A chatbot powered by artificial intelligence is a great way for your company to meet customer expectations for self-service. By having a chatbot installed on your website, your company will experience many benefits. These include the ability to cater to all time zones with 24/7 service, cost savings, and increased customer engagement.
Using a chatbot in your company can significantly elevate and improve the customer’s journey. If you’re wondering how chatbots can improve the customer journey for your customers, here are the six highlights:
1. 24/7 Customer Service
Chances are your customers will be pursuing your website outside of regular business hours and will likely have some important questions. They will become easily frustrated and may even seek out service from a competitor if there is no way to find answers to their questions promptly.
That’s where chatbots come in! They offer customers the opportunity to get their questions answered, even if it’s in the middle of the night or the weekend. This way, they don’t have to send an email or leave a voicemail and wait hours, or even days, for a response.
Of course, you’ll want to make sure your chatbot software is equipped to answer a large number of frequently asked questions. It’s also imperative that your chatbot gives off the same feel as a human, so customers aren’t reminded that they’re dealing with artificial intelligence.
2. Product and Service Promotion
Chatbots can even go beyond regular messaging and help you promote your products and services. Let’s say a customer asks about a certain product you have on offer. Your chatbot will then be able to pop-up that product page to give your customer additional information about the product.
They can take this one step further and provide your customers with unique discount codes to further motivate them to purchase the product or service. So, not only will your chatbot be there to answer questions, but you can also consider them a mini salesperson! The best part? All of this can take place while you sleep and without you having to pay an employee to do it!
3. Less Stress for Your Customers
A survey recently conducted by the company Helpshift found that 94% of participants actually dread contacting customer support! With this in mind, it’s easy to see how chatbots are a great alternative solution.
With a chatbot, customers don’t have to contend with stress-provoking alternatives like automated menus and overseas customer service agents. All they need to do is visit your website, click on the chatbot (unless you have it programmed so it pops up for you), and they have access to their questions right at their fingertips. In today’s modern world, speed is so important.
4. Customizable Chatbots
When you install a chatbot on your website, they are totally customizable to you and your customers’ needs. For example, chatbots can engage with customers on many different levels. They can provide account management, tech support, and as we mentioned, even sales information.
If you’re worried about chatbots not sounding authentic, you can even customize them to have different conversational styles. This allows them to chat with customers the way customers chat every day. While they can be precise and full of information, they can even be humorous if you so wish.
Chatbots can even break up conversations over multiple blocks of text and incorporate emojis to add emotion!
5. Collect Customer Feedback
Every company relies on customer feedback. While the customary method of collecting feedback is to send surveys via email, these often go ignored by the customer. A great alternative is to use chatbots.
Chatbots can ask the customer for feedback at the end of a conversation. Since it’s so easy to respond in this format, you’re much more likely to get a response. On top of that, you’re also making things easier for the customer which they will surely appreciate.
Also, since you are collecting the information right after the customer has the experience, it’s a lot more likely to be accurate.
6. Ease of Use
Customers are used to having online conversations. So, when a chatbot is introduced to their experience, it won’t be a completely foreign concept. The learning curve for customers to start engaging with a chatbot on a company website is virtually non-existent.
This is a good thing since the last thing you want is for a customer to get frustrated with your contact methods, such as the chatbot, and feel like they are not being heard. Since chatbots use natural language processing methods, they can easily analyze a customer’s question, which in turn means that they can deliver a response that meets their needs.