Chatbots, the present of customer service
Chatbots give us the opportunity to improve customer service and respond quickly, according to your needs.
They are available at any time, 24/7, to answer.
They will never lose patience with a client who asks the same issues over and over again and will always give answers that are consistent and aligned with your brand.
Improving the service we provide and interacting more naturally with people through chat, we just have to write what we need and the Chatbot will respond.
We always open channels of communication with clients but it is difficult for us to always be attentive to everyone, we neglect them.
We are used to that, if we ask a question, the answer will come hours or days later, when it may be that we have already made the purchase elsewhere or do not even remember that we had asked it at all.
If we have a communication channel that is always open, that of quick solutions to the clients and do it quickly, the perception of the brand can improve a lot.
We can start with the most common and simple doubts that customers have, which surely take 60 to 80% of the attention time and are the same again and again.
By automating them we simplify the service for clients and ourselves.
Some topics in which it is feasible to implement a Chatbot are:
l Location
l Hours
l Costs
l Gather information for a quote or sign up for a lead
l Confirming appointments
l Initial service offer
l Find what they need easier and faster
And very important, without having to register, download something or have to wait to be served by someone.
Resolving these issues that are the majority, we can focus our attention and service resources on clients who have an application that needs to be attended by a person.
What generates us savings and takes advantage of the cost of the opportunity to have a trained agent responding to the location of the store or opening hours.
Although the Chatbot is not a panacea for attention, it helps us to improve and simplify it but we have to take into account 3 points:
1. The design of the user experience
2. Manage customer expectations
3. Be able to escalate to the Chatbot if necessary
User Experience
Before using the best technology, you have to think about the user, make your contact with my brand, simple, easy and fast. We have to consider what it is that you are looking for and how.
For that we can use first, our experience or that of the telephone or chat staff to know the most constant questions of the clients, then reflect that in the flow of the conversation with the Chatbot, so that it is natural and attractive.
Take into account that there are issues that can be solved in a simple and agile way without excessive effort, we do not necessarily have to use artificial intelligence for everything if we can start responding by means of buttons and rules the first questions of the clients; the important thing is to progress, improving and increasing the scope of the solution step by step.
Expectations
If we expect our Chatbot to do and answer everything, we will most likely fail. The best practice is to manage expectations and keep them in something attainable so as not to cause frustrations in the clients, that includes mentioning that they are talking with a Chatbot.
It is better to limit the scope than to constantly respond “Sorry I did not understand what you want” or something similar.
This includes a brief and clear welcome or on-boarding process that explains what the Chatbot does, how to interact with it and how to start over or contact a human.
Pass with a human operator
Since the Chatbot will not be able to solve all the customer’s concerns, but it will be able to resolve the most common and pressing, we must have a clear procedure to request to speak with an operator.
If we follow an iterative process of measurement, development and improvement of our Chatbot, every time there must be fewer steps to operators or only those that require specific attention (and that can potentially generate more value) through interactions with human operators we can know where the Chatbot falls short and thus refine it more and more.
The idea is that the Chatbot will only deal with the repetitive issues and the people will be able to answer specific recommendations or make sales until the chatbot can assist most of them automatically.
And to know more about what are the Chatbots, artificial intelligence and how they work, you can see the following video in Spanish that I made about it:
