How Chatbots Improve Customer Experience

AI is the way of the future. However, while many individuals and organizations dread the future in which this is true, most of them fail to realize that they interact with AIs on a daily basis. We’re, of course, talking about chatbots. Keep in mind that this particular trend exists for years now but with the help of the machine and deep learning, it is getting more and more used by conglomerates and promising startups alike. The reason behind this is the improvement in the overall customer experience that they are capable of bringing. Here are six examples.

• They are cost-effective

The first thing you need to understand is that chatbots are incredibly cost-effective and resource-friendly. According to one survey, they’re capable of reducing your customer service cost by 30 percent. On the one hand, this may seem like something that would mostly benefit the business but not the customer but this is not necessarily so. You see, with the same amount of money you would invest in a mediocre customer-service agency, you can develop or purchase an outstanding chatbot. In other words, you can use the resources you have to ensure a better treatment of both your return customers and potential customers.

• A welcome message

While it’s always more welcome to hear a human voice on the other end of the line, even the most highly trained professionals have that one customer that completely gets them off track. Therefore, your next customer might feel some angst coming their way resulting merely from nothing else but a fact that their customer service representative was irritated by the previous call. Needless to say, this is not something that can happen to a chatbot. In other words, every single interaction of your audience with your brand will start with the same (somewhat generic), yet, overwhelmingly positive welcome message you decide to go for.

• Adding a personality

Those who decide to develop their own chatbot, either by handling this in-house or outsourcing to a software development company, need to learn how to add personality to this tool. Sure, it may be an incredibly sophisticated piece of AI but, at the end of the day, your customers don’t really want to talk to an AI. What they want is a person on the other end on the line or, at very least, they want to fail your cunning Turing test. Overall, you need to help your chatbot find a voice that will match the expectations of your audience, as well as some of your most important corporate values.

• Great response time

In order to have a responsive website, you have to have good response time, and chatbots are great for that. Your customer service can easily get overwhelmed and, when this happens it will result in massive customer frustration. Sure, all your customers may need your assistance but the level of urgency doesn’t really matter from one person’s point of view. This is why a well-designed chatbot is particularly handy and can respond to everyone’s request simultaneously.

Moreover, wait time between each message sent by your chatbot needs to be timed adequately in order to give your customers some time to read, yet, it shouldn’t be too long for them to start feeling neglected by the AI.

• Personalized marketing campaigns

In the past, you had to split your marketing into two major groups B2B and B2C. Neither of these groups was ideally classified, seeing as how it had a problem of understanding the individual need of the client in question, merely observing them as demographics. With the proper AI analytical tool and with the help of big data, your chatbots can now go ahead and offer each of your site’s visitors the feature or product they are the most interested in. This will be analyzed based on their previous searches, browses and interactions.

• A tactful way of saying ‘no’

Earlier on, we talked about the probability of an agitated customer relations representative. Well, nowhere is this as dangerous as when it comes to the moment in which you have to say ‘no’ to your customers. In some scenarios, it would be much simpler to entrust this to a person, yet, you would be surprised to realize that this doesn’t always bring the most consistent results. Instead, you can implement this as a chatbot function and rest assured that the misinterpreted rudeness in your rejection was in no way your fault.

In conclusion

At the end of the day, while the cost-efficiency of chatbots may not be your primary concern, when put against the benefits it brings to your customer experience, the question of whether to use it becomes a no-brainer. Think about it, most offices already employ a high level of automation and this is one of the ways that can benefit your brand the most, with the least demanding investment. Overall, the choice is not that hard.