How Chatbots can Turbo Charge your Business
Have you ever wondered how your business can respond to customers' complaints and resolve issues in the late part of the night?
Are you constantly worried about your business not having enough customer support strength?
Does your company have a peak sales period, e.g., Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and you do not want to hire additional staff to cater to the workload?
What if I told you a single chatbot could solve all your business needs.
Chatbots are opening up a new era of business-customer interaction. Small and large businesses have been using chatbots to scale and market their products efficiently.
Also, research shows that, unlike email, which has an open rate of 22%, SMS text messaging, such as WhatsApp, has a 98% open rate. As a business owner, the intelligent thing is to take your business to where your customers are.
And How do you reach your customers on social media faster? You guessed right, Chatbots.
“You can use chatbots to automate the business processes from taking customers' orders to suggesting personalized products to notifying the store that the product is out of stock.”
What is a chatbot?
A chatbot is a conversational agent trained to understand human language.
According to experts.ai, a chatbot is an artificial intelligence (AI) software that can simulate a conversation (or a chat) with a user in natural language through messaging applications, websites, mobile apps, or telephone.
“Chatbot comes from the term “chatterbot” and is the mix of two words: “chat” (to converse) and “bot” (robot).”
Types of Chatbots with Example
There are different types of chatbots
- AI bots
- Rule-based bots
Rule-based bot
Rule-based bots conditions or set of rules defined. Rule-based bots are the simplest form to build and can be trained and deployed in minutes.
The conversation is limited because they cannot understand the context of the conversation and usually require human intervention when they fail.
Examples where rule-based bots are used, are FAQs and a ticket ordering system.
You: Hello
Bot: Hi!, I'm the movie ticket ordering bot. Kindly press 1 to order a ticket.
You: 1
Bot: Select a Category!. Press 1 for Now playing or 2 for New release.
You: 3
Bot: Incorrect command I would be transferring you to a human agent to assist.AI-based bots
AI bots are a more advanced type of bot. They use advanced Machine learning techniques like Natural language Understanding to respond to customers' queries.
AI bots require a long training time and are the most successful type of bots.
Using advanced AI techniques such as natural language understanding, a chatbot can understand the context of the conversation even with untrained data. Many AI bots have self-learning ability meaning they can learn from its mistake and update their knowledge base. Also, AI bots can be trained using an Advanced algorithm to understand multiple languages like French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Examples of platforms where you can build your AI bots are:
- Dialogflow
- IBM Watson
- Amazon Alexa.
Advantage of integrating a Chatbot in your business
Let's go through the benefits of incorporating a chatbot into your business.
“According to IBM, every year, 265 billion customer service calls are made, and businesses spend $1.3 trillion on servicing them. AI chatbots can serve 80% of them without human involvement.”
#24/7 Support
With the use of chatbots, companies can offer 24/7 support all year round with zero downtime. The chatbot can easily understand customers' queries and respond based on the training data. There is no need to worry
#Handle repetitive tasks that are boring to humans.
A repetitive task like updating the price list of a product at 5 AM daily or frequently verifying customers' serial numbers can prove tiresome to humans and also impact job satisfaction.
A bot can handle such tasks efficiently and free up time for a human to work on more creative tasks.
#Reduced training cost
A well-trained chatbot only needs to be deployed once and would handle hundreds or thousands of requests daily.
#Personalized response
After interacting with customers, chatbots can segment them into groups based on their responses and send personalized messages to them.
#Easy integration
Chatbots can be deployed in minutes and integrated into several messaging and voice channels which include Whatsapp, Facebook, telegram, slack, Genesys, Avaya e.t.c
#Better anticipation of customer needs
Chatbots can be used to answer repetitive customers complaint that would be tiring for humans. Most times, customers need quick answers and do not want to wait for a human. With a chatbot that can quickly achieve. A well-trained chatbot should understand the customers' queries and should be able to hand them off to a human agent if need be.
Customers can use them to check account balances, pay bills, recharge their mobile phone, resolve complaints, make query schedule appointments e.t.c
“69% of consumers prefer to use chatbots for the speed at which they can communicate with a brand. (Salesforce State of Chatbots Report 2018)”
Use cases of chatbots in a real-life scenario
Let's walk through sectors that have successfully applied chatbots to their business.
Banking Sector
The Financial sector has enjoyed more benefits from the adoption of chatbots than any other sector.
Banks can now place services like rewards notifications, promos, nearest bank locations at the tip of the customer's finger.
Chatbots can quickly provide insights on spending, market-specific news, and opportunities to use credit card rewards. At the same time, continually test and analyze the clients' level of interest-based on the response.
Furthermore, bots can provide balance analysis and forecast, cost and budget management, notification of bill payments, sends reward notifications, and other tips. Additionally, this AI-driven financial advisor allows customers to define and manage how much they withdraw from an ATM and spend on shopping every day.
The United Bank of Africa Leo chatbot is an excellent example of a chatbot in the banking sector. Leo can help make quick transactions, block or freeze accounts in case of suspected fraudulent activities, print mini-statements, help locate the nearest branch, resolve customer complaints, and even weather forecasts.
Leo is also available on WhatsApp and Facebook messenger.
Retail Sector
One of the areas where chatbot shines the most is the retail sector. Here a bot can be used for various things but mainly for marketing, optimizing supports, and improving sales.
The chatbot will boost sales by suggesting products to customers, showing codes and giveaways, and allowing customers to check out easy checkouts.
Business owners can use chatbots to automate the business processes from taking customers' orders to suggesting personalized products to notifying the store that the product is out of stock.
You can find the Original Coast Clothing bot on Facebook messenger using the link.
Transportation Sector
The Chatbots can quickly help customers book rides, rewards promos, report lost and found items. Report missing items quickly—fast access to customer support.
A chatbot can also provide step-by-step direction and give an estimate of the fare. With chatbots, users can get public transit directions on-demand, 24/7.
Lara is an Artificial Intelligence chatbot that provides directions via public transportation with step-by-step instructions, fare estimations, and alternative means of transport around Lagos.
Lara has been dubbed the google map for street transportation.
It gives the direction-finding best available route using Google Maps and also provides an estimate of the fare.
If you stay in Lagos, you can check out Lara. You know when AI will be of help 😉.
Conclusion
Chatbots have taken customer support to the next level with benefits such as easy access to customers, improved customer satisfaction, reduced cost, greater reach, and customer satisfaction.
Businesses that adopt chatbots have a competitive advantage over those that rely on traditional marketing and providing Support. Significantly In this Covid-19 era where communication speed is of great importance, chatbots can help companies retain customers and stay one step ahead of their competitors.
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