10 Benefits of live chat and chatbot technology

With the increasing popularity of messaging and social media platforms, chatbots and live chat tech are now the centres of business messaging. By 2021, over 80% of businesses are expected to have some sort of chatbot implemented.

The technology over the past last few years has significantly been improved, as businesses move to an omnichannel model where they sell across all digital channels including websites, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other channels.

Successful CX-led companies are focused on making data-led conversations with their prospects and customers. Connected business systems better inform starting points and improve relevancy for chatbots and live chat service agents. Cutting edge customer experience demands a much better process than outdated ‘Batch and blast’ tactics.

Instead, you should be using holistic customer data to segment and engage prospects in a way that truly connects with their needs. Our team have the experience to make it simple to nurture and build your relationships by providing prospects with relevant messages that answer their needs at every stage of the decision-making process.

Our Triggerfish UX, digital strategy and integration team have crafted many solutions for our clients to streamline service delivery bolstered by connected business systems and automated front-end services. The delivery of these projects has increased cost savings, customer retention, satisfaction and higher margins for our clients.

Key Features of a Modern Chatbot

With the growing demand from businesses to have an omnichannel presence the adoption of live chat & chatbot tech has significantly increased. The development community like us have heavily invested in enhancing and improving the user experience and have extended solutions with integrations with WordPress, Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Zendesk, Sitecore, Shopify, Mailchimp, Zapier, CRM software, mobile apps, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and analysis tools like Google Data Studio and Microsoft Power BI.

Chatbot software partners have also simplified implementation by giving admin users access to template-based drag and drop user interfaces which gives them the control and flexibility they need to evolve their chatbot services. Adaptability means that your businesses can take an agile approach with minimal downtime between tweaks or feature releases. This approach gives businesses the power to pilot questions, user journeys, query answers and recommendations. Modern live chat and chatbot features now include:

·???????Conditional logic

·???????Machine Learning

·???????Collect customer feedback and reviews

·???????Record chat transcripts

·???????Ability to sell, cross-sell and upsell users to different products

·???????Serve one time discounts and promotions

·???????Qualify leads

·???????Send coupon codes

·???????Take restaurant reservations

·???????Cart Abandonment

·???????Provide quotes and estimates

·???????Share recipes

·???????Discover store and office locations

·???????Show menu and specials

·???????Join waitlists for product releases or out of stock products

·???????Capture and subscribe visitors to email marketing lists

·???????Book appointments

Cognigy AI and Voice Gateway is a global leader in omnichannel Customer Service Automation. Intelligent voice and chatbots powered by its Conversational AI platform help businesses improve service quality, reduce operational costs, and support teams across the enterprise.

Cognigy’s award-winning AI understands user intents precisely and enables natural dialogs in over 100 languages. Easily scalable and pluggable, its low-code platform automates business processes through integrations into backend systems, operates as SaaS and on-premise, and is GDPR compliant.

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Machine learning is how a lot of chatbot solutions like?Ada AI Chatbot?are improving chatbot responses and user experiences. This iterative test and learn approach have made the tech more customer-focused, experience-led and have better problem-solving capabilities. According to?ManyChat?their chatbot clients are seeing a 600% higher ROI than traditional marketing.

Live chat leads to a 48% increase in revenue per chat hour and a 40% increase in conversion rate. - American Marketing Association

According to a?Forrester Research?2019 study, poorly implemented conversational platforms lack the critical capabilities and business-friendly usability necessary, leaving customer experience teams struggling and customers unsatisfied.

Ada AI Chatbot reduced AirAsia’s wait time by 98% in 4 weeks.

For many of our client's implementation of this technology fosters better relationships with customers and improved customer satisfaction ratings. This is due to our refined delivery of this technology over time through countless hours of pilot programs, user testing, customer interviews and months of planning and preparation.

63% of customers were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat. - Emarketer

When a chatbot is implemented correctly it can increase the average transactional value (ATV), increases content discoverability, retains customers and fuels positive conversations. According to?Zendesk?live chat managed by well-trained customer service agents can increase users engagement and shorten the time to transact.

Sam the Chatbot

An example of a chatbot on Sitecore is the Australian Federal Government website Head to Health. Sam is a clever and intuitive Decision Support Tool (chatbot) to remove complexity for users looking for information, clinical resources and mental health services. The chatbot was designed to allow users to enter plain English questions and subsequently be directed to the most suitable resource or service.

How to streamline onboarding and reduce wait times with a Chatbot

With telecom competition on the rise, customer experience has become the ultimate differentiator. The telecommunication industry for a number of years has been using self-service chat tools, to sign up new customers to their mobile and internet services.

Website visitors of?Belong?in a few simple steps can sign up to a new service by answering a few questions. Their self-service chatbot also has the ability to securely validate your account using an SMS one-time password (OTP) integration. Their ability to streamline onboarding and reduce wait times with a personalised experience that automates both answers and actions in the customer’s language of choice is a very smart move. Below are the top live chat and chatbot tech we've implemented for our clients:

·???????Manychat

·???????Cognigy

·???????Azure Bot Service

·???????Zendesk

·???????Hubspot

·???????Salesforce Service Cloud

·???????LiveChat

·???????Drift

·???????Ada AI Chatbot

·???????Intercom

·???????Twillio Studio

Best-in-class chatbots are integrated with business systems and leverage 3rd party data to serve highly personalised messages specifically tailored to the user's interests and stage of a user's journey.

Top benefits of personalised customer service interactions

To thrive in today’s experience-led economy, personalised customer service is how you can set your business apart from the competition. Your competitors might be bigger than you or even offer slightly better prices. You can't control these factors, but you can control the kind of service and level of support that you provide.

To regain some trust and confidence from your customers, leading businesses are integrating business systems to serve their customers better online. Top online retailers are implementing live chat and chatbots that have 3rd party and business data integrations to facilitate conversations akin to that of a customer-employee connection at a brick-and-mortar store.

Azure Health Bot empowers developers in healthcare organizations to build and deploy AI-powered, compliant, conversational healthcare experiences at scale. It combines built-in medical databases with natural language capabilities to understand clinical terminology and support compliance requirements including HIPAA.

Chatbots in eCommerce are great for answering base-level questions customers have. If a customer is curious about your return policy, shipping fees, or the status of their order, chatbots can provide canned responses that answer simple, FAQ-type queries. Other top benefits of a chatbot are:

·???????Decreased operational costs

·???????More productive customer service agents

·???????Greater visibility into customer needs, expectations, friction points and behaviours

·???????More satisfied customers

·???????Increased customer engagement

·???????Increased average transactional value

·???????Increased advocacy and loyalty

·???????98% Reduction in wait times

·???????Lower bounce rates on pages

·???????Prequalify prospects and marketing leads

12 Common Chatbot Questions You Should Consider

Our commitment to helping our clients solve their customer's problems is why we've built such robust chatbot solutions. Before choosing which live chat/chatbot solution is right for your business we recommend considering the below questions:

1. Where does the live chat agent or chatbot store my user's data?
2. What are my live chat and chatbot options?
3. Do my customers trust chatbots and live chat?
4. Who / what team in my business will be responsible for service and maintaining it?
5. ?What response times is my business willing to meet?
6. What common questions do your customer service and sales team answer from customers?
7. What message does the user receive if the chatbot or live chat operator can't answer a question?
8. What message does the user see if it is outside of your business operation hours?
9. At what stage in the customer's journey or time on page will consumers engage with it?
10. Do my current customer currently like using chatbot and live chat technology
11. What are the main frustrations with the chatbots and live chat that they are currently using?
12. What approach should I take to implementation and is there an option to do a technology pilot and test this tech in my business?

Where to start?

Our recommendation is to start by mapping your user journeys, conducting user research and focusing on your users' needs, wants and expectations for interacting with your organisation. User research often uncovers brilliant customer insights and is a sure-fire way to get a clear vision of what parts of your business can be improved.

Your approach to implementing this technology will be unique based on your company's structure, resources and processes. For example a small business's approach, needs and requirements will be completely different to an organisation that has an existing call centre team.

Need a chatbot for your business?

Triggerfish are well versed in chatbot and live chat technology. Our chatbot solution can be used across any CMS platform and can even be integrated with Facebook Messenger.

As UX experts we are focused on delivering optimised solutions that enhance your customer's experience. All live chat and chatbot projects start with a consultation meeting where we deep dive into your data, map out user journeys and decide on how, when and where the live chat could be integrated into your current business platforms.

When partnering with Triggerfish you can rest assured that our team are focused on developing integrated, best in class B2B and B2C solutions.

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