How Can You Use Chatbots to Help Your Business?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has progressed dramatically in the past decade, and one of the most useful products of this AI revolution is AI chatbots. They can help reduce the time taken to resolve queries of customers and also lessen the load on customer service agents.

According to Gartner, nearly 25% of all customer service operations will use chatbots by 2020. A major reason for this is the fact that brands are investing in improving the customer experience. As many as 84% of organizations were expected to increase their investments in customer experience technology in 2017. The chatbot market is forecasted to reach $1.25 billion by 2025 as well.

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Now that we know why chatbots are popular with marketers, let’s take a closer look at what they are.

What is a Chatbot?

In simple terms, a chatbot is a virtual assistant that communicates with your customers through text messages. You can integrate it into your website, apps, or even instant messengers, such as Facebook Messenger.

Chatbots can help you get closer to your customers without any manual intervention. The chatbots act automatically when a user messages them.

While they don’t completely remove the need for human customer service representatives, they can drastically reduce their workload.

Here are some of the major reasons why people prefer to interact with chatbots:

• Entertainment – Interacting with a chatbot is entertaining for many people. They also help people kill time when they have nothing much to do.
• Curiosity – Chatbots are fairly new for people, and this sparks their curiosity. People want to test the ability of these chatbots and understand how they react to different messages.
• Social factors – They can help improve social experiences and also drive conversions for your business. People can talk with chatbots without the fear of being judged, and this can be comforting for many.
• Productivity – Whenever people need some assistance, they need it quickly, and chatbots do just that.

They’ve become one of the biggest automation trends of recent times. In fact, chatbots have become so popular that Facebook Messenger hit over 100k bots in 2017. Additionally, about 35% of consumerswant to see more brands using chatbots.

Now that you have an idea of their importance, let’s take a look at how they can help your business thrive online.

How Can Chatbots Help Your Business?

1. Always Available

It can be frustrating for customers to see that there’s no one online to assist them with their queries. Chatbots can be extremely useful in such cases. They can be present throughout the day and night and are always available to solve the customer’s concerns.

People don’t like to wait for a long time to have their concerns addressed. In fact, about 37% of customers want quick answers to their questions. Instead, you should try to resolve their queries at the earliest and chatbots can help you do exactly that. This is perhaps the reason why they are quickly replacing other forms of customer support, such as live chat and calls.

Unlike humans, you can have a chatbot work 24×7 to solve your customers’ queries. This can help improve your overall customer satisfaction.

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2. Saves Money

When you have a customer support team, you need to pay them salaries every month for their services. Without a chatbot, you’d need a huge staff to respond to your customers quickly and efficiently. And as your business grows, these expenses will only keep on adding up.

Chatbots may require a big one-time investment, but they help reduce your recurring expenses even when your organization grows. When your customers have some simple queries, you won’t need any intervention by the customer support team. Instead, the chatbots will handle the conversations with them and solve their problems.

This allows you to reduce the number of customer service agents required for your brand. Additionally, you can have them solve only the complex queries rather than wasting their efforts on simple ones.

The reduction in staff size can help you save money.

3. Improves Customer Satisfaction Levels

For a business, it is critical to improve customer satisfaction levels. When it comes to customer service agents, their conversations with customers depend upon their mood. If they are in a good mood, they can solve the customers’ queries easily. However, if their mood isn’t right, they may not be able to give the customers a satisfactory experience.

Chatbots, on the other hand, are bound by rules of code, and they obey them perfectly. They always treat customers in the most polite manner possible regardless of how the customer talks to them. This can help improve your customer satisfaction.

Additionally, you may have customers who speak multiple languages. It can be difficult for your agents to speak in different languages with your customers. However, a chatbot can easily do so without any mistakes. This can help improve communication with them as well.

Continue reading this article on Shane Barker's blog.