A chatbot is not new for the contact center industry. It has already revolutionized customer experience. From social media channels to e-commerce or banking, chatbots have made a strong presence everywhere. Chatbots is an artificial intelligence software that establishes a conversation with the user/customer. From spreading awareness to offering on-the-fly answers to collecting feedbacks and remembering choices of customers, chatbots can do it all. It is no more a small robot with fixed five replies on your website (something that annoyed customers earlier). Read more about chatbots and why customers, as well as businesses, need it.
Why do customers like it?
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It offers excellent assistance to the customers who are visiting the website or looking forward to self-help. Quickly and efficiently, the chatbot takes the customer through the journey and saves their time and effort. The customer does not require to call customer care, hear the IVR or hold the call to talk to the agent.
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Chatbot interaction seems amusing to people, especially the unexpected funny reverts coming from the bots. Also, there is no wait time or urgency to close the chat early so that contacts can interact for long.
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Chatbots are not restricted to the website, so customers can have exceptional customer experience via phone, social media channels or more.
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Customers or visitors do not need you to write the search query as chatbots can act on both text and voice inputs and outputs.
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Chatbots even act like an assistant who can book appointments and remind the user of the same. The bot will store the information and communicate the same at the desired time as a personalized alert so the user does not miss anything. This can be done by sales chatbot, banking bot, e-commerce bot or even an intranet chatbot.
Why businesses need it?
The primary reason for using chatbots is improving the customer experience. Below is how it happens
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Increased productivity – For agents, you need to define a shift time, monitor their presence and performance, check the pendency in their absence so that the business revenue is not hit. But in the case of chatbots, there is no such issue to handle. These are robots that can be accessed anytime and are never tired. They can operate continually all day long and obey the instructions. This improves customer experience and maintains the positive image of your brand.
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Automate tasks – Not every customer has a new question. There are some repetitive questions people look a reply to such as, where is the business located? When are you operational? What are your services? Is there any discount? and so on. Instead of making an agent reply to these questions every time, you can make a chatbot do it. Automation of such repetitive tasks can reduce the workload of agents.
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Higher response rate – With the high quantum of queries pouring in from various channels and a limited number of agents resolving them, it gets challenging to reply to every question. This even annoys prospect customers and never converts them into buyers. Chatbots can handle numerous conversations at once and answer every single person. This is amazing for restaurants or the e-commerce industry.
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Personalization – Personalized experience is what every customer is looking forward to. Chatbots act as a savior for the business in such scenarios as they offer only the specific and relevant information against the question raised by the customer. Receiving such answers make the customer feel important and valued, thereby increasing the chances of him to buy something.
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Streamline process – With chatbots in place, a customer does not require to repeat himself to the agent with his preference, nor he requires to sit and scroll to search for the product he needs. The customer is only required to mention his choice to a chatbot and this will be transferred to the required department. The chatbot remembers such information for future interactions.
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Cost-effective – Increasing headcount at your contact center is always a costly affair that requires an investment of time and money on every agent. After that, it is not necessary that the sales target is met. But, chatbots solve this problem. A single chatbot can perform the task of numerous employees without any fail. These need to be reworked on the instructions or updates when required, assuring increased revenue and customer satisfaction. There is no need to train or groom them nor worry about attrition.
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New sales channel – Chatbots are a new sales channel in themselves. With a 24×7 presence, they reduce the load on agents handling the call and are a delight for the customer who prefers texting. Chatbots remember customer’s choices and provide full guidance to the user through the purchase process with minimal human interaction.
To wrap up, chatbot makes things less stressed for the contact center and the customers. It helps in creating a smooth customer journey without the fuss of listening to the IVR, staying on hold and connecting with the agent. Chatbots are changing customer’s perception for a brand with the unexpected presence and insightful replies bots offer.
