Log onto your favorite business website and you may be pleasantly greeted by a chatbot. Savvy business owners have realized the advantage of using chatbots for customer interaction. They can handle anything from simple questions to taking orders, much as human customer service representatives would. Some are so well-built you can’t tell that they are a robot. The natural language processing (NLP) technology has advanced so far that it appears to be human to human conversation.
What benefit does this technology provide for your business? Let’s get into it.
The 3 main areas a chatbot will help are:
Client Services: Your customers want quick answers. They don’t want to scroll through an FAQ or call you to be put on hold and wait for a customer service agent. Chatbots with A.I. improve with every conversation. One designed to analyze sentiment will transfer the customer to a human customer service agent when irritation or anger is detected.
Streamlined Sales Process: Purchasing from your company should be quick and easy for your customers. The more irritation-free the process is, the happier your customers will be, increasing their chance of buying from you again. Chatbot interaction and quick response time encourage loyalty. Chatbots are economical for your business sales too — you can have a well-manned call center for 1000 orders or 1 chatbot to handle them all.
Marketing Analytics: Data-driven A.I. chatbots remember every customer, what they ordered and their questions. This information can help formulate marketing plans or encourage upsells through the chatbot.
What type of chatbot is best for your business?
There are two main groups of chatbots that are available right now: the simple chatbot which uses commands that are pre-entered and the smart chatbot which uses A.I. to learn while it works. They will either be a web-based application or one that will stand alone.
First, let’s distinguish the differences:
Simple chatbots use keywords that are pre-entered to complete the task that is asked of them. Routine questions, such as hours of service or location can be answered quickly and help reduce the workload for your agents.
Smart chatbots use A.I. to record all conversations for analysis in order to learn your customers’ idiosyncrasies such as repeat purchases or preferences. Their language skills improve over time, increasing their human-like responses. Machine learning algorithms help advance the chatbot knowledge base, increasing its depth of interaction.
Even industries as sophisticated as banking are leveraging A.I. to launch numerous chatbot solutions which help them to reduce costs and serve more and more tech-savvy Millennial customers. Chatbots are being developed in banking to facilitate two-way communication, and many users can’t tell they aren’t interacting with a human.
To understand just how AI is going to affect the banking industry consider that more than four in 10 (43%) respondents say they prefer to address any issues they may have with their banking provider this way, which makes sense as this leads to a more positive banking experience for all involved.
Quick service through transactional support is one of the key features of chatbot tech — as most basic tasks including bank account details, balance inquiries, and loan queries can be handled effectively by bots, leaving actual customer service reps to handle complex issues. And as we move into 2019 and beyond, A.I. promises over time to provide the industry with greater forms of engagement.
How to Get Started?
To capitalize on the rise of chatbot tech and build a mobile app that supports it, you need to find a competent app developer — one that can first help you decide which chat bot technology is right for your business. By delving into a developer’s process as well as by analysing their portfolio, you’ll be able to learn more about what they can do to integrate this nuanced technology into your app.
What steps do you take to get a chatbot for your business?
An ace app developer will work with you hand-in-hand as a partner to determine which chatbot is best for your business, whether it be customer-driven or internal.
Before approaching your developer though, take some time to:
- Determine what functions your chatbot will do by understanding the language of your customers and listing all possible keywords they will likely be using
- Decide where your chatbot is going to be located — how your users interact with this technology is a key choice.
- Decide if the developer has the portfolio to match your vision
Chatbots are an emerging technology and continue to evolve, and smart business owners are getting onboard. They are seeing remarkable results through customer relations, lean processing, and streamlined internal workings. An investment in a chatbot will repeatedly pay for itself, so what are you waiting for — find the right mobile app developer to help you integrate chatbot tech into your upcoming app.
