If you are a business owner, chances are, you have a website. In recent years we have witnessed a new feature on a lot of websites called a chatbot. Chatbots are a new way for businesses and companies to communicate with their customers through messaging apps. A chatbot offers a user-friendly experience, where you can communicate the essential information with the help of artificial intelligence. There’s a reason, or a couple of them to be honest, why the chatbots are really popular these days and we’re going to talk about them in a few moments. But first, let’s get familiar with the chatbots.
In essence, a chatbot is a program run by AI that can simulate a conversation. What’s great about this, it’s not only programmed to respond to a certain command, it actually comprehends language and the more you interact with it, the more human-like they become. It’s more than possible to have an interesting and informative conversation with a chatbot and you can easily try them out online.
Now that we’ve gotten familiar with what chatbot is, let’s take a look at what it brings to the table and how it can help your business grow. Without further ado, let’s get started.
1. Using messaging platforms
We live in a world where an online presence is an integral part of everything and everyone. We all use social media and messaging platforms. We don’t just call on the phone anymore or send text, we video call through Messenger or chat through WhatsApp. As far as strictly communicating goes, messaging apps like Viber or before mentioned WhatsApp count hundreds of millions of daily users. If you count in the Messenger, there are more than two billion people that use messaging apps. That’s over 25% of the whole world population.
With that being said, it’s clear that you should utilize that in order to grow your business. That’s where the chatbots come in handy. A lot of chatbots are integrated with messaging apps, mostly Messenger. This allows your customers to have an easy conversation via an app they already have on their phone. It’s much better to use an existing app that billions use than to develop another one. Also, users tend to be more relaxed while chatting, since they’re not talking to a person or writing a formal email.
2. Customer Service
There have been a lot of research on the topic of business and what’s the most important part of running a successful one and the results are always either a quality product or a quality customer service. So, if we assume you’re offering a quality product, whatever it may be, all that’s left to do is work on your customer service. So, how can a chatbot help you out here?
Well, the most important part of customer service is round-the-clock availability and having the answers to the customers’ questions. You can easily program a chatbot to be available 24/7 and provide all the necessary information. Also, you can program a bot to forward the customer to a real person in case the problem at hand is something a program can’t handle. This model will not only speed up things, but it’ll also make the customer service better.
Additionally, a lot of people need assistance while online shopping. Whether they cannot find an item they’re looking for or they have some issues with payment or signing up to a website, a Botsurfer chatbot can help them out in no time. It’ll be able to point them in the right direction by either providing them with an answer or forwarding them to a person that will then tackle the problem.
3. Customer engagement
It should come as no surprise that you should keep your customers engaged with your brand. The more active you are on social media and other online platforms the more likely you are to engage with customers and increase your sales. Aside from social media, you can use a chatbot to increase customer engagement.
Companies and businesses often take a passive approach when it comes to customer engagement. They provide with the information when necessary, but they don’t really listen for any. With chatbots, you can change that. Your programmed buddy can engage a customer in a conversation by just presenting themselves available. Since they’ve been programmed to learn from various conversations, it can actually hold a fun one while giving the important information to the customer along the way.
4. Monitoring and collecting user data for improvement
As we’ve mentioned, a chatbot is a great way to communicate with the customer. What we also mentioned is that the chatbot learns as they ‘speak’ with various people. This means you can use collected data to upgrade your page and approach. With learning from just the basic questions the chatbot had received, you can see what parts of you approach should be improved, why and where are people stumbling and so on. You can even program the bot to approach the customers with a survey. That way, a customer can provide you with actual feedback on why and how they did or did not purchase something from your store. All of these can help you improve your strategy and better your business.
5. Cost and time savings
Final and probably one of the most important benefits of the chatbot is the cost-efficiency. Implementing a chatbot is far less expensive than developing an app or hiring a whole department to deal with customers. Like we’ve mentioned, most of the chatbots are integrated with popular apps like Messenger, so you’ll save on time as well.
What chatbot allows you to do is have only a handful of people in the customer service department because a programmed bot can engage numerous of customers at the same time. Not only will this save you money, but it’ll also save you time. A person can only deal with so many problems at a time. A program does not have that problem.
As you can see, a program like a chatbot is very useful for a business for a number of reasons. From easy access to cost savings, a chatbot is the epitome of a super-employee. If you were on the fence about implementing this feature, hopefully, this has nudged you in the right direction.
