpot)

This template is 100% drag-and-drop ready, making setup a breeze. With an elegant header and overlay, you'll make a great first impression as you tell your brand story. Zero coding is required, it's completely customizable, and it's backed by a 100% happiness guarantee.

7. Negocis (HubSpot)

Do you think that your story is best told visually? This template supports icons and other elements that appeal to website visitors who want to understand your impact. It features image sliders, social sharing buttons, and more.

At this point, we hope that creating an "About Us" page doesn't seem like a daunting task -- rather, we hope you're ready to have some fun with it. With a good story to tell, creative copy, humility, and digestible visuals, you're on your way to an eye-catching user experience.

Even better? You're becoming part of the exception -- and standing out from a sea of "About Us" pages. What makes you different? We're eager to learn more ... about you.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

26 About Us & About Me Pages + Templates to Make Your Own was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

12 of the Best AI Chatbots for 2021

Whether it’s on Facebook Messenger, their website, or even text messaging, more and more brands are leveraging chatbots to service their customers, market their brand, and even sell their products.

But even though most chatbots can handle moderately sophisticated conversations, like welcome conversations and product discovery interactions, the if/then logic that powers their conversational capabilities can be limiting. For instance, if a customer asks a unique yet pressing question that you didn’t account for when designing your chatbot’s logic, there’s no way it can answer their question, which hangs your customer out to dry and ultimately leaves them dissatisfied with your customer service.

Fortunately, the next advancement in chatbot technology that can solve this problem is gaining steam -- AI-powered chatbots.

By leveraging machine learning and NLP, AI-powered chatbots can understand the intent behind your customers’ requests, account for each customer’s entire conversation history when it interacts with them, and respond to their questions in a natural, human way.

If you’re currently using a standard chatbot, but want to upgrade to an AI-powered one, we’ve put together a list of the best AI chatbots for 2021. Read on to find the right one for you.

1. HubSpot

Image Credit

HubSpot has an easy and powerful chat builder software that allows you to automate and scale live chat conversations. Your customers will be able to get answers to frequently asked questions, book meetings, and navigate the site. At the same time, their answers are saved in your CRM, allowing you to qualify leads and trigger automation. Keep in mind that HubSpot's chat builder software doesn't quite fall under the category of "AI chatbot" because it uses a rule-based system. However, HubSpot does have code snippets, allowing you to leverage the powerful AI of third-party NLP-driven bots such as Dialogflow.

Because HubSpot is a CRM platform, using the HubSpot chatbot in conjunction with code snippets gives you the advantage of easy integration across your marketing, sales, and service tools.

2. Intercom

Image Credit

Intercom is software that supports live chat, chat bots, and more to provide messenger-based experiences for prospects. Using machine learning and behavioral data, Intercom can answer up to 33% of queries and provide a personalized experience along the way.

3. Watson Assistant

Image Credit

Developed by one of the leaders in the AI space, IBM, Watson Assistant is one of the most advanced AI-powered chatbots on the market. Pre-trained with content from your specific industry, Watson Assistant can understand your historical chat or call logs, search for an answer in your knowledge base, ask customers for more clarity, direct them to human representatives, and even give you training recommendations to hone its conversational abilities.

Watson Assistant can run on your website, messaging channels, customer service tools, and mobile app. The chatbot also comes with a visual dialog editor, so you don’t need any coding experience to develop it.

4. Drift

Image Credit

Drift provides conversational marketing and sales software powered by both automation (rule-based) and artificial intelligence (NLP). According to their website, "Drift's conversational AI is trained on over 6 billion conversations to identify the patterns that engage and convert visitors into qualified pipeline." This means the machine learning that the chatbot comes with is already pre-trained and ready to go.

5. Bold360

Image Credit

Trusted by customers like Intuit, Edible Arrangements, and Vodafone, Bold360 patented its own natural language processing technology to help brands build chatbots that can understand your customers’ intent without the need of keyword matching and learn how to deliver the most accurate answers to them.

Bold360’s conversational AI can interpret complex language, remember the context of an entire conversation, and reply to customers with natural responses. Customers can even buy your products through the chatbot. You can also give your chatbot its own personality and run it on most messaging channels.

6. Zendesk Chat

Image Credit

Zendesk offers live chat and chatbots as part of their Zendesk Chat service. Built with powerful automation combined with the technology of Answer Bot and Flow Builder for creating AI-powered conversation flows, it allows you to configure your chatbot to answer common customer questions without writing code.

7. Salesforce Einstein

Image Credit

Salesforce Einstein is AI technology that uses predictive intelligence and machine learning to power many Salesforce features, including Salesforce's Service Cloud and chatbot offerings. It is capable of solving customer queries with its intelligent conversational features, and you can count on it for triage and routing and data-driven insights.

8. Rulai

Image Credit

Armed with deep-learning based natural language understanding and adaptive multi-taking capabilities, Ruali, an AI-powered chatbot for enterprise brands, can understand the context of a conversation, predict user behavior, grasp customer preferences, take actions, switch to different tasks, and ask customers for more clarification.

Rulai also integrates with most messaging channels, customer service software, enterprise business software, and cloud storage platforms. You can either build a Ruali chatbot from scratch with its drag-and-drop design console and let its AI adapt to your customers or you can implement a pre-trained chatbot that has been fed data from your specific industry.

9. LivePerson

Image Credit

By collecting over 20 years of messaging transcript data and feeding it to their AI-powered chatbot, LivePerson can automate almost every industry’s messaging and integrate with most messaging channels like your website, mobile app, Apple Business Chat, text messaging, Google Rich Business messaging, Line, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Google AdLingo.

LivePerson’s BotStudio also lets you build chatbots from scratch, without any coding knowledge, and its analytics dashboard can track metrics like real-time sentiment, bot containment rate, bot conversation time, total conversation time, average order value, and bot contained sales, allowing you to grasp the impact your chatbot has had on your business’ bottom line.

10. Inbenta

Image Credit

Designed specifically for enterprise brands, Inbenta’s chatbot leverages machine learning and its own natural language processing engine to detect the context of each customer conversation and accurately answer their questions. Inbenta also offers a dialog manager, which allows you to craft custom conversation flows and paths.

Additionally, when Inbenta’s chatbot realizes that one of your customers needs to talk to a human, it’ll escalate the conversation to the appropriate support agent. To make your chatbot seem more human, you create a custom avatar for it, too.

11. Ada

Image Credit

Trusted by customers like Medium, Shopify, and MailChimp, Ada is an AI-powered chatbot that features a drag-and-drop builder that you can use to train it, add GIFs to certain messages, and store customer data.

Ada can also integrate with most messaging channels and customer service software, send personalized content to your customers, ask for customer feedback, and report on your bots’ time, effort, and cost savings. According to their website, Ada has saved their customers over $100 million in savings and 1 billion minutes of customer service effort.

12. Vergic

Image Credit

Vergic offers an AI-powered chatbot that can serve as your businesses’ first line of customer support, handle transactional chats, and transfer more complicated problems to your actual customer service agents. It’s like a hybrid chatbot that can boost your employees’ productivity.

By leveraging natural language processing and natural language understanding, Vergic can also perform sentiment analysis, share documents, highlight pages, manage conversational workflows, and report on chatbot analytics.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

12 of the Best AI Chatbots for 2021 was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns