How Chatbots are improving Customer Services

How Chatbots are improving Customer Services

A few decades back many of us were not firm on interacting with a chatbot flawlessly. Undoubtedly it was not easy for many of us to digest the fact that they are chatting with a virtual and nonliving machine humanly. But today with the dramatic advent of science, it gifted the human tribe with an enormous number of technologies and methodologies to work on and create wonders. Amongst these wonders lies the birth of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Chatbots have taken a prominent place in our daily life and are strongly revolutionizing the customer interaction space. Today chatbots have become a fundamental part of each Customer Service platform. Do you know the basic reason behind it? It is because of us. Yes! You read that right, it is because of our human nature to converse and interact with the surrounding people! Humans lack patience and getting them to wait for hours certainly results in the loss of a customer. These behavioral dynamics of humans were metered, and inferences proclaimed that technological advances are the cause.

It is like — “Once upon a time our patience dwindled, and then a business got its idea and henceforth prospered! ”

You see how surprising this fact is sounding and had hit your brain.

Wait! the marvelous facts do not end here. We have some of them more for you -

1. 8 out of every 10 consumers who have engaged with a chatbot report it as an overall positive customer experience.
2. 69% of consumers prefer to use chatbots for the speed at which they can communicate with a brand.
3. $5 billion will be invested in chatbots by 2021 end and 85% of the customer interactions will be handled without human agents by 2021.
4. Chatbots can cut operational costs by up to 30%.
5. By 2024, the global chatbot market is projected to be over $994 million.

Hence, it is quite evident that chatbots are changing the way brands interact with their customers. And if those chatbots are of high quality, then the outcomes are probably positive.

Now quickly understand the term Chatbot. By definition, a chatbot is a simple software that communicates with a user through a conversational interface and replies to them back with a solution. This conversational medium can be textual or voice-based. The bots can be classified into two types -

1. Rule-based Bots
2. Natural Language Processing (NLP)-based Bots

Now let us dive into the search for an answer for- What is a customer service chatbot?

→ A customer service chatbot is a bot that uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for answering customers’ questions and resolve their queries.

AI chatbots use an organization’s existing information and resources, like FAQs, knowledge base articles, or the fed questions to help and resolve the customers’ questions. They acknowledge and answer multiple forms of the same question and can be trained thoroughly to give instant responses using one’s preferred voice, script flow, and tone.

That means faster, more consistent support for one’s customers and fewer repetitive, transactional questions for the support agents.

Which organizational website should include this chatbot?

→ An organization should think about adding a chatbot feature for customer service to its website if-

2. A global, ever-growing base of customers, and requires multi-lingual support for communication.

3. Support is needed across multiple channels like website, application, social media accounts, etc.

4. Not able to keep your support team present and active 24/7.

5. One needs to reduce customer service costs and search for more efficient ways to scale customer support.

Why organizations need chatbots?

→ Chatbots are designed and programmed to carefully examine the chunks of data to revert a user with a quick answer in a fraction of seconds. Hence, they are great for repetitive jobs which demand simple tasks. In a customer interaction platform, chatbots eliminate the redundancy without even pleading for a raise. Moreover, if a business invests huge capital on customer service initially, then acquiring AI chatbots or customer service chatbots can reduce the operational costs, boost the sales funnel, and uplift flawless interaction with customers. More squarely, chatbots can improve response rates, overall customer service, automate online purchases, and dispense better communication.

Here are some of the reasons for their effectiveness:

1. Seamless User experience — The brands with a customer-centric approach that offers appropriate content, quickly, and through a perfect channel with the right context create an impactful experience on a user’s mind. In the current pandemic situation, most of the shoppers are becoming tough customers when it comes to the retail experience, that is the reason why chatbots are held to the very same high standards as human chat agents.
2. Offering 24/7 availability- A company’s live chat customer support team needs to rest, sleep, tends to get frustrated or bored, asks for day-offs, and is not 100% accurate and precise with their work. However, the chatbot does not need any of it other than a simple installation. When a huge amount of queries and transactions take place outside of the official business hours, the employees ask for extra wages. Moreover, adding extra cost to the company’s budget. But, customers demand quick support on a website or a messaging application irrespective of the unavailability of your employee. Hence, chatbots fit remarkably at this place.
3. Better Communication- The customer service chatbots are critically designed to reduce talk time and provide faster solutions. They extract the information on the user’s liking, preferences, needs, etc to create a personalized touch with the users, engage in an enhanced conversation, and display the products or the services which might be of their need. Additionally, over the past years, businesses have gained revenue and improved customer engagement with these methods.
4. Providing Assistance to Reach the Milestones — Many a time customer experience comes in between to magnify the interaction at the various touchpoints in a customer’s journey. Today most of the interactions occur in a digital environment, assisting customers throughout the journey, and at all the digital instances is important.
5. Chatbots offers instant resolutions — A chatbot being non-living offers the client with instant help, suggestion, and solution. It communicates to the user using the firm’s source material, past experiences, including the knowledge bases and FAQs. This kind of instant revert keeps the customer engaged, gives them an emotion of value and personalized service.
6. Chatbots’ ongoing learning tendency — The chatbots just do not use Artificial Intelligence to answer a question. They also learn from the previous instances to use that data to learn, analyze, and automatically improve the quality of the support offered in the future. A company may even train its bots to provide better answers. For example, feeding the questions to the bot, which the customers have asked to improve how that bot will respond in the coming future.
7. Pocket friendly — It is a proven fact that using chatbots, cuts almost 30% of the operational costs of an organization. Since these chatbots are capable of answering routine questions and reducing the overall response time results in a faster output with minimal cost. A famous IBM’s prediction speaks that 85% of the customer interactions, by 2020, will proceed without human intervention. Hence, adopting chatbots is a win-win situation by saving money while availing customer satisfaction.
8. Multiple Lingual Problem — Worldwide more than 7000+ languages are spoken, thus creating a barrier in communication. These lingual preferences create a gap in employee and customer communication. It is not achievable to know, understand, and speak all the languages present on the Earth. And here for this issue, the chatbots will suffice. Instead of risking the loss of a potential customer, implement a chatbot in the communication system. Chatbots, by default, run on NLP standards that enable them to understand different tones and languages with ease. During an active conversation with a guest, the customer service chatbot stores different words and sentences related to a customer query, thereafter making it easy to develop and increase the existing knowledge base. This will keep your work going and the customers to freely express their grievances being in their comfort zone.
9. Chatbots help in showcasing the new products and services -Chatbots provide a very useful platform for broadcasting product updates and in reaching potent audiences. They maintain consistent and friendly customer contact, eliminating customer irritation from those traditional cold calls or spamming emails. This forms a basis for push notifications and showcases new products and services. As these notifications are only sent to the appropriate people after analyzing the data chunks, based on their interests, customers feel appreciated rather than being irked.

To sum up, chatbots can have a huge positive impact on the quality of customer experience and it is gaining more and more attention. Especially since the pandemic as the pressure on several businesses have dramatically increased, to digitize their services and workflows.

So are you ready to create a chatbot for your dear customers?