A solid foundation lets you build valuable things. Be it a tree, a home or an iceberg. For a company, the underlying tech stack is the foundation of the product and influences the user’s experience. 

When investing in technology, there are a few questions every team tries to answer to ensure it’s future-proof. Is it scalable? Will it integrate with other systems? Can you refine or replace it in the future? 

So what happens when the tech stack is outdated? The product’s efficacy decreases. Security gaps creep in. Operational workflows between the product and systems integrated with it break. It’s like buying an old house and finding out that everything is broken. From wiring to drainage to interiors. Everything needs to be redone and we all know how difficult, time-consuming and expensive that is. 

To provide a holistic customer experience, you need to get every solution in your tech stack right. Including the ones you integrate with and ones that operate on top of your technology. For example, chatbots.

Today, chatbots are omnipresent. On every website or social media page you visit, you a friendly neighbourhood (bottom-corner) chatbot greets you. And they engage with thousands of visitors every day. So ensure they are up-to-date to handle the scale you operate at and keep getting new features with every release. 

To integrate a chatbot on your website (opening on desktop, mobile or even a tab) or mobile app (iOS and Android), you require SDKs. An SDK, a software development kit, is a set of software building tools for a specific platform and operating system (OS). I’m sure while working with the Verloop.io team, you would have heard our developers use the words mobile SDK, Android SDK, iOS SDK etc. 

What are these Chatbot SDKs? 

SDKs contain all the information a software developer would need to build a particular application and operate accurately on a platform. Say your chatbot has to share a product image with the user on the mobile app. Instead of writing the code from scratch, the developer can just check the chatbot’s mobile SDK and find the code that would allow this. 

Why are Chatbot SDKs important? 

The biggest advantage you have with SDK is that it allows for faster integrations, shorter sales development lifecycles, and built-in support. 

With SDKs, you also have greater reach. Mobile SDKs allow launching the chatbot on your mobile apps, a .NET SDK allows you to publish your chatbot on a Windows desktop app and so on. This way you can deploy a chatbot on multiple platforms, wherever your user contacts you. 

Now imagine if your chatbot’s SDK isn’t updated. First, your technology will not exchange information efficiently with the bot. That is, communication between your system and chatbot is broken. And this will have a direct impact on your customer’s experience. Or worse, lose a few customers. 

If you are still using an outdated SDK for your chatbot, you will see:

• Broken workflows
• Missing features
• Bugs in CX
• Vulnerabilities in security
• Lack of scalability

A non-compatible SDK, i.e. one that is outdated and doesn’t integrate well with your tech stack, will also keep crashing your app. All this leads to poor customer experience, eventually leading to churn and loss of business. 

So next time you consider buying a chatbot from a vendor, make sure they keep releasing updated versions of SDKs that ensure your chatbot functions accurately. 

With up-to-date Chatbot SDK, you will:

1. See faster and smoother integrations
2. Customise chatbots to meet your guidelines
3. Get the latest features automatically when available
4. Improve CX with a robust and error-/bug-free technology
5. Increase your customer reach to newer platforms and OSs
6. Reduce post-deployment costs involved in maintenance and updates 

Verloop.io is a leading provider of conversational chatbots. We provide Android SDK, iOS SDK and Flutter SDK that allow you to build chatbots on Android and iOS apps in a single code base, allowing faster and cost-effective development. It also gives you flexibility in UI design. 

And to make sure our customers can provide delightful experiences to their users, we update our SDKs regularly. Learn how long it will take you to implement a chatbot with Verloop.io by scheduling a demo. Our experts will walk you through the features, pricing and timelines based on your requirements.