Content Service Provider

Chatbots: The new Marketing tool

Pic shows Chatbots or robots chatting on desktops. Content for chatbots is created by Ascezen Consulting Lucknow India

Did you ever notice a small chat window, which pops up on a website, asking if it can help you? One might think that it’s human on the other side of the computer but it is actually a chatbot that has been programmed to assist you. Essentially, they are software applications that perform automated tasks, mostly by interacting with users using spoken or written communication. Chatbots are also known as talkbots, IM bots or simply bots, even though the original term was ‘Chatterbot’, given by Michael Mauldin who created the first bot- Julia in 1994.

Chatbots are instant, interactive, and they are here to stay. They have become increasingly popular as an engagement tool and deemed to be the next big thing in the world of marketing and business communication.  Moving beyond old-style online advertising, brands all across are now integrating chatbots into their strategies to offer a more personalised experience to the consumers or prospective customers.

Chatbots are designed to have a conversational interface that emulates how humans behave in real life while talking to each other. They rely heavily on sophisticated technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). The more modest systems scan the inputs for keywords and produce the most relevant response accordingly.

Today, bots are mostly used for B2C customer service and marketing across different categories that include e-commerce, education, entertainment, finance, marketing, shopping, travel and customer support, to name a few.  Many companies rely on messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Telegram to place their bots. Even WhatsApp is testing a pilot program, allowing developers to run their bots from the platform.

At present, bots are either accessed through these web-based applications or through virtual assistants such as Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana. Some brands also offer them as stand-alone apps to act as personal shopping assistants for the consumers.

Even though still in its nascent stages, chatbots are responsive, provide quick services to the users and are a powerful link between brands and their consumers. But like most things on the web, the success of chatbots is largely dependent on content. Chatbots are computer programs that are designed to have good conversations. There a lot of tools on the internet that a layman can use to create the structure of a bot. It is developing the conversational interface that is challenging because unlike humans, bots are not capable of understanding contextual conversation.

While designing content for bots, one thing to keep in mind is that it should give the user exactly what they are looking for. Short and precise content and a perfect balance of images are important for better appeal and utility. This is, however, the somewhat easy part. The real challenge lies in replicating the human behaviour in conversational situations. This is why content creators today need to have an in-depth knowledge of the way people communicate with each other. Nobody would like to interact with a bot that throws up abrupt and unrelated responses. The messages – right from how the bot greets the user to the actual response should feel ‘human-like’. A good chatbot must be able to offer the nearest replicas of real-time communication transactions. This can be ensured by hiring accomplished content agencies.

Chatbots are capable for redefining how businesses communicate with their consumers or target population and are undoubtedly the future of communication and engagement platforms. Designing content for chatbots requires a deep understanding of human behaviour and their reactions. Ultimately, a chatbot is simply a software that has been designed to ‘converse’ with users. It needs human intervention that can transform it from a bot to human-like, and complicated to helpful.  Given this newfound opportunity, it would be fair to assume that the importance of expert content agencies will continue to grow in the time to come. Content, still is the King.

Read more...

Be counted among the Top-notch Content Writers in India

Be counted among the Top-notch Content Writers in India

content-writing-training at Lucknow, India by Ascezen Consulting to deliver the best content writers in India

Going digital is no longer a matter of popularity. Having the presence on the world wide web has become a necessity. Businesses in India are shifting their operations online and are constantly working towards gaining a strong foothold on the web using high quality content created by top-notch content writers in India. To produce specific, compelling and targeted content, the search for content writing talent and the best content writers is on.

Content writing, as the name suggests, means writing content for a wide variety of audience available through websites, newsletters and brochures, emails, flyers and so on. Even though writers have always been valued in media and journalism, digitization has given the demand of quality content writers a massive push.

Demand for Content Writers in India

Earlier, content creation in the form of articles, news items and scripts, was limited to media such as print, radio and television. However, with the increasing internet penetration and the need to access information at a few mouse clicks, the world needs many more content writers who can deliver quality content.

For some reasons, despite the increased demand, there is still a considerable scarcity of good content writers in India. Quite a lot of content writers in India are unable to meet the industry standards and produce engaging, effective content. There is a vast difference between the demand and supply of the writers in the country and some reasons that can be understood are as follows:

  • Societal Perception
  • Lack of professional content writing training
  • Inadequate training on the job

There has been a perception in India that writers can never make good money. On top of it, the society and primarily the parents play a dominant role in choosing a career for their child. Mostly with that background, budding writers are seldom motivated to take up writing as a career. So, it is never easy for an aspiring writer to ask parents for sponsoring a training in content writing, technical writing or anything similar.

Like any other profession, content writing too presents its own challenges and opportunities. As traditional marketing is seeing a decline, content writing holds immense potential in its avatar of content marketing and the sheer scale of opportunities that the industry is promising cannot be overlooked.

It wouldn’t be naive to claim that content creation will never become outdated. In fact, right from big corporations to start-ups, everyone will need more content as part of their marketing strategies, especially in this age of user-generated content.

Need for Content Writing Training

Those aspiring writers who take on a content writing or technical job after a few internship stints are trained on the job. Now, it largely depends on the organizations they were employed at or the people they have worked with, to train them as writers. It would purely a game of chance that such interns or junior writers were trained by a professional writer or someone who has good understanding of the domain. A good writer comes out only when the organization is process-driven and doesn’t make an exception for the content department to operate on ad hoc basis. Since most organizations do not have a regular content department in place, they have no means to train and groom people on writing skills.

The answer lies in Training. Today, there are good number of training institutions in India that deliver high quality training in Content Writing, Technical Writing or Instructional Design. The aspiring writers must invest in training themselves to get hired by the high-paying, reputed organizations in India and abroad.

Most people keen on pursuing a career in content writing or development feel that writing ability is the only skill required to become a writer but that is far from being true. Besides having a natural flair for writing, there are other skills needed as well and these can be acquired through structured and balanced content writing training.

At Ascezen Consulting Private Limited – a Lucknow based Content Writing Services Provider, we offer content and technical writing training for aspiring and junior writers to hone their skills and groom them to be ready enough to work for the best IT companies in India.

Read more...

Who Needs a Content Vendor?

Image showing a man thinking about the services offered by content vendorIt is as early as toying with the idea of a start-up that the wannabe entrepreneurs would need a good hand at content. Be it an impressive pitch to raise venture capital or funding through a bank loan, all entrepreneurs need to sell their ideas that must also be presented beautifully. And this selling must persist to get different potential stakeholders such as business partners, the founding team, and the first customers. An entrepreneur needs to communicate through various mediums such as the corporate website, blog, product or service brochure, online or print ads and anything else that’s thinkable. Most entrepreneurs are ripe with great ideas but not all of them can put them across a wide outreach. Why just entrepreneurs, even established businesses are also among those who might need help with corporate communication.

Let’s go deeper to find out more about who needs a content vendor…

  • You have an excellent idea and want to create a convincing business plan: You need someone who can organize your thoughts and ideas, and present them in words as well as statistical visuals. A business plan becomes compelling when it has everything thought out and planned. It flows in a sequence and answers questions as they come up. All this can be done by professionals who understand business as well as excel in the art of communication. So, it will help if you hire a company that can trusted enough to keep your well-guarded secrets and help you put in all on paper.
  • You have a product ready for market and need help with branding and advertising: Your team might believe that they created the best product for a certain market but the word needs to go out as well. You need to inform your prospective customers and distribution networks about the unique features of a great product. Who can help you better than communication specialists who can understand the technology and explain it to the world in a lucid manner? You certainly need a business content writing services provider—a content vendor capable of creating compelling business collaterals such as presentations, demonstrations, and brochures.
  • You have a product that can’t go without documentation: You were so busy developing a wonderful application or product that you completely overlooked the support documentation angle. Now when the product is almost ready, you find out that it must be supported by some user documentation such as a user manual, product guide or help videos. Assisting the users in installing, deploying and using a product or application is a vital part of customer relationship management.
  • You need to engage with your customers intelligently: Today, nobody might disagree that it is increasingly becoming crucial to engage in a constant dialogue with one’s customers. It helps you understand their changing needs, shift in choices, issues with one’s products and what’s being talking about the most. Most importantly, you get a chance to tell your loyal and about-to-leave customers about your future plans, product enhancements and new releases. A blog or social media campaign might be the first thing to start from. Again, you would need communication experts who think like your users to interact with them and find out what’s on your customers’ minds.
  • Your company needs content to support some products but that’s not a round-the-year requirement: Let’s say your organization doesn’t have much of regular content production needs but once or twice a year you need someone to spruce up the corporate website content or update existing product and process documentation. It might not be feasible to hire and retain a content team through the year but hiring a content vendor to provide a periodic fixed-cost service might serve the need.
  • Your company needs to produce and edit content through the year: There are fair chances that your company would already have a content or technical writing team in place. It is also likely that workload might at times go out-of-proportion if there aren’t a good number of people sitting idle. Maintaining a good bench strength helps handle the extra work but it isn’t a cost-effective or lean strategy. Those aiming for optimum resource utilization might consider having some content vendors shortlisted for seasonal spikes in workload. The cost would be lesser than having an unproductive team with a downward learning curve.

The competitive business scenario would leave no room for a product or service not marketed well. An excellent idea or product must not die a premature death for the want of fair publicity. It must be talked about to get its fair share of limelight. Every product needs a voice to announce its arrival. Once the product or idea takes off, it marks the onset of life-long quest to support the product to sustain in the market. This is where fresh content will always be needed and it is not a bad idea to invest in a content vendor.free translation greek to english

Read more...