What’s the hype with chatbots?
We’ve all been there at some point as customers where we have a burning question we need answered, check in, and store hours are closed, so we can’t call.
We are searching but cannot find information in the FAQ section or on the website.
Welcome! A chatbot pops up to ask if you need any help. Finally, you can get the answer to your simple question and move on with your day.
Chatbots help turn the frustrating experience of not finding the information you need into a positive interaction with a brand.
The customer gets the information they need in a cost-effective and low-resource way for the brand.
But these chatbots improve communication and meet business needs and goals in more ways than one with their deep learning capabilities.
Over the past two years, more companies have integrated chatbots into their communications process to interact with customers.
As chatbots have evolved to better communicate with customers, there have been more meaningful interactions. A recent study showed that 80% of customers had a positive experience with chatbots.
As consumers’ needs for round-the-clock communication grow, companies are adapting to find ways to meet customer needs through automated response systems.
But knowing when and how to use chatbots is key to successful integration into your business strategy.
Since 36% of consumers believe that chatbot accuracy can make efforts to improve, it is necessary to know where chatbots are integrated and where human interaction is still necessary.
So, let’s break down the different ways to use chatbots so you can learn how to integrate them to better support your brand and relieve some of the tasks from your staff’s dashboards.
Innovations and benefits
As we’ve discussed, companies have traditionally used chatbots to communicate simple responses to their customers.
This has had a huge impact on e-commerce businesses during the pandemic, but the shift has become a normal norm for brands to communicate for several reasons.
Companies are incorporating better AI capabilities into their chatbots to handle specific issues customers bring to them and understand more complex questions.
In addition, they are evolving from generic and generic messages, which can backfire and frustrate their customers, to more intuitive, personal responses.
Chatbots have also become a multi-channel response system not only for brands’ websites but for their app and social media channels, especially for Facebook.
Now, businesses can meet consumer demand for 24/7 networking opportunities with their favorite brands.
Not only can businesses interact more with their customers, but chatbot integration has easy scalability to meet high volume needs.
Chatbots also provide the opportunity to predict customer behavior, which can help predict customer intentions to either provide them with more options such as purchasing or provide information about their orders, or gather better information for the agent to answer their questions.
Additionally, they help gather information and deliver solutions faster, creating a streamlined experience.
For companies with a heavy call flow, chatbots provide another communication method to mitigate the high volume of calls.
But chatbots are becoming more valuable than simply communicating with customers.
Common Business Uses of Chatbots
Sales and marketing
According to studies, customers are open to purchasing items through bots.
Insider Intelligence states that by 2024, retail consumers will be spending $140 billion worldwide Through chatbots. Chatbots can help by suggesting products and assisting with the purchase process.
By using chatbots, you will be able to communicate with customers efficiently and effectively, which means increased customer satisfaction which can lead to increased revenue.
When companies use chatbots to send messages to abandoned carts, they can help increase sales up to 25% for e-commerce brands.
In addition, brands can communicate with two to five times more customers through chatbots than they can through email interactions.
Content marketing
So, how can chatbots help with content marketing? First, chatbots can help gather valuable information from people who are interested in your brand.
Chatbots can organize and store this information and segment consumers for future marketing campaigns. This can be incredibly useful for creating more accurate target marketing.
Based on information from the dialogue with chatbots, marketers can use this information to help personalize brand content.
However, while chatbots are excellent for informing content marketing, brands shouldn’t necessarily use artificial intelligence to create the content itself.
Content creation is more complex, and AI is not as reliable at creating authentic content that truly connects with your target audience.
customer support
We’ve talked about how great chatbots are at providing 24/7 customer support and responding immediately to customer inquiries, but do customers really want to talk to a chatbot?
Reports show that 40% of customers prefer messaging chatbots over a virtual agent. Chatbots can do more than just answer simple questions.
For example, they can provide updates for any order, help customers select and purchase a product, provide a tracking update, and process returns or exchanges of products.
Additionally, Chatbots Magazine states that chatbots can lower customer service costs by 30%with the potential to generate $23 billion for overall brands in the US.
As mentioned, companies can integrate chatbots on many platforms, such as websites, apps, and social media.
Even if companies initially implement simple chatbots, they can at least provide customers with simple answers and a waiting time until they can speak to a representative or let them know when customer support reaches out to them.
Instead of customers emailing and waiting days for a response only to not get their questions fully answered, they can receive immediate responses.
Plus, this kind of simple chatbot support will let customers know they’re an important part of your brand’s community.
Social media and lead generation
As we know, chatbots can help brands gather information and help marketers better understand customer behavior and preferences, but they also have better customer engagement rates on social media.
Chatbot interactions on Facebook Messenger Increase consumer confidence in a brand or business.
Interestingly, Facebook messenger is powered by computer software instead of AI with easy implementation. Chatbots are also great for tracking analytics like your open rates.
Businesses can also use social media chatbots to get updates and send bulk messages. Keep your customers informed with daily or weekly announcements about deals, events and promotions.
Or you can ask customers to book a service, schedule an appointment, take orders, or share new content through social media chatbots.
Another fun and valuable way to interact with customers is to create quizzes, surveys or surveys to help you gather vital information to generate better leads.
Chatbot challenges
Even with all the advancements they’ve made, chatbots still have some challenges to overcome.
For example, chatbots can have problems establishing proper sentence structure across different languages, as well as understanding colloquialisms or colloquialisms.
AI and chatbots help brand teams, but they can’t replace a writer or editor to create compelling content.
Another problem with simplistic chatbots is that if your chatbot can’t answer more complex questions, it can misinterpret customer requests or carry out inaccurate orders.
As chatbots try to keep up with customer expectations, the industry is building more human-like chatbots with the help of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing.
Over time, they will become a more effective way to help brand teams than they have already proven.
Chatbot trends
According to Juniper Research, by 2023, chatbots will help the retail, banking and healthcare industries save $11 billion Only on customer service inquiries, with over 2.5 billion hours saved.
In addition, among these sectors, the retail industry will be able to maximize the use of chatbots by 70% to assist with customer inquiries.
Not only will chatbots assist with customer interactions on brand websites, but there will be more use within brand applications, with 50% Using chatbots through applications.
They can help your IT help desk and customer service staff by learning to answer frequent questions asked by customers and improving response time.
Internally, they may collect and organize information to assist with HR duties such as onboarding and gathering valuable updates on employees.
When discussing chatbots on the SEJ Today podcast, Dr. Michelle Chusaid, co-founder and CEO of Juji, Inc. and inventor of IBM Watson Personality Insights, chatbots are getting better and can help deliver personalized information based on conversation.
I shared the following example:
“Let’s say if you go to a book website and then after the person has been chatting with the chatbot for a certain amount of time, let’s say five or 10 minutes, the chatbot can really recommend books that are tailored to the person’s interests, passions, and even personal interests.”
Chatbots move to more intuitive conversations in exchange for simple responses.
In addition, chatbots are turning to using NLP to better understand and send accurate answers to users.
I went on to discuss chatbot improvements, emphasizing their importance to small businesses.
For example, since it is not possible to hire many people for all the functions and customer service components needed to scale a business, chatbots can become virtual assistants to help with regular or repetitive operations so that employees can focus on other areas throughout the company.
Benefit: Is there a future for chatbots?
Yes, there is a future for chatbots. Fortunately, chatbots appear to be here to stay for the foreseeable future.
Chatbots are changing the way companies communicate and understand their customers.
With artificial intelligence, chatbots will have the ability to deliver a more personalized customer experience.
It also saves companies money through customer service, internal operations, and marketing efforts. There is a lot of potential to integrate chatbots across the company’s website, app, and social media platforms.
E-commerce brands are already taking advantage of the potential of chatbots, and there are opportunities for brands to start taking advantage of all the ways chatbots can help grow brands.
More resources:
- Facebook Messenger Marketing & Chatbots: 11 ways to get started
- How will cognitive intelligence reshape chatbots with Dr. Michelle Zhou [Podcast]
- How to Advertise on Facebook: A Beginner’s Guide
Featured image: sdecoret/Shutterstock
