Have you ever needed customer support on any website? If you did then what was the standard procedure? You might have clicked on the help button and written your query. If it’s a frequently asked question then you would have got an answer. But if that was not the case then you would have waited for someone to answer the query. Sometimes you might have to wait for days to get your problem solved. But lately, there have been a lot of changes in the customer service area. As technology is developing companies are looking at innovative ideas to solve the problems of their customers. The latest technology that is being used for customer service is chatbots. More and more companies are trying to use chatbots to improve user experience.
A chatbot is a program that is designed to deliver answers to certain questions. It is a sophisticated computer program that automatically sends answers to users when they hit certain triggers. You might have already interacted with a chatbot as they are being used by all types of organizations. If you have ever seen a message popup that says hi as soon as you enter a sight then know that it is a chatbot. There are different types of chatbots like rule-based chatbots, Intelligent chatbots, and AI chatbots. Rule-based chatbots are the chatbots that are only capable of providing predefined answers to a specific set of questions. Intelligent chatbots use machine learning to understand words and phrases to provide the answers. AI chatbots use both rule-based and machine learning techniques to provide correct answers to the users.
Here are some chatbot benefits for your business.
24×7 customer support
If you hire people for customer support then you cannot expect them to work for the whole day because it is impossible. A person can only work for limited hours. So there have to be multiple people to provide service in different shifts but even that won’t work as people don’t work on weekends. But you will not have all these problems if you have a chatbot. They provide customer support for people at all times. You don’t have to worry about customer support as chatbots are available to customers any time throughout the year.
Quick responses
As mentioned earlier a chatbot is a computer program that is specially designed for customer support. So you do not have to worry if a customer’s query is answered or not. As soon as the query hits a trigger they will receive the answer. Chatbots do not even take time to answer the question as the answers are predefined. All it does is finds the answer related to the query and sends it to the customer.
Chatbots are cost-effective
Chatbots are cheaper compared to hiring more and more employees for customer support. Yes, it may cost you some money when you build one but it will only be saving you money in the long run. If you hire employees you have to pay them monthly salaries. You would be paying even for not working on weekends or when they are on sick leaves. But once you get a chatbot it will be available for customers all the time.
Increase productivity
Many people who run organizations do not know that chatbots can actually increase productivity. A company can receive thousands of queries each day. The customer support staff cannot reply to all of those questions. Even if they do they will only be wasting time. This is because most of the queries are repetitive. So if it’s a frequently asked question then a customer support employee does not have to reply as the chatbot will take care of it. This makes sure that the employees focus on important and complex queries that chatbots cannot solve.
No human errors
Humans make errors which is a very natural thing. But you cannot afford errors when you are solving customer’s problems. This will leave them angry and unsatisfied. Moreover, it is very bad for businesses. If you have a chatbot then you can be assured that there will be no errors in its part. The reason is simple computers do not make wrong calculations when they are programmed to specific tasks. However, chatbots did not reach their full potential yet. They are fairly new technology and there are many great communities that are building faster and advanced bots for business.
Decreases customer support staff
You won’t be needing a huge staff for customer support if you own a large company. Most of the work can be done by the bots. As mentioned earlier most of the queries are frequently asked questions so you don’t need people sitting there and replying to the same questions. You can just build a bot that can answer all of those questions. This means that you will only need people to answer complex questions which are comparatively less in number.
Improves customer service
Humans are not always in the same mood. They act according to their moods. But one has to be patient with the customers no matter what. Employees may lose their patience after sometimes and provide bad customer service. This is not all good for the company. On the other hand, bots are incapable of any of that as they are programmed to do that job. They will be answering all the questions of the customers even if they are asking the same questions again and again. These bots ensure that the customers get the answers to the query no matter how long it takes.
Chatbots increase customers
When you have a chatbot you can be assured that the customer service is going to be excellent. If you own a business you will definitely know how important customer service is. Good customer service will always yield results. Since the chatbots are great at providing customer support you won’t be hearing many complaints. Moreover, people will keep coming back to your websites and promoting it which will increase your customer base.
Helps in boosting brands
There are a few principles you want your customer support to follow in order to boost your brand value. Chatbots are great at meeting all your expectations. These bots proactively interact with customers and meet all of their requirements. They are great at engaging with customers and deliver results quickly. Customers get a personalized experience as they can interact with a chatbot at any time.
Good at promoting new products
Chatbots are great at reaching potential customers. Because these bots do not promote all the products that they are aware of. Getting notifications about products every now and then will irritate the customers. But the bots will predict what the customer may like. They do this by analyzing the type of queries the customers are asking. After that, they will be sending notifications about the products based on their interests. The customers are more likely to buy the product if it is something that suits them
Conclusion
Chatbots are expected to solve almost 90% of the customer queries by 2023. Many companies are building more and more sophisticated chatbots that can solve people’s problems. They are looking to create chatbots that can work intuitively and solve any type of problem that is faced by the customers. Chatbots have many benefits for businesses. They are capable of increasing sales and conversions while saving money at the same time.