Chatbots are artificial intelligence (AI) that simulate human conversation. They can also be known as digital assistants. But why are they important? Chatbots can be utilized in a company website or as a standalone app to answer customer questions with a series of programmed responses. They eliminate the need for someone to be sitting at a computer waiting for customer questions.
Chatbots can be used on Facebook Messenger or Twitter and many standalone applications. They work in the same way that Siri on your iPhone does. These chatbots can interact over text or even provide verbal responses.
What makes chatbots so great is the fact that they can personalize messages to the user. When the bots have access to your social media account, they have the ability to read data about you and your interests or habits. The bots can deliver information that is relevant to you based on your location and the content you are interested in.
Now, you may be wondering how chatbots are beneficial to your business in other ways than quick responses. Here’s a list of benefits from Reve Chat:
- 24/7 availability - never worry about keeping a customer waiting during weekends or holidays, bots provide 24-hour customer service
- Reduced customer waiting time - chatbots ensure that customers receive an immediate response instead of putting them in a queue
- Better customer engagement - chatbots can be programmed to be conversational and personalized to better help your customers
- Save customer service costs - skip hiring customer service agents and spending money on training and salary
- Reduce customer churn rate - chatbots will engage your customers and make them happy with the service they received, encouraging them to stay loyal to your company
- Easy scalability with bots - the number of conversations a bot can have at one time can be increased during busy hours, servicing more customers without making them wait
According to these benefits, the chatbots will be able to work overtime, handle more customers in the queue, keep customers satisfied and never leave a customer waiting around. All of these attributes will save your business money in the long run from less customer service employees.
If all of those benefits haven’t persuaded you yet, chatbots are also extremely easy to use and set up. Many chatbot platforms have already been created for businesses to use. When the platform is provided to you there is no coding required, the analytics are available to measure customer satisfaction and there can be a mix between live chat and chatbot.
One of the most innovative customer service chatbots was from Dominos. They created Dom, an interactive pizza bot who helps customers order their pizzas online. The options that Dom offers are to create a new order, reorder or track your order.
The bot will give you options to click on and if you make a mistake, you can scroll up and start over. Not only does this bot make it easy to keep track of your pizza orders, but it is highly accessible. You can order through the Domino’s Pizza Bot by Slack, Messenger, Apple Watch, Mobile App, Twitter (by Pizza Emoji), Smart Home Assistants, and more.
There are many similar bots for fun interactive experiences, but some companies have taken it upon themselves to create bots for learning experiences!
Duolingo for example has a chatbot that will help you learn another language. The company created an app for their chatbot to message you and help you learn. This is a great way to learn on-the-go and without having to speak to a real person.
Chatbots are a great way to ramp up your customer service and can be vital to your customer service engagement strategy. Keep your chatbots innovative and effective and you will see immediate results. No more worrying about hiring customer service agents when you have a full-time digital assistant!
Inner Spark Creative
Inner Spark Creative takes pride in our ability to help companies with their marketing and ad campaigns. Our staff has over 30 years of combined experience in marketing, public relations, website design, graphic design and photography. If you want to bolster your marketing efforts, need a new website, or are unsure about how to proceed we’d love to schedule a free consultation. You can reach out to us at (334) 826-7502!