Why Do Businesses Need Chatbots?
When it comes to why businesses need chatbots, various reasons come to mind. Some of these include automation of routine tasks, and simultaneous handling of multiple requests or enquiries. The most immediate impact for customers is the ease of getting in touch with your business or customer service rep. This increased speed in handling customers’ requests using chatbots can also impact positively in gaining customer loyalty.
According to a study entitled Why People Use Chatbots presented at the 4th International Conference on Internet Science in November 2017, a number of reasons as to why people chose to interact with chatbots were identified. In the open question on why participants in the study used chatbots, four main motivational factors were identified. These are outlined in brief below:
- Productivity. Chatbots provide fast and efficient assistance or access to information.
- Entertainment. Chatbots amuse people by giving them funny tips and also help "kill time".
- Social /Relational. Chatbots fuel conversions and enhance social experiences. Chatting with bots helps avoid loneliness, and gives people the chance to talk without being judged.
- Novelty/ Curiosity. The novelty of chatbots sparks curiosity and so people want to explore their abilities and try something new.
If you’re thinking of implementing chatbots for your business, here are some questions you may want to ask:
How much does your business rely on customer communication?
Are you constantly in contact with customers? If there is a high need for constant contact, it is most likely that a chatbot may serve the purpose well.
What level of engagement does communication with your customers require?
Chatbots are great at answering inquiries accurately and quickly and if you receive many similar inquiries from customers, then chatbots may be your best solution.
How do your customers want to communicate with you?
Communicating with brands or businesses over a messaging platform is an emerging concept for many people. If you cater to customers who are excited about tech, then a chatbot would be the excellent choice.
How Chatbots Can Help Your Business
From the information gathered from various sources, we have found that these best describe how beneficial chatbots may be to your business.
Improve customer service. With chatbots, required information may be provided to customers irrespective of the day or time. Chatbots are less prone to errors; hence, the better customer experience can help to establish a better brand.
Easy to use. Besides allowing easy communication, the simple interface of chatbots makes it more familiar to customers. This can help increase sales for your brand and engage customers better.
Personalize communication. A chatbot answers the specific questions of customers. The more attention a customer gets, the greater the chances of him buying something.
Better user interaction. Chatbots provide better interaction with customers and are the best tool for keeping customers on a specific platform longer and engage them by initiating and maintaining the conversation.
Accelerate operations and streamline processes. User types what they need, and the chatbot sends the information to the relevant department. Data from user can be collected during this process. Chatbot remembers user preferences from previous interactions and uses that information to streamline the engagement..
Improve response rate. According to a study, about 90% of questions sent from Facebook business pages remain unanswered. Chatbots respond to 100% of messages and converts more visitors into customers.
Automate repetitive tasks. Most customers want to get answers on the same questions. In order not to write the same answers every time, chatbots are the fastest and most engaging way to answer these common questions. It certainly reduces your employees’ workload.
Save human resources for qualitative tasks. Chatbots can be used to assist customers for a specific task, whenever they want and are not bound by limitations, like the way employees may be. Therefore, employees can be fully utilized for more productive business tasks. Employing chatbot solutions to businesses will help complement human task force, boost efficiency and reduce effort and cost.
Chatbot development requires less time. The development time required in building a fully functional smart chatbot, one which is not out of the box, does not consume more time compared to application development. Time is one of the important factors from the business point of view. The sooner you get started with chatbot development, the sooner you can execute best strategies and marketing activities for your business.
More success chance as early adopter. With chatbots, you can lure technology savvy customers, and this can further enhance their loyalty towards your business. If your business is first to adopt new technology, it has more chance to own success. Chatbots are already becoming mainstream as more and more businesses see great potential and benefits of chatbots.
With increasingly intelligent AIs, some say they will take away the need for human interaction, though with this, we disagree strongly. The Alcassoft philosophy has always been to empower people.
Both businesses as well as consumers will be impacted by the development of chatbots. The present implementation of chatbots in various industries offers businesses a doorway to understanding the future uses of chatbots for different aspects of business operations.
If you are a business owner who wants to expand his/her business online, then chatbots can play a significant role in your success story. Chatbots can deliver the two essential requirements for any online business today – quality products and market presence. With the chatbot business solution, you can use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to keep your customers engaged in meaningful communication. This will enhance your knowledge base and help you in developing better products for your clients. Furthermore, you will be able to offer a quicker and more accurate support service to customers, enhancing your brand’s reputation.
In the near future, it is easy to envision that most brands will have a bot channel of their own. In fact, chatbots are expected to become as common as business phone numbers. With increasingly intelligent AIs, some say they will take away the need for human interaction, though with this, we disagree strongly. The Alcassoft philosophy has always been to empower people. By using better-trained chatbots to respond to questions that are easily tackled, actual people dealing with customers are freed from answering these mundane questions and can be called upon to respond to the more challenging and engaging questions from their customers.