10 Benefits Of Using Chatbots For Customer Experience
What is a Chatbot?
Before talking about the benefits of chatbots, it is crucial to know what chatbots are and what they are used for. A chatbot is an application that is used to conduct conversations with customers via online chat or even via texts. It is created to provide a way of direct live communication with a living human being (a customer). It is a product of the experiments done within the range of artificial intelligence to ensure conversations are conducted with human beings as naturally as possible.
Why are Chatbots Important?
Chatbots are one of the crucial and expressive interactions between human beings and machines. They are developed on the concept of a Question-Answering system leveraging Natural Language Processing. A chatbot is programmed to function effectively through various messaging and interacting applications, websites, and mobile apps or even through telephone to make telephonic conversations with people.
Chatbots are probably one of the best examples that could be termed as the evidence to support the greatness of Artificial Intelligence and what can be created if it is used effectively. They save a significant amount of time and can effectively automate several aspects of Customer Service Support provided by various business companies.
How Does a Chatbot Function?
A chatbot functions based on two tasks: User Request Analysis and Returning the Response.
User Request Analysis takes place when a chatbot application analyses a customer's request to understand and recognize its intent and extra relevant answers to engage in a conversation with the customer.
Returning to response is the second step of how a chatbot functions, and it takes place after the chatbot has identified a customer's intent. The chatbot will provide the customer with an appropriate answer to make sure the customer's request or issue is addressed and resolved.
10 Benefits Of Chatbots For Customer Experience Enhancement
Chatbots, without a doubt, has become the most invaluable tools to ensure customer requests, grievances, and even queries are addressed in the right way in a business. They are programmed to streamline and better the entire customer experience at every step of the service process or even while drawing the customers to the sales funnels. To ensure that the overall customer experience is positive and swift, business owners are now investing in chatbot applications. Here are the benefits of chatbots for customer experience in the business.
Providing 24/7 Hours Of Customer Service
If you are providing customer service through manpower, then it is not possible to make sure your existing or potential customers are receiving customer service and support throughout the day and even at night. That problem is solved the moment you invest in chatbot applications; the chatbots are functioned to ensure customers receive service 24/7 and receive answers to their queries or even have a corner to ensure their grievances are addressed at any given time. It ensures that businesses receive the brownie points for being available to the customers through the chatbots even if the manual service staff is not available at a point.
If there are customers having questions at times of trouble, then chatbots can address them by answering those questions and queries at the right time. This leaves a really positive impact on the business as a brand, and customers will be coming back to your brand to avail themselves of services and products from you in the future also.
Resolution Speed
The majority of businesses are unable to create a loyalty program with existing customers because they are unable to get back to the existing customers in time. This is probably one of the best benefits of chatbots because it gets back to the queries or grievances raised by the customers right away. Chatbots are designed to cut down the workload by addressing customers the moment they contact your business. The chatbot can look into the company database to find appropriate answers to the questions and queries raised by different customers regarding the different products and services offered by a business.
Instantaneous Reply
Hiring a customer service staff team that is live 24/7 awaiting customer's calls or texts to solve their problems is not only a costly affair but also seemingly impossible. Even though if the chatbots are unavailable to resolve a certain issue or answer certain questions asked by customers, they can at least redirect the customers to the service team, and they can take up the customer queries from there. Among the several benefits of chatbots, making the first point of contact is probably one of the important ones because the customers are coming in contact with the representatives of the company through these chatbots.
Operational Costs Reduction
If someone has to talk about the benefits of chatbots, then investing in chatbots saves money, in the long run, is noteworthy and requires a special mention. It reduces the need to hire manpower significantly and thus makes investing in chatbot applications a very economical option. Hiring and maintaining a full-time service team with capable and eligible men and women is very costly and can't be afforded by business companies that make very tight profit margins at the end of the month. Even if certain business companies have the budget to hire a fully capable service team that is available 24/7 to cater to the different needs and wishes of the customer, there are very slim chances that they would be unbiased and remain calm and composed with every single customer. But a chatbot will interact with the customers with a positive attitude because it doesn't have emotions or feelings and doesn't get exhausted after a long day at work.
Different Language Support
A chatbot application is designed to handle thousands of existing customers or potential customers every single day and is functioned to answer questions in multiple languages according to the native language of a customer. This makes the entire customer service support extremely flexible and versatile, especially for Business Companies that have customers from across the world. Without having to look and hire manpower as staff that speaks different languages because one can only hire so many people speaking different languages, a chatbot is designed to interact with customers in multiple languages depending on every customer's native language.
Maintain Quality Customer Service Support
Even the most professional employee hired to provide customer service support to the customers as part of the company can have bad days or miss out on crucial information while making interactions and communicating with customers. But that problem is completely eliminated when you are investing in chatbots for customer experience. The chatbots will accurately provide all the information that a customer is making a query on and answer the different questions asked by different kinds of customers about the products and services offered by your business without missing out on any details, no matter how insignificant they might be.
Chatbots are designed to take no breaks and can work all throughout the day the entire week without taking off days, sick days, or even paid leaves. Most business owners understand the fact that there can't be a day at work without having an employee to address the various customer queries and grievances because that would set the company back a few steps. One of the benefits of chatbots is that they will provide top-quality work without fail, even if it means addressing customer queries and conducting interactions in the middle of the night.
Record Customer Conversations to Avoid Future Problems
A chatbot can be programmed to record all the conversations that take place with every customer on a particular business day to ensure if there are any problems in the future with any customer, then the conversation recorded by the chatbot can be used as a physical piece of evidence. It is handy and can be called one of the many benefits of chatbots because it protects the company from engaging in any legal problems with any fraudulent customer.
A chatbot will ensure communication with every customer that asks for customer service support from the company while simultaneously recording the entire conversation. Suppose it is over the smartphone through SMS or texting on other platforms. In that case, obviously, the conversations will be stored and can be accessed at any given time of day. Even if people can't remember all the little details of the conversation they have with the customer service of a certain company, a chatbot will make sure to provide the business owner with every bit of the conversation because it records each and every conversation. Chatbot experience can be improved by gathering all the data gathered through making communication with different customers. The data can be analyzed, and changes can be brought in to make the entire customer experience even more smooth and positive for the company and helpful for the customers.
Say Goodbye to Interactive Voice Response System
The majority of customers hate the Interactive Voice Response System during a phone conversation. It gets really annoying. Customers are badgered with a bunch of menus and are requested to type numbers on their smartphones instead of receiving personalized customer service support. Even though IVR systems are organized, technical, and structured, they leave no room for customers to make genuine conversation or even make special requests. Chatbots are designed to cater to customers personally, and even though human employees are not present in the primary customer support to customers, the chatbots provide customers with a very similar experience.
Provides Excellent Self-Service
Most queries raised customers to have straightforward textbook answers, which can be answered by the chatbots effectively without any issue. The customers feel satisfied with the service provided by the chatbot even without having to go round and round through various employees to get simple answers to simple questions raised by them. This ensures that fewer and fewer customers are getting annoyed with the maze they have to go through to get answers for their queries or submit their grievances. Customers will only appreciate and leave positive comments for your customer service support only if their needs are taken care of most directly and straightforwardly possible.
Perfect For Introverted Customers
A significant section of customers experiences anxiety while making conversations, raising a query, or even reporting a grievance with a customer service support employee. Among several benefits of chatbots, one is that they offer non-judgemental conversations with customers without generating any anxiety for them. The revolutionary response speed and instantaneous response ensure that people are not waiting in line to get their problems resolved. To sum up the benefits of chatbots, by investing in chatbots, you are streamlining the entire process of customer service and ensuring the majority of your customers are happy with the support offered by your business.
Wrapping Up
In case all the above benefits of chatbots for customer experience intrigued you, then you have two options: have a chatbot custom coded and developed for you by a specialist, or use a chatbot builder such as Botsurfer to create your chatbot yourself. Ensure that your customers are dealt with the utmost care, and all their needs are being catered instantly when they contact your company's customer service support.
Click here to register to start creating a chatbot that will change the face of your business's customer service support. We at Botsurfer will be honoured to be the platform that helps you achieve that.