How will AI (artificial intelligence) chatbot be the solution for the modern day customer service?
Satisfying the customer expectations has always been a hot-button issue for companies to tangle with throughout all industries. Nowadays people are getting more and more accustomed to interacting through social media, mobile apps and email. Therefore, the demand for better and faster online customer service has increased drastically. This becomes evident especially when you are dealing with the generation of digital natives, who might have less patience if the online service isn’t working flawlessly.
Poorly designed websites can actually be the cause for your customers to leave the website and never come back. No brand wants to lose their customers just because the customer service couldn’t respond to the queries of their visitors fast enough. This begs the question: How could your company prepare for the merciless demands of the customers?
Adapting your service design for the new landscape of customer expectations
Chatbots are the future solution for the ultimate customer satisfaction. By adding a rightly designed, coded and integrated AI (artificial intelligence) chatbot to your business ecosystem you will improve your customer service experience significantly.
According to a survey made by "The Point Source" in 2017, 83% of consumers say that they are OK shopping with a brand or retailer that uses chatbots. When AI is present 49% of consumers are willing to shop more frequently, 34% will spend more money and 38% will share their experiences with friends and family.
To better understand how chatbots are revolutionizing the customer service experience I have listed some of the main benefits of chatbots in customer service.
24/7 customer service
We live in a time where it's totally normal for people to interact and do shopping online through the nights. There is demand for customer service even though all the workers have already gone home. There is no need to worry anymore!
Unlike a live chat support staff chatbots don’t need to sleep, which allows them to work around the clock. Chatbots will answer customers’ queries at any time of the day so customers won’t have to wait for a later response through email for example. In addition, one of the biggest benefits of having a chatbot is the volume and the pace of transactions it can handle without needing a break.
According to "The Point Source" survey most customers chose 24-hour service as the best potential benefit of chatbot service. This shows the importance of real-time, on-demand experience for consumers.
Rapid answers
Since the world has turned into more hectic place than ever before, we can expect that the tolerance for slow replies is almost non-existent. Therefore, your company will need the ability to answer immediately to the most common questions, asked by your customers. To maximize the efficiency of your business's customer service you will need a chatbot to supplement your human workforce.
Chatbots are best utilized when answering simple and often repeated questions or requests. Above all, they don’t get tired of answering to the same questions over and over again. They can provide very comprehensive answers in just a matter of seconds.
Either, it won't require nearly as much time for a chatbot to search for the answers as it would for a human agent. However, if the chatbot isn’t able to resolve the matter it can easily direct the customer to a live agent.
“In the world of retail, for example, customers express a desire for chatbot involvement when handling fast needs. At the 5-minute mark, 34 percent of customers on hold with a retail customer service agent want to switch to a chatbot. Similarly, 59 percent of consumers grow frustrated if a chatbot has yet to provide them a clear path to resolution within this time frame.” - 2018 Artificial intelligence and chatbot report.
It's also good to realize that a business that exploits chatbots can release its employees to focus on other tasks thus increasing the overall productivity.
Chatbots increasing the volume of customer interactions
AI (artificial intelligence) chatbots are excellent at delivering a personalized experience for customers. In fact personalization is the key factor in conversing a potential customer into a customer. It is also necessary for achieving a long term relationship with the new customer. Given that it is much harder to attract new customers than converse fresh customers into returning customers.
A well designed conversational chatbot will keep your customers entertained and guide them through the purchase process in a friendly manner. Chatbots are, indeed, great at maintaining a conversation and keeping the customers on your website for longer time.
Chatbots that are equipped with NLP (Natural Language Processing) can process and decode natural language and also more complicated expressions to better understand the hidden intent behind the grammatical sense.
AI Chatbots’ cognitive technology interprets customers responses and provides accurate, automated answers. Because chatbots have a lot of memory the chance of misinterpreting a query or offering an incorrect solution is smaller.
AI chatbot as a personal assistant
Even though we have the access to all the information and services in the internet, it can be very time consuming and frustrating to search it all by ourselves. For this purpose we have an AI chatbot assistant.
Fully automated AI chatbot allows customers to have an easy access to the company’s products or services. It can help the customer with searching for products’ prices, product information and making a payment or tracking the status of a delivery. Moreover, it let's users to transfer money, buy train tickets, book hotel rooms, show the nearest store and much more.
AI chatbot can also recommend new products based on the customer’s previous interactions on the website. In any case, if you have to perform simple transactions an AI chatbot will come handy.
More intelligent customer service
Companies depend on the information that they can gather from their customers. After all, this information is essential for building the best service design.
With machine learning algorithms an AI chatbot can collect and process valuable data that has accumulated from the conversations with customers. It can also learn from the data it gathers during a conversation between human agent and a customer. This way a chatbot can improve its capabilities for the next similar encounter with another customer.
AI chatbots’ ability to detect pattern in data and provide actionable insight based on its findings is necessary for businesses to be able to provide exceptional customer experiences. With this knowledge chatbots can learn customers’ behavioral patterns and predict the future needs of each customer.
By knowing the behavioral patterns, user experiences and market trends a business is able to take proactive measures to offer personalized, unique and memorable experience for the customers across multiple channels. Ultimately, the aim is to make the customer feel understood and valued. This will help them to develop a loyalty that will be a good basis for customer retention, up-selling and cross-selling.
According to a survey by "Oracle" 80% of companies are already using or planned to use chatbots by 2020.
Related: Why Chatbots Need Quality Standards?
