5 Reasons Why Your Business Doesn’t Need Chatbots
I have been in the artificial intelligence and chatbots business for more then a year now. This is a short time in most industries but in the Ai world that’s a heck of a long time.
I learned a few things along the way and while I truly believe that artificial intelligence applications will become mainstream in the years to come, we are not there yet. Robots won’t take over the world. At least not for now.
There are plenty of wanna-be artificial intelligence experts, clickfunnels mumbo jumbo adepts and bot builders who will tell you the contrary. They’ll list you reasons your business should get a bot right now. They will swear that If they build a chatbot for your business, customers will be lining-up for your services: build it and they will come.
While there has been significant progress in text and speech recognition, today’s Ai systems capacities are still pretty basic. They are useful only for a limited number of use cases.
In fact I recommend to nearly half of my new customers to not invest in a chatbot. Maybe I’m stupid and I should be taking their money anyway, but that’s not how I build relationships businesswise.
This is why I decided to come up with a list of five reasons why your business doesn’t need a chatbot. It’ll be up to you to decide if a bot is the right tool for you or not.
Your Customers Need a Personal Touch
Automation is great but the best customer service is provided by humans, period. In a recent Korn Ferry’s survey, 43% of people reported that they prefer to communicate with a human first and foremost.
If your customers need to express their needs in a peculiar way, or if your first interaction with a customer is driven by an emotional trigger a bot may not be the greatest first contact they should have with the services you want to sell them.
In fact a McKinsey study on automation technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence discovered that activities involving complex human interactions such as communication with customers had less than 30% chance of success.
Bots can handle straightforward ping pong like dialogues but have a hard time dealing with complex interactions. This mean that they can handle simple inquiries, but don’t expect them to be able to handle complaints by frustrated customers.
Your Customers are Old
It took my mother a long time to learn how to use Facebook. I still remember one of her first interaction with Facebook. She posted the following message in cap letters on my wall, thinking she was sending me a private message:
YOU LEFT YOUR UNDIES IN THE DRYER. LOVE YOU.
I realized then that technology and old people doesn’t go along really well.
The older your users are, the longer they will take to adapt to new technologies. So if your customers are grandmas and grandpas, a bot may not be the best first experience they have with your customer service to resolve a problem.
Beside they probably won’t have any idea they’re talking to a bot.
Your Business Might not be a Good Fit
Bots are great for certain use cases such as Facebook Messenger lead generation or for answering frequently asked questions by users. I’ve developed many successful Ai applications for clients who are glad they purchase an Ai assistant for their business. They were a good fit for a bot.
As a rule of thumb, any venture that rely on a sales funnel could add a chatbot to their digital marketing tools. A virtual assistant designed to troubleshoot users’ problems is also a suitable utilization for a chatbot for a company if repetitive customers queries can be identified from its current communication channels on social media and on its existing chat service.
The fact that this technology works fine for these businesses doesn’t necessarily mean that you should adopt it as well.
You Don’t Have Demand on Social Media
I get it, chatbots are a brand new shiny thing. You might be tempted to get one just because it would look cool on your Facebook page or on your web site. Some social media marketing experts might have already tried to sell you a chatbot with some social media ads campaign to stand out of the digital crowd.
But if your customers don’t use your Facebook page to reach you or fail to use your chat service on your web site, you shouldn’t invest in a chatbot.
Otherwise it will be a sad and lonely bot.
Bots Can Damage Your Brand
if all of the above doesn’t convince you evaluate carefully the possibility of integrating a bot to your company’s communication channel, this last argument might be the most important to weight out:
A chatbot could be a potential liability to your business’ branding.
if your users end up having a negative experience with your Ai application, close to 75% of surveyed people answered they won’t use that chatbot ever again.
That’s a lot of potential leads lost because you were too excited to let a chatbot take care of onboarding your new clients in. That’s really bad.
So is the right time for you to invest in Ai for your business? It is up to you to decide, but before jumping in the botwagon make sure it will be worth the investment.
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