The functions and capabilities of chatbots have evolved over the years. They have changed from being simply repetitive and illogically predictive to intelligent, programmable, and highly interactive features in a chat application or service.
Chat, just like calls, is a way of communicating in real-time. Thus, this method of communication saw great potential in businesses, not just on the customer service aspect. It’s becoming a common misconception that chat services in business are only exclusively for customer service.
There are other benefits chat and chatbots can bring to your business, and we’ll tackle some of them here.
Chatbots Help Streamline Your Business Process
Chatbots that have intuitive and data-gathering programs embedded in them can collect valuable customer data which can be useful when it comes to planning and implementing changes or improvements in your business process. You can learn what the most frequent issues that customers raise, what aspect of your business their feedback commonly indicate, what suggestions are frequently being provided by customers, and much other relevant information.
While it’s good that your business has its research and development team or a department that handles corporate processes and functions, the bottom line is being able to satisfactorily meet the demands of your target market. Data coming directly from customers can give useful insights that can help guide your business planners to align your business process, mission, vision, and values with the needs of your customers – both established and potential ones. All this useful stuff comes from your chat application and chatbots.
Chatbots Expand Your Market Reach
Another capability of chatbots that have relevance to marketing is the connection to Facebook Messenger, another widely used chat application by Facebook users. It comes as no surprise that the majority of the people on Earth have a Facebook and Messenger account. Developers of chatbot4u and many other popular chatbots realize this potential and are offering their services to business owners and managers.
A well-informed business owner should already know the extensive potential of having the capability to reach out to a wider audience. Chatbots can grant this capability to businesses due to their extensive connection to other chat services, specifically Facebook Messenger. Businesses can now be able to reach out to a very wide market and they can provide updates, announcements, and relevant information about their products and services through chat.
Chatbots Make Services and Production Better
Not only do chatbots help streamline or speed up the delivery of services and creation of products for your business, but they also help improve the quality of your service or products. Since the development of AI technology, chatbots now have the capacity to more effectively handle inquiries, requests for information and properly categorize received information so that they are more effectively handled by human employees.
Chatbots are not created to replace humans and services, which is a common misconception. Instead, they serve to polish and improve processes and the way services are provided.
Consider a scenario where your business handles multiple sets of services and have their corresponding customer service departments. In a chat communication without chatbots, there’s a high chance of overlapping inquiries and concerns misrouted to a different department. With a chatbot that has an AI technology for interactive messaging and categorization, certain concerns regarding a specific product or service that is exclusively handled by a dedicated department can be routed to that department by the chatbot. The result? More efficient customer service is provided by lessening the wait time/response time and the concern of the customer is more effectively addressed because it was routed to the right department.
Chatbots can Help You Save on Operational Costs
Before the creation of chatbots, businesses and companies have spent a considerable amount of their operational costs for customer service departments. This is particularly true for businesses with a wide market, large customer base, or offshore branches.
When your business caters to customers numbered 10,000 and above, you are most likely to receive at least 1/10th of those customers requesting for customer service assistance daily. While ideally, your workforce should match the average amount of received requests or have a 1:1 ratio when it comes to a rep and a customer, this cannot be feasible due to financial and operational constraints. Thus, the initial customer service consisted of several frontlines: one for receiving calls/chat queues and requesting for customers’ basic information and concern and the other one handling the concern of customers after being forwarded by the queue handling department.
When chatbots entered the business scene, there was a drastic change in the customer service scenery. Instead of handling initial chat queues and advising customers to stay online while waiting to be catered, chatbots are now equipped with basic troubleshooting and information services to address basic concerns of customers and cut down the number of requests received by human operators.
If the initial resolution attempt by the chatbot is not successful, its next step is to get information regarding the customer’s concern and relaying the information to the appropriate department and then routing the chat to that department’s representative. This can improve the chat handling efficiency by having an effective first line of contact thanks to the chatbots and a satisfactory resolution of the customers’ concern thanks to a more focused and prepared group of customer service representatives. Also, this means less number of representatives needed, and save up to 30% of your operational costs before the introduction of chatbots.
Chatbots Help Change Customer Dynamics
Customers can both be apprehensive and excited when it comes to new technology. When it comes to introducing chatbots, you are more likely to attract the excitement of your customers. To make the customer dynamics change in your favor, make sure that your chatbot technology is seamless, user-friendly, and relevant. A good first impression about your chatbot technology can go a long way when it comes to solidifying your customer base and expanding it.
Your customers will most likely expect that it’s a technology that could make your services and products better, so make sure you deliver and don’t disappoint them. Gaining solid customer support can lead to your customers becoming advocates of your products or services themselves, and they will become effective forms of promotion and advertisement for your business.
Don’t let the chatbot naming fool you into thinking that chatbots have limited use for your business. This technology can go further than just enhance the customer service aspect of your business. It can also contribute to the improvement of different aspects of your business operation.
All you need is to explore its capabilities and learn how you can integrate them into your business vision, mission, and values.
