Nowadays, businesses face the challenge of delivering excellent customer service. Microsoft’s survey shows that 96% of consumers across the globe indicate customer service as a significant factor in their loyalty when it comes to choosing a brand. Read on to find out how to meet clients’ expectations with the help of AI-powered chatbots and how your business can benefit from such a solution.
How do chatbots work?
Let us start with explaining what actually a chatbot is. According to Oxford’s dictionary, a chatbot is “a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the Internet.”
Chatbots use natural language processing (NLP) to understand messages and respond to them appropriately. This technology lets chatbots interpret correctly all messages, even ones with spelling or grammar mistakes. Therefore, they can provide a human-like experience to their interlocutors.
Example: A customer did not receive his product in the expected delivery time and wants to find out what is going on with his order. He enters a given e-commerce website, opens a chatbox and types in a question. Chatbot responds immediately asking for the details. The customer gives the order number and receives information about the shipping delay and apologies for the inconvenience.
In no time, the customer can get all the needed information. No emails, no calls, no stress.
In practice, you can program a scenario with accurate answers for the given inquiries and let the system to make a conversation. Thanks to machine learning, a chatbot can learn from the inputs it experiences. The more data a system has, the better the results you can expect.
A website chatbot can interact with your visitors (potential and current customers) via live chat interface without the usage of any third-party platform such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram or WeChat.
Here are some examples of bot types:
- after-hours bot
- welcome bot
- lead generation bot
- survey bot
- appointment bot
- competition bot
How can chatbots improve customer service?
Chatbots can be implemented in business to boost its many aspects. Among conversational commerce, customer support is one of the most essential. Smoothing customer journey, whilst facing fierce competition, might be challenging, especially for small and medium businesses.
Find out what are the advantages of using AI-powered chatbots in customer support.
Instant answers
Hubspot Research revealed that when it comes to customer service, 90% of respondents find “immediate” response as important. Automation enables replying in real-time. Even if a given question requires human intervention, a bot can at least ensure that a customer’s inquiry will be handled properly soon.
Cost-saving solution
Of course, chatbots are not able to fully replace human-based customer service. The point of using this innovation is to automate routine questions. So that the customer support team can focus on the more complex issues and provide clients with better understanding and, most of all, efficient help. Therefore, it can reduce staffing needs.
Enhancing self-service
Today’s customers are willing to find answers by themselves. Machine learning can help them get all the needed information within the website and avoid frustration caused by interactive voice response (IVR) systems.
Working around the clock
Chatbots are there for your visitors, ready to solve their issues 24/7. This aspect becomes extremely significant in the globalization era, when companies have customers from all over the world, living in different time-zones. And even if you act on the local market, many customers look for information and help after regular working hours.
Human-like customer experience
Chats are the most natural form of digital communication. Instead of writing an email or scrolling through a FAQ page, it can be far more pleasant to ask a chatbot. Thanks to the aforementioned NLP, chatbots are able to smoothen the customer journey.
Scalability
Bots can handle a limitless number of conversations at the same time. As the opposite of human-based customer support, a system can solve as many issues as needed.
Seamless customer support
Everyone says that chatbots are supposed to imitate human-to-human interaction. However, they can go even one step further. Many people find working in customer service difficult because you often have to answer the same questions and deal with discontented customers. Programmable bots are not affected by emotions, exhaustion or frustration. They will always answer politely, professionally and in a timely manner.
How to make a chatbot?
As you are already familiar with key benefits that chatbots can bring to your business, especially in terms of customer support, you might wonder how to implement this solution on your website.
Luckily, the market is filled with chatbot platforms, which can help you out. One of the excellent solutions is Chatbotize. With no coding skills required, you are able to build a chatbot and implement it on your website in no time. In an intuitive online editor, you can create a scenario for frequent questions and use for that purpose text, buttons, images and cards with links, for example, directly to your products. Yes, it is that simple.
You can use a chatbot on your website and social media, but also... embed it to any link you share! Thanks to RocketLink you can reach people who click links you share, for example, on social media and interact with them. Check out the demo to find out how great that is!
Conclusion
We have already entered the Digital Transformation era. There are plenty of emerging technologies (voice marketing is another one that may be helpful for your strategy – it’s never too late to look for a Google Voice alternative) that are about to revolutionize every aspect of the business. Chatbots are one of them. Do not hesitate to implement a chatbot on your website and boost your company’s customer service. Your clients deserve the best possible customer experience, while you run your business more efficiently.
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