While implementing an effective AI-powered chatbot can be expensive, it can be a promising investment for your business. It has lower costs compared to the traditional model of customer service which includes staff salaries, infrastructure, and training costs. With conversational messaging, you can provide real-time, proactive support and enhance customer satisfaction.
AI-powered chatbots can make product recommendations and introduce customers to new products and services based on their needs and interests. Moreover, with negligible wait-time and fast responses, surveys claim that chatbots can increase sales by 67% on average by speeding up the purchase decision process and increasing the conversion rates.
AI-powered Chatbots
AI-powered chatbotsare a combination of the other two kinds of bots. These bots use ML, AI, and NLP to understand and remember the context of the conversation and the user’s preferences.
So, now that you understand the fundamentals of how chatbots work and the three types of bots your business can use, it’s time to look at the benefits of chatbots.
How to use chatbots for lead generation?
- Better lead qualification – Bots qualify leads by asking relevant questions and directing them to the sales team for immediate sales conversion. A chatbot template for appointment booking can help schedule an appointment if the team is busy/unavailable.
- Better lead nurturing – The qualified leads are nurtured thereafter based on their customer journey. For e.g.
in an e-commerce business, a chatbot engages the customers by giving personalized recommendations, combo offers, or discount coupons to improve sales conversions.
Implementing chatbots is an investment to optimize customer service costs.
Personalized human interaction
The computerized chatbots can in fact also help personalize the customer experience in retrospect. Chatbots gather customer data from their interactions. With that data, real support reps can use the information to personalize their interactions with customers. Customer information can be fed to the agent in real time *when they’re speaking to a customer on the phone), so the support rep can provide relevant solutions based on current needs as well as previous interactions with the company.
A surprising benefit to AI can actually be to encourage support staff to focus on more challenging tasks. As AI has such great ability to mimic human behavior, staff may fear their jobs are at risk. To soothe these fears, companies must show their employees what’s in it for them. Chatbots are actually a chance for support reps to focus on more high-value activities rather than routine tasks. For example, sales reps can use AI to make a better offer on a renewed contract, insurance providers are more likely to sell a policy when they can offer personalized advice (Forbes, 2017). Image credit: Zapp2Photo/Shutterstock
How to use chatbots to provide instant responses to customers
Chatbots are the perfect solution for this challenge. When deployed correctly, chatbots can provide relevant answers to customers’ frequently asked questions (FAQs) instantly.
Customers no longer have to sit in call queues and wait several minutes just to speak to a contact center agent.