Why Your Next Employee Should be A Chatbot
In my first sales job, I sold branded uniforms to local businesses.
I spoke to hundreds of small business owners each week. And the most common objection I’d hear was “sorry, I don’t have time.”
At first, I thought this was just an excuse to brush off salespeople like me. But when I dug deeper, I discovered that time really is a big issue for small business owners.
Now as a small business owner myself, I understand even better why these owners didn’t have time. These days I often find myself saying “sorry, I don’t have time.”
Research from Prospa found that small business owners are working more than doctors on average. More than a quarter work over 50 hours a week.
Part of the reason these owners are so busy is that they try to take on everything in their business. They are the CEO, operations manager, HR coordinator, customer support, salesperson, janitor…
Most business owners I speak to take on all these roles because they feel like they have to. Not because they enjoy them. And not because they’re exceptionally good at them.
It’s an unfortunate but common scenario…the small business owner who started a business to pursue what they love. But instead of doing what they love, they end up spending hours every week doing activities they hate.
Not only that, but the long working hours leaves owners with little time to spend with their families or doing what they love outside of the business.
Obvious solutions to this problem are hiring and outsourcing. But hiring and outsourcing both have their drawbacks. Depending on where you’re at in your business, they may not be viable.
I’d like to show you an alternative — chatbots.
We’ll take a look at how a chatbot can reduce your workload, opening up the time to focus on running the parts of your business you enjoy.
You’ll also see why a chatbot may be a better solution for your business even if you already have a team of employees or are in a position to hire and outsource.
HOW CHATBOTS CAN HELP
If you’re not familiar yet with what a chatbot is, let me explain.
It’s basically an automated computer program that can speak to your customers, prospects or staff. I explain chatbots to my clients by telling them to imagine having a new employee who works for them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, who doesn’t get sick or take time off, can perform hundreds of tasks at the same time and costs just a small fraction of a full-time employee.
That usually gets a business owner’s attention!
CNN are using chatbots to distribute news stories to their audience. Major airlines like QANTAS are using chatbots to help customers manage bookings and Domino’s are using a chatbot to take pizza orders.
These chatbots operate on messaging applications like Facebook Messenger, WeChat or Slack and can have conversations with thousands of people all over the world, every single day.
But chatbots aren’t only for big businesses like CNN and QANTAS. In fact, they may be even more important for small to medium-sized businesses.
A chatbot can be trained to assist with sales, marketing, customer service and HR. In my own business, my chatbot is having sales conversations with prospects every day then following up and setting appointments for me.
It doesn’t do 100% of my sales work but it can handle a good chunk which gives me more time to focus on other important tasks that I enjoy more.
In other businesses, we use these chatbots to respond to customer service queries, help local businesses get more reviews from happy customers, provide information to new prospects or even train new staff. These are just a handful of the possibilities.
A chatbot may not be intelligent enough to completely substitute a good employee. But for a small business owner who does not have the resources to hire a large team, this new technology is very appealing.
WHAT IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A TEAM?
I’m not suggesting you go and fire your employees so you can replace them with bots.
But it may be worth looking at chatbots before you hire your next human employee.
A chatbot can likely do much of what a new employee could do for you. Or at least reduce the burden on some of your existing staff. Thus freeing up time for them to work on higher value activities.
A bot won’t be able to do everything a human can do. But then a human can’t do everything a bot can do. And hiring employees comes with plenty of risks and disadvantages.
What if a new employee turns out to be unreliable, unprofessional or lacks the skills you thought they had during the recruitment phase? What if they have conflicts with you or the rest of your staff?
Then you have the costs of hiring a new employee. If you’re in Australia like me, you will have to pay superannuation on top of their salary. Then what happens if they get hurt at work?
There will be times when your employees get sick or when something has gone wrong at home and they can’t focus on the job. They will take vacations during the year. Some days they will come to work in a bad mood and unload their negative emotions on to other employees or your customers.
Humans are unpredictable. You might think everything is going well and then the next day they quit their job. Some studies suggest that every time you have to replace an employee, it will cost you 6–9 months’ salary. You have the recruitment costs to find someone new, costs to onboard and train your new employee, loss of productivity and the new employee will likely make costly mistakes as they learn.
And apparently, humans are not even very good at multitasking. In fact, it’s not just that we’re not very good at it. It’s actually scientifically impossible!
Opting for a chatbot rather than more employees can help you avoid some of these problems associated with human staff.
Firstly, in terms of cost, chatbots have a big advantage. A custom made bot will generally cost you between $500 — $10,000 for set-up, depending on how advanced they are. You won’t have to pay your chatbot bonuses, or overtime or superannuation.
Your chatbot isn’t going to show up to work in a bad mood. You decide how you want your bot to speak to customers or prospects and the bot will do exactly what you want. Every single day.
It’s not going to take sick days. It won’t be going on vacation. Actually, it doesn’t go home at all! Your chatbot works for you all day every day and doesn’t sleep.
Once your chatbot has been set up, it’s not going to quit your business. It won’t leave and take all the skills you trained it. It will be the most loyal employee you ever have.
And there’s one thing that bots can do far better than any human — multitasking. Your bot could have a conversation with hundreds or even thousands of customers at the same time, while simultaneously updating your CRM system. Show me a human who can do that!
Of course, bots do have flaws as well. Sometimes they will say or do the wrong thing. They won’t know how to handle some situations. And they won’t know everything about your business.
But if you work with a good chatbot developer, they will be able to identify and correct any issues as soon as they occur. They will also ensure that over time your bot continues to learn and improve. Your bot should become an increasingly valuable member of your team as time goes on and it learns more.
WHERE TO START
Customer service is a good place to start. IBM estimates that chatbots can answer up to 80% of routine customer service questions.
Aside from saving your customer service staff time, chatbots also offer other advantages over humans. Firstly, they can respond to customer service queries instantly. At any time of day.
Customers expect quick responses to their questions. If you leave them waiting, they will go somewhere else.
And if you don’t respond quickly to your leads, you will probably lose them. Drift conducted a study to see what impact response time has on leads.
They found that if you take longer than 5 minutes to respond to a lead, your chances of contacting them drop 10x! Then if you’re making leads wait more than 15 minutes for a response, you will lose nearly all of them.
A chatbot will ensure that customers and leads aren’t left waiting. It may not be able to deal with every issue or answer every question. But it will at least be able to acknowledge the customer or lead instantly, making them feel heard. Then if needed, it can pass the issue on to one of your human team members.
As well as customer service, a chatbot can fit nicely into your sales department. You may use a bot to qualify prospects during the early stages and then have it direct your best leads to your human sales team members.
SUMMARY
Chatbots can be developed to handle a lot of the work in your business. These are tasks that in the past you had to do yourself or pay employees to do for you.
If you’re a small business owner, this could mean taking some of your workload away from you. Giving you more time to focus on the parts of your business that you love and maybe even more time to spend outside your business.
For larger businesses, a chatbot can reduce the workload for your existing employees allowing them to focus on other important tasks.
Consider what areas in your business a chatbot could assist with. Customer service is a great place to put your chatbot to work. But also in sales and marketing, a chatbot can be a valuable contributor to your business.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard McGrath is the founder of Chatbot agency All Chat Solutions. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or by email — richard@allchatsolutions.com.
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