A chatbot is an artificial intelligence (AI) software that can simulate a conversation (or a chat) with a user in natural language through messaging applications, websites, mobile apps,etc. They are virtual assistants that can engage customers 24×7 and improve customer experience.
There are many important advantages to using chatbots. The key is how businesses can implement those chatbots to benefit from them.
You cannot rely on support agents for round the clock customer service. Anytime response is important even after business hours when the team is not available. Chatbots can manage such customer queries with automated responses.
Customers simply do not like to wait for assistance — any wait time can lead to frustration and potential churn. Chatbots are a smarter way to ensure that customers receive the instant response that they demand.
Better lead generation-With chatbots, you can engage your customers with personalized messaging throughout their journey by guiding and recommending them in making a quick decision. Chatbots follow the preset questionnaire to persuade the visitors for lead generation. Bots ensure the flow is in the right direction to get higher conversion rates.
Implementing chatbots is an investment, which helps businesses to optimize customer service costs. Investing in chatbots saves extra costs of adding more agents. Hiring more number of support agents means additional costs and time. The costs may be in terms of
Salaries
Training
Infrastructure
These expenses cannot be overlooked as it is never a cheap affair. It becomes expensive if your business revenue is not high or sales targets are not met and it would create havoc in the business. Chatbots help to overcome all these costs.
Needless to say, how vital it is to keep your customers engaged with your brand. Chatbots take customer engagement to a new level. Here are some tips you can follow to create effective customer engagement:
Enhance customer satisfaction – Chatbots deliver immediate one-on-one responses to your customers – exactly what customers demand. With this problem-solving approach and effective guidance, you make your customers happy and satisfied.
Customers look for personalization – Chatbots analyze the customer responses and provide related data instantly. Based on the customer details and history chatbot can engage customers by using the name during the conversation.
Chatbots provide real-time conversation – Chatbots is the fastest response channel to communicate with your customers. This pace can lead to time and cost savings for both – businesses and customers.
Improve the user experience – Chatbots are your ultimate brand representatives. They have real-time interactions with your customers. When you add chatbots to your communication channels it provides greater options for your customers to engage with you.
Chatbots benefit your business to improve the efficacy and productivity by providing quick answers and solutions to customers for simple queries. Thus, bots significantly reduce operational costs, manpower, and time. Time is money in business. Here is how chatbots help to make the most of yours.
Bots automate information-based queries so that agents can spend more time on crucial issues that need human support.
Chatbots are available 24*7 to deliver instant responses even when the human support not around.
Bots make it easy for customers to make a purchase or book an appointment without waiting for human assistance.
It’s a universal fact that human errors are inevitable. Manual work has a risk of errors that can eventually create big problems. Mistakes might happen while collecting customer information or sharing product pricing information.
Chatbots are the best way to deliver error-free service and avoid complications. As chatbots are programmed with all the information there is no chance of errors. Accuracy is guaranteed with chatbots.
Generally, businesses tend to provide reactive customer support like phone and email. It means when customers report their problem, only then they respond without initiating communication from their side.
In competitive businesses especially with a remarkable percentage of millennials as customers, now the brands can’t afford the luxury to act passive anymore.
As businesses are limited with manpower to initiate a communication with all their customers periodically. With the help of chatbots, you can start proactive chat through personalized messages at scale, product recommendation that boosts customer satisfaction and retention.
Chatbots also make your customers feel that you care for them by having proactive conversations and this improves your brand perception in the long run. They become your loyal customers and stay associated with your brand for a long time.
Businesses that offer support with live agents might not know when they need to add more agents or not. Also hiring more agents means infrastructure costs, training costs, and loss of time. In such a scenario, chatbots can be the best way to handle conversations.
Unlike live support agents who can handle 2 to 3 conversations, chatbots can simultaneously manage thousands of conversations. No matter what time it is or how many customers are reaching you, every chat will be answered immediately.
Bots can be easily scalable to handle a large volume of chats without affecting the business costs.