Increase Customer Acquisition and Improve Conversion with Chatbots

Chatbots are everywhere, from e-commerce sites to online banking portals and everything in between. Recent estimates suggest that 1.4 billion individuals use chatbots for sales purposes. In addition, 67 per cent of consumers worldwide interacted with a chatbot to acquire customer support over the past year. Moreover, Insider Intelligence forecasts that by 2024, global consumer retail spending through chatbots will hit $142 billion compared to $2.8 billion in 2019.?

But the critical question here is why chatbots are swiftly becoming a must-have for all businesses. Well, there are several reasons. Using chatbots, organisations can offer round-the-clock customer service without hiring more agents. Plus, they can eliminate friction from the purchase process, improve customer interaction, increase sales, acquire insights to facilitate personalisation efforts, and with multilingual chatbots, serve international markets seamlessly.?

Obviously, not all chatbots are effective. Certain chatbots create strange conversations, thereby lowering the organisation’s reputation. Thus, businesses must use the right chatbot solutions.?

In this article, we take a detailed look at chatbots, with particular attention to how they can boost and improve conversion and increase customer acquisition.

What Are Chatbots?

Chatbots are computer programs that simulate human conversation using natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI) to understand customer queries and automate responses.?

These chatbots can make it easy for people to get the required information by replying to their requests and questions – via audio input, text input, or both – without human intervention.?

Chatbot technology is everywhere, from the latest home intelligent speakers to messaging apps at the workplace. The most recent AI chatbots are typically known as virtual agents or virtual assistants. They can use audio input, such as Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant, or communicate through text messages. Either way, you can conversationally ask questions, and the chatbot can refine your search through follow-up questions and responses.?

How Can Chatbots Improve Conversion and Increase Customer Acquisition?

Several businesses need to pay more attention to the value of chatbots in improving conversion and increasing customer acquisition. While they may not be as likeable as your best sales associates, they can serve hundreds of customers simultaneously, instantly answer their questions on social media platforms and websites, and automatically pick up on any valuable data that can help you convert potential prospects into paying customers.?

Here are some ways to use chatbots to improve conversion and increase customer acquisition.?

1.?????Increase Service Speed

Speed plays a crucial role in determining whether you will make a sale. Consumers are bombarded with multiple adverts, marketing campaigns, and promotions. Consequently, digital attention spans are shortening, and your chances to acquire new customers are lower than ever.?

Using chatbots for customer service can minimise the friction between your prospect’s pain points and their resolutions. Many of your competitors will have an FAQ page or a review section to help with responding to customer queries. While both are effective, they require the prospect to search for the problem and discover the solution independently.?

Chatbots are good at responding to FAQs. However, their best feature is their ability to evaluate the problems they are unable to solve, gather preliminary information and send them to the appropriate departments/agents. Thus, your customer service team will not have to go through the tedious process of responding to common queries and will have more time to deal with prospects needing assistance.?

2.?????Bring About New Leads and Collect Customer Insights

Chatbots employ?conversational marketing techniques?to engage customers, such as determining their position in their purchase journey, finding out what they require assistance with, etc. Thus, they can swiftly qualify leads before redirecting them to the appropriate next steps.?

Using an AI chatbot, you can ask the visitors on your website what product they are searching for and redirect them to the relevant web pages. However, chatbots can schedule a meeting with the appropriate person if they want a consultation.?

Moreover, chatbots for sales can generate new leads by asking web visitors to share their contact details, which will move them into the sales funnel. The prospects will then start receiving marketing materials, including customer case studies, discount alerts, etc., which will warm them up and boost the probability of them converting sometime in the future.?

3.?????Provide Personalised Responses

Personalisation is vital for both customer support and marketing success. According to a report by Statista,?63% of marketers?have noticed that personalisation boosts customer interactions and, eventually, improves conversion rates.

Moreover, personalisation can also lead to impulse purchases. A study by?Forbes?revealed that 49 per cent of individuals purchased products they did not plan on purchasing because of a personalised suggestion by the brand they were doing business with.?

Chatbots are excellent tools for personalisation as they can respond to customer requests in real-time by giving them answers and the right content or redirecting them to the relevant department or landing page.?

Apart from capturing leads and their data or providing after-sale support, they can offer proactive support, ensuring that prospects don’t have any second thoughts regarding their purchase decision. This is a time-saving and non-invasive strategy to personalise interactions and boost your website’s conversion rates. It ensures your prospects and customers get a quicker on-site experience with the additional security of making an intelligent purchasing decision, ultimately translating into higher sales and fewer returns.??

4.?????Engage More Website Visitors

Many browse a website, close the tab, or move on to something else. There’s a small window of opportunity to capture their attention. You can successfully engage your visitors by positioning your chatbots at strategic locations. For example, you can host mini polls on a webpage and make the chatbot offer recommendations whenever individuals view products or items on your webpage.?

If you are selling dresses online, the chatbot can ask the browsing visitors various questions, such as what colours, designs, and cuts they like and even suggest accessories with the products they view. Consequently, you find more information about your visitors’ tastes and preferences as they browse and upsell.?

5.?????Prevent Cart Abandonment?

Cart abandonment is hugely frustrating for brands. Visitors have browsed, chosen their preferred products, and added them to their cart. However, instead of checking out, they close the tab. According to research,?68 per cent of users?abandon their carts. In simple words, almost 7 out of 10 sales don’t materialise. There are plenty of reasons why people abandon their carts. It could be because they felt that the additional costs were very high (such as taxes and shipping), the website asked them to create an account, the delivery time was too long, the checkout process was excessively complicated, or they left to return to finish the purchase.?

So how can chatbots change this behaviour? If chatbots collect the contact details, they can send a follow-up email prompting the customers to check out. They can even send reminders to individuals when they visit the website the next time, reminding them about the item sitting in their carts and prompting them to convert. Such reminders have an 80 per cent open rate compared to 25 per cent abandoned cart recovery emails and ten times higher click-through rates.?

6.?????Provide Customer Feedback Promptly?

Brands need to do everything possible to offer a good customer experience. A study reports that individuals who get a positive customer experience spend?140 per cent?more than individuals who had a negative experience and have a higher probability of becoming long-term customers. If businesses provide just one bad experience, customers might leave permanently. The market is highly competitive, and the stakes are at an all-time high.?

Chatbots can talk to customers and ask about their experience and what they want the businesses to work o. They can collect crucial customer feedback that will immediately be sent to the relevant company members, showing how the industry can improve its customer experience while demonstrating what they are already doing.?

Nevertheless, specific individuals might want to keep their answers private. Thus, chatbots can ask individuals to rate the business’s customer experience by choosing an emoji. Therefore, customers can share important feedback through a single click.?

7.?????A/B Testing?

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a method of displaying similar sets of web visitors and different elements of a page and comparing the outcomes to see what gets a higher conversion rate.

All variants can be changed and tested to see what works best for your target market. This might include button colours, copy, lead magnets, CTAs, images, etc.?

Chatbots are great when determining which tone or web copy resonates the most with your selected demographic. For example, suppose a customer chooses a specific point on your website that sends a personalised message. In that case, you can test various brand languages to determine which generates the highest return on investment.??

8.?????Send Welcome Messages

Customers love to be greeted by sales agents, making them feel special. So a warm welcome at the start is always great for engaging website visitors and helping them convert.?

Like a physical store, you can greet your online customer with a tailored message and instantly connect with them. Using a proactive chatbot, you can help your business engage all kinds of customers, whether new or repeat, and cater to their needs through conversations.?

To use personalised welcome messages effectively, you must work on the chatbot design flow and develop several scripts/messages tailored to their experience.?

For new customers:?

“Hello and welcome! Thank you for visiting us! Do you need any assistance with our products?”

“Hey, it’s great to have you here! How can I assist you?”

For repeat customers:

“We are so glad to have you back, Salem! What are you looking for this time around?”

“Glad to see you back, Salem. We have more exciting items for you to check out. Want to try them out?”

9.?????Provide Multilingual Sales Support

Seventy-five wish to make purchases in their language, and they would only proceed if they had that option. It indicates how many customers are comfortable communicating in their first language, which is only sometimes English. Thus, if you sell products internationally, you will have customers with varying language choices for conversations.?

Therefore, AI chatbots can be helpful as you can program them to provide multilingual support and boost your conversion rate. When you can respond to sales-related queries in different languages, your brand can get more accessible and expand to new markets quickly.?

Here are some benefits of providing multilingual sales support:

• Enhance the customer experience:?Using artificial intelligence chatbots allows you to engage customers with a more accessible and quicker conversation in the native language and improve their experience with your business.?
• Expand your customer base:?A multilingual chatbot allows you to expand your reach to new markets and places, showcase the products to new customers, and quickly move down the sales funnel.?

Some Thoughts?

As a technology and concept, Chatbots can be highly effective in boosting customer acquisition at a lower cost with less effort than other strategies. Customers and prospects respond well to well-developed chatbots. Many of us actively avoid contacting brands through email, live chat, or phone for basic answers as we don’t wish to deal with the follow-ups that might emerge later.?

Chatbots are a low-pressure touchpoint to accelerate acquisition. Brands must work hard to create an engaging and helpful chatbot from the customer’s perspective.?

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