Small businesses need Chatbots

Chatbots are not new but technology has now gained momentum in recent years, our chatbots are becoming smarter and virtual assistants, such as Google Assistant, are becoming increasingly accessible to consumers.

Many major companies now employ chatbots as the first line of customer service response. Instead of using a person to address simple queries; they install a robot to do it. This is great for SMEs, but to understand why we should begin by defining what is a chatbot.

A chatbot is a service, powered by rules and artificial intelligence designed to resemble human conversations.

SMBs need chatbots

Reducing the time spent and the number of people needed to perform repetitive and high volume tasks requiring customer support is the biggest potential of chatbots. This is why small, medium business owners need chatbots. They have minimal costs and instant ROI. With chatbots, SMEs could provide an instant service that never sleeps while increasing sales, allowing business owners to have more time to do meaningful work to grow their core business.

Your customers expect you to be available 24X7. Chatbots allows SMEs to fulfill that expectation and prevent losing sales leads without having to increase the payroll. This alone makes chatbots a great investment in your business

I recommend a hybrid approach, applying human interaction for more complicated customer requests and automation for simpler ones. Your chatbot should be the first level of interaction with a customer but you need to ensure it’s not the only one. Your chatbot should allow a human customer representative to take control of the conversation and send it back to the chatbot if necessary.

Chatbots offer a huge opportunity for businesses to engage with customers and they’re becoming smarter as technology evolves, SMEs could definitively increase their efficiency by implementing chatbots.