Every customer in the world today demands quick, simple, and easy solutions whenever they run into problems — and businesses ought to take note of it. Overall, businesses have been satisfactory with addressing this with customer phone lines, email support, and instant messaging support. However, as customers have opened up to new technology, one appealing solution customers have been considering is chatbots.
Chatbots have grown to be insightful programs that are able to simulate human conversation. With natural language processing (NLP), a chatbot can understand human communication and provide accurate context and relevant answers to any question customers might have. In the eyes of the customer, they are getting faster solutions to their problem while still having somewhat of a conversation.
How Do Chatbots Improve Customer Experience?
Most people can piece together whether they are talking to a chatbot or an actual person, but this is hardly an issue for them. Chatbots today are still able to carry out a conversation and to address most of the customers’ needs without having to take time away from actual staff to deal with the daily minor issues. Furthermore, they help enhance the customer experience in five different ways.
They Provide Valuable Business Insights
Any business can collect the data from chatbot conversations and through those conversations, businesses can get insights on user experience. A chatbot is a quick and easy way for businesses to know if there are any issues or specific roadblocks that customers are facing.
This allows businesses to be proactive in dealing with specific issues or even predict issues before they happen. To better analyze these conversations, businesses should consider using advanced customer feedback analytical tools like Thematic which can provide insights and interpret text.
They Reduce Waiting Time For Customers
As mentioned above, chatbots are designed to reduce how long it takes for customers to get answers. Every minute is crucial and we’ve all known how much of a pain it can be to be put on hold for minutes. Anyone remember the elevator music playing while waiting for someone? Chatbots remove the need for this and they are a welcomed relief for most people.
They provide 24/7 Customer Service Without Businesses Having Hire More Staff
It’s almost standard today that any large corporation or medium-sized business provides 24/7 customer service. It’s a great luxury to have as a consumer but it can be a nightmare for businesses as it means hiring more staff, training them, and ensuring that staff is available throughout the day.
Chatbots remove the need for businesses to do that as they can address the more common day-to-day problems at any time. Things like answering simple questions, amending invoices, checking balances, and other such tasks.
With that said, it doesn’t mean a business should dissolve their current human staff. Chatbots can only handle simple tasks and will always refer tasks to human support in certain situations. For example, some chatbots can distinguish between human emotions like anger, confusion, fear and joy. If a bot detects the customer is angry, they will transfer the interaction to a human.
They Facilitate Personalized Human Interaction
Because chatbots are providing data, if a real support rep needs to step in, they can provide personalized interactions with that customer based on that data immediately. In short, the chatbot provides information for the rep to know immediately what the problem is and provides relevant solutions based on that previous interaction.
They Indirectly Encourage Employees To Take On More Challenges
Chatbots function as a filter in that they cover the small and minor tasks instead of a human. Even if staff are efficient in adjusting invoices and doing these menial tasks, these do take up time during the day and that can be time spent doing other things. Which is the point.
Chatbots free up time so support staff can focus on more technical or tougher problems or other challenging tasks.
Every business should convey this to staff when implementing a chatbot service as it’s easy for employees to think they are being replaced by a robot. This isn’t the case as staff are now able to do more challenging and tougher tasks. They can provide more support as a whole. For example, every sales department can use AI to spend more time on high-value activities to grow the company further rather than spend their morning or afternoon doing routine tasks.
Chatbots Are The Way To Go
AI and Chatbots have come a long way from how computerized customer service experiences have been in the past. Beyond that, the technology will continue to improve over time and these benefits can be passed down to staff and customers alike. If a business can implement a chatbot, it’s well worth the investment.