What Are Chatbots?
A chatbot is computer software that helps businesses automate conversations with their customers. Whether or not you know of it, you must have come across a chatbot.
For instance, you are looking for a shirt online, and suddenly, a window asks, “how may I help you?” At first glance, it might appear like a display ad popping up, but then you realize someone is out there to help you solve your queries. And that is basically what a chatbot is!
Chatbots can process data to respond to all needs powered by AI, NLP (natural language processing), or machine learning. And if they cannot answer any query or request, the chat transfers to a human agent. Over time, chatbots have replaced humans from one end of the conversation and enabled Human-To-Machine interactions.
Why Do Traditional Bots Fall Short Of Meeting Customer Expectations?
Whether we agree or not, all technological developments are designed to imitate human body functions. Likewise, chatbots were developed to replace human conversations with a machine. Nonetheless, these first-generational chatbots had left a lot of room for improvement:
– The Tedious and labor-intensive process of building and implement
The early versions of chatbots took at least nine to 12 months to build and deploy. The cost of many experts and chatbot-dedicated software engineers and the considerable time required made first-generation chatbots less cost-optimal than they could be.
– Poor quality of user experience
The automated chatbots were highly scripted and could not foresee user intent or engage in a meaningful, dynamic dialogue. Because of this, user interaction suffered greatly, ultimately deteriorating the overall user experience.
– Lack of ability to solve personalized issues
There was a lack of semantic understanding to meet rising user expectations. They could not accurately identify the want of the users and formulate specific, personalized responses.
Transformation Of Customer Support Experience
It is rightly said that those who can have the right conversations can sell anything. Traditionally, a one-to-one human interaction was used to answer consumers’ queries and address all their questions. But with the evolution of online platforms, the feature of 24/7 customer support became ubiquitous. To fulfill this need, chatbots were developed, which were cost-efficient and a powerful way to provide essential support at all times.
No wonder these traditional chatbots revolutionized the concept of customer engagement beyond measure. They were not free of loopholes. These traditional chatbots recognized keywords but failed to acknowledge the context in which they were being used. They could not understand human emotions such as anger, frustration, etc. Also, they did not recognize the way people naturally spoke. Although the development of chatbots was efficient, they were very mechanical. On the contrary, the demand for individually personalized conversation was gaining attention to deliver a seamless customer support experience till the last mile.
This led the way to AI chatbots. Along with being quick and cost-efficient, these chatbots can understand the customer’s context and intent before actually doing anything meaningful for them. They can recognize customer frustration and switch the interaction to a human in the company’s support center. Subsequently, AI chatbots provide a personalized customer experience by providing customer data to the agent in real time.
Customers want quick, frictionless solutions to their problems and answers to their questions. Thus, AI chatbots are making all this happen without leaving any stone unturned.
Benefits Of Ai Chatbots
- Minimize wait time
It is difficult for businesses to balance inbound customer queries and support agents. And even if the company has a sufficient workforce, one agent can handle only one customer at a time. This leads to an increase in wait time for customers, because of which the business may lose a potential lead.
Chatbots don’t have such constraints, and one can handle any number of customers.
- 24/7 service
Chatbots can provide 24/7 support to customers. AI chatbots use past conversations to improve continuously, enabling them to provide at least essential support like guiding a user to a particular section of the website, giving pricing details, etc.
- Omnichannel Experience
Every business is required to provide consistent customer support across multiple platforms. It is difficult for agents to juggle between platforms to offer customer support in real-time. AI chatbots offer an omnichannel experience by integrating easily with multiple chat channels like Slack, Whatsapp, and Facebook Messenger. So, no matter which channel your customer needs support from; your business is ready for it.
- Understanding customer needs
Businesses have a vast amount of customer data, like past transcripts of conversations and transaction history. All of this data is usually unstructured, and because of this, companies fail to leverage it. AI chatbots can use the data to understand past and future requirements. It helps customers in receiving relevant information without manual intervention.
Redefine Your Customer Experience With Customer Service Chatbots
Artificial Intelligence is now revolutionalizing how we live and work. It’s also transforming how we can support our clients, whether they’re asking simple questions or trying to make a purchasing decision. Adding AI chatbots to your site will do much more than just look tech-savvy (although you will). A customer support chatbot will save you time and improve the customer experience and help you build a more robust support offering on your site or mobile app.
How Is A Customer Service Chatbot Better For Support?
- You can train your customer support chatbots to foresee customers’ needs and deliver relevant answers.
- Bots can be the first point of contact to reduce customer churn and make human handovers for challenging issues.
- If your business receives repetitive queries, executing chatbots can be an intelligent way to provide quick support without making customers wait.
- Even when chatbots can’t solve a problem promptly, they can at least offer an instant response relevant to the customer’s inquiry and create a good impression on your customer.
Ace Your Support Game With Customer Service Chatbots
Artificial Intelligence is now a fundamental part of user engagement strategies and significantly changes how businesses support their customers. Credit goes to the ever-growing usages of AI; companies find it appropriate to use customer service chatbots to furnish immediate responses and reduce the chances of two-way human intervention.
Similarly, AI-powered bots have also helped reduce operational costs, resulting in greater customer satisfaction. As things stand today, chatbots for customer service are set to have more advanced and upgraded Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities to understand customer queries’ context and sentiments and ensure the response is similar to users’ language.
