20 chatbot templates to improve your CX in 2024

From answering customer questions to collecting contact information, chatbots wear many hats. Think of hats, in this instance, as chatbot templates. The more hats your bot wears, the more it can do. And just as there are different hats worn for different occasions, there are many different chatbot templates used for different situations.

To help you elevate your bot’s wardrobe, we’ve gathered 20 popular bot templates to inspire you on your chatbot journey. Follow along to learn more about chatbot templates, their benefits, and how to use them to improve agent productivity.

• What is a chatbot template?
• 20 popular chatbot templates
• Benefits of using chatbot templates
• How to use chatbot templates
• Frequently asked questions
• Use chatbot templates to boost agent productivity

What is a chatbot template?

A chatbot template is a pre-built bot flow designed to take customers through specific actions using artificial intelligence (AI), alleviating the need to build a bot from scratch. Chatbot templates are also customizable, so you can easily adjust your template to create AI-powered chatbots that match your company’s specific needs and tone of voice.

While chatbot templates can vary depending on the business, they are often used for:

• Customer support: Chatbot templates can aid your support team by handling certain customer inquiries without human intervention. Additionally, customer service chatbot templates can collect key details upfront, so agents can resolve complex issues without asking the customer repeat questions.
• Lead generation: You may also use templates for lead generation by automatically collecting valuable customer information, such as their name, email address, and phone number.
• Employee support: Chatbot templates can help support your internal team members, assisting them with processes like handling time off requests or answering new hire onboarding questions.
• E-commerce: For e-commerce businesses, chatbot templates can be valuable for many tasks, from offering personalized product recommendations to encouraging shoppers to return to their abandoned carts.

Whether you want to generate leads, improve your e-commerce experience, or provide better customer and employee support, there are plenty of chatbot templates to choose from.

20 popular chatbot templates

To help you understand how chatbot templates work, let’s look at some popular templates your business can use with Zendesk to improve your conversational chatbot experiences.

Template	Best for	Use case
Pricing options template	Quickly sharing pricing options with customers	Customer support
Chatbot-to-live-agent transfer template	Directing a customer to a live agent	Customer support
Customer satisfaction template	Gauging customer satisfaction	Customer support
Restaurant reservation template	Booking and confirming dining reservations	Customer support
Travel feedback template	Soliciting valuable travel feedback	Customer support
Cancel a reservation template	Canceling existing reservations	Customer support
Post-purchase survey template	Requesting post-purchase customer feedback	Customer support
Net Promoter Score® (NPS) survey template	Seeking feedback for an NPS survey	Customer support
News and updates template	Updating customers on your latest news	Customer support
Offline form template	Helping customers after hours	Customer support
Restaurant order template	Taking online food orders	Customer support
Leave policy question template	Managing employee time-off requests	Employee support
Employee onboarding template	Answering new hire questions	Employee support
Product recommendation template	Delivering product recommendations based on chat interactions	E-commerce
Order status template	Updating customers on the status of their order	E-commerce
Discount code template	Sharing promotional offers with customers	E-commerce
Package tracking template	Updating customers on the location of their order	E-commerce
Online order template	Assisting customers in the online order process	E-commerce
Basic lead generation template	Collecting customer contact information	Lead generation
Subscription form template	Adding customers to subscriber lists	Lead generation

1. Pricing options template

Use case: Customer support

Adding a pricing options template to your chatbot can help your customers quickly access important pricing information whenever they please and without wasting time clicking through your website.

2. Chatbot-to-live-agent transfer template

Use case: Customer support

Whether there’s a delicate situation requiring a human touch or someone simply prefers to speak to live agents, you can give customers the option to chat with a human using a chatbot-to-live-agent template. This template allows customers to connect directly with a support representative without leaving their chat window.

3. Customer satisfaction template

Use case: Customer support

Not only can chatbot templates help expedite the support process, but they’re also a valuable resource for soliciting customer feedback. Using a customer satisfaction bot template, you can automatically reach out to customers with a satisfaction survey following their support interactions. Surveys can make customers feel like their opinions are valued and provide your business with valuable insights you can use to improve your customer experience.

4. Restaurant reservation template

Use case: Customer support

Restaurant reservation templates are a quick and easy way to take the reservation process off of staff members’ hands. Using a template can also reduce the number of incoming phone calls, freeing up your staff to take on higher-priority tasks. On top of that, it gives customers the flexibility to book a reservation at their convenience.

5. Travel feedback template

Use case: Customer support

For businesses in the travel industry, travel chatbots are a valuable asset for providing quick, personalized support to travelers. Implementing a travel feedback template can help you automatically surface customer feedback you can use to improve the experience of your travelers.

6. Cancel a reservation template

Use case: Customer support

Just like bots can help diners make a reservation, chatbot templates can also help them cancel one. A cancel-a-reservation template allows people to cancel their reservations whenever it’s convenient, without pulling one of your employees away from more important tasks.

7. Post-purchase survey template

Use case: Customer support

If you’re running an e-commerce business, you’ll want your online order experience to be as easy as possible for customers. Soliciting customer feedback is a great way to discover where your business needs to improve. However, relying on agents to collect feedback takes time and may hinder their ability to help other customers.

With a post-purchase survey template, your chatbot can automatically message your customers as soon as they complete their transaction, gathering insightful feedback that can help improve your customer experience.

8. Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey template

Use case: Customer support

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a popular customer service metric that helps measure customer loyalty. Leverage an NPS survey chatbot template to automate the survey process and free your agents to handle more urgent situations.

9. News and updates template

Use case: Customer support

If your business just rolled out a new product or feature, consider using this chatbot template to help spread the news to site visitors.

10. Offline form template

Use case: Customer support

Even though chatbots can provide 24/7 support, there may be times when a customer prefers to speak with a human during off hours. An offline form template can help your business handle after-hours support inquiries, collecting information so your support agents can pick up the conversation once they return.

11. Restaurant order template

Use case: Customer support

For many restaurants, takeout orders bring in a lot of business. But not everyone wants to make a phone call and wait on hold until your next available staff member can take their order. Make the takeout process even easier for diners by enabling them to start a food order via your website chatbot.

12. Leave policy question template

Use case: Employee support

While most people might think of customer support when they think of AI chatbots, a bot can also assist your human resources (HR) team and handle internal inquiries like answering questions about your leave policy. This frees up your HR team to handle more delicate issues and gives your employees the chance to seek help at any time.

13. Employee onboarding template

Use case: Employee support

In addition to helping customers, chatbots can be a valuable asset for answering employee questions. With an employee onboarding template, you can set up your chatbot to proactively engage new hires and ask if they need assistance.

This kind of bot can streamline your employee experience, helping to surface important information—from onboarding documents to answers to common questions.

14. Product recommendation template

Use case: E-commerce

With a product recommendation chatbot template, your bot can act as an extension of your sales team, automatically offering personalized product recommendations to customers on your site.

This encourages purchases and can create a positive customer experience. In fact, 62 percent of consumers agree that personalized recommendations are better than general ones, according to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report.

15. Order status template

Use case: E-commerce

After a customer makes a purchase, they’ll likely want to keep tabs on it. When you use an order status chatbot template, your customers can quickly find their order status without waiting to connect with an available agent.

16. Discount code template

Use case: E-commerce

If there is one thing all shoppers love it’s a discount code. With a discount code chatbot template, your chatbot can proactively message customers, enticing them to make a purchase and save some dough. After all, a discount code could be the difference between a customer following through with a purchase or leaving your site.

17. Package tracking template

Use case: E-commerce

Another useful template you can add to your chatbot is a package tracking template. Great for e-commerce businesses, this template lets customers quickly find out where their package is and when they can expect to receive it, without waiting for a live agent response.

18. Online order template

Use case: E-commerce

For businesses that sell their products and services online, chatbots can direct interested customers to your online store to make a purchase. This can increase customer engagement and drive new business by automatically sending customers to the correct webpage to place an order.

19. Basic lead generation template

Use case: Lead generation

A lead generation template is a great way to help your business generate sales leads without taking time away from your sales team. For example, you can customize your lead generation chatbot template to ask visitors to share their name and email address when engaging with your bot.

20. Subscription form template

Use case: Lead generation

Similar to a lead generation template, a subscription form chatbot template can help your business automatically collect customer contact information. This enables you to grow your SMS or email list without additional effort from your sales or support team.

Benefits of using chatbot templates

Now that you’ve seen examples of chatbot templates in action, it’s time to break down how using them can positively impact your business. Chatbot templates can enhance your support experience by offering the following chatbot benefits:

• Quick to get started: Chatbot templates empower your support team to quickly introduce new conversational AI experiences to your customers and employees without having to build a conversation flow from scratch. A conversation flow includes each step of the conversation and how it can change based on a user’s response.
• No developer support required: Businesses of any size can get their chatbot and desired templates up and running without any help from developers.
• Highly customizable: Chatbot templates are easily customizable, ensuring every interaction meets your company’s unique needs and tone of voice. You can tailor them for many tasks, from recommending specific knowledge base articles to soliciting customer feedback using preset questions.
• Easy to scale: Using chatbots and customizable templates enables you to scale your support capacity and handle multiple support inquiries simultaneously, without increasing headcount.

No matter what you use your chatbot templates for, every support inquiry handled by your chatbot is a task taken off your support team’s plate. This increases their bandwidth to tackle more complex issues and deliver better support with ease.

How to use chatbot templates

If you’re ready to take advantage of these pre-built chatbot templates, follow these steps to take your chatbot experience to the next level:

1. Determine your needs: First, you need to decide what you want your chatbot to do. For example, if you run an online clothing store, you might implement an abandoned cart template to help boost purchases on your site.
2. Select a template: After determining your needs, use your chatbot builder to choose the chatbot template that’s the best fit.
3. Customize the conversation: Next, customize the conversation flow in your chosen chatbot template to better match your brand. For example, you might want your chatbot to speak in a friendly tone and introduce itself as your company’s “virtual shopping assistant.”
4. Set up triggers: During the template customization process, set up specific triggers that cause your chatbot to spring into action. For example, you may set up your post-purchase survey template to engage customers as soon as they reach your order confirmation landing page.
5. Test the chatbot: Before unleashing your chatbot to the masses, test it out to ensure it’s working properly.
6. Save and deploy the chatbot template: Once finalized, save the template to your template library and roll it out to your audience.

By following these simple steps, you’ll have your chatbot handling tasks in no time—all without having to build a chatbot from scratch.

Frequently asked questions

Use chatbot templates to boost agent productivity

When you outfit a chatbot with the right hats, you can boost agent productivity and offer a chatbot experience that meets your needs and delights your customers. With a complete customer service solution like Zendesk, you can deploy a chatbot in seconds using customizable chatbot templates based on common customer service use cases. Our AI is built on billions of real-life customer interactions, powering generative AI chatbots that sound like humans and provide excellent support from day one.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of NICE Satmetrix, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.