How do you communicate with your customers? Is calling, emailing, or submitting a form on your website the only way for customers to reach you? If so, you likely need to get with the times and make changes.
Having a chatbot on your website is a great way to offer a better customer experience. According to research, 67% of consumers globally used a chatbot for customer service in the past year. And 95% of consumers believe that “customer service” will be the main beneficiary of chatbots. In fact, 45% of consumers say they prefer chatbots for customer support inquiries. Thus, with this technology on the rise, you must have marketing skills to survive the age of AI.
Having said that, to get the maximum benefit out of chatbots, you need to know when to use them and when not to.
When You Should Use Chatbots
To Collect Data and Pinpoint Market Trends and Demands of Customers
Chatbots are a cost-effective way for businesses to connect with potential customers. If you’re a business with online sales, you need to use a chatbot. This is not only vital for building strong relationships with your customers, but it’s also crucial for your own analytics. The reason is that customers are very honest with bots, and the data you collect from these conversations can propel your business to a new level.
Chatbots offer a great opportunity for brands to gather data and identify the trends and demands of customers.
Today, consumers want more than the traditional one-sided transaction; they want two-way interaction. They want to engage and connect with their favorite brands. By using chatbots to offer a two-way communication, you’ll reap the benefits of a personal, actionable conversation through increased profits and increased loyalty.
To Simplify Basic Interactions
The power of chatbots lies in the convenience they offer. Ideally, a customer with a simple question or request can contact a chatbot to get an immediate response.
Over 53% of consumers are likely to ditch an online purchase if they can’t find a quick answer to their query. Thus, if you use chatbots correctly you can prevent cart abandonment.
For example, a customer who isn’t sure if a certain product is in stock can quickly ask a chatbot. Here, both the customer and the brand will save time and effort. This shows a simple, transactional touchpoint that doesn’t need the finesse of a human customer support agent, who will now have more time to address more complex customer concerns.
Deliver Welcome Messages
You can use chatbots to greet your customers. By using chatbots on your website you can grab your customers’ attention, make them feel welcome, and put them in a good mood for shopping.
Automate Regular Tips to Create Brand Awareness
People love being inspired and learning new things regularly. That’s why inspirational Instagram and Facebook accounts are popular.
However, don’t go posting inspirational quotes on Facebook and Instagram and expect to make big sales.
Why? It’s too crowded and everyone is doing that. Also, it doesn’t guarantee that those who you engage with are interested in your products or services.
Instead, you can leverage chatbots to deliver tidbits to your subscribers daily. Using chatbots, you can share your content directly with interested users instead of random Facebook or Instagram users who haven’t connected with you.
You can set up your scheduled chatbot conversation with two button-based responses, to get customers to opt in from ads to your website to get your bite-sized inspiration.
With this kind of chatbot, you can regularly deliver marketing messages because users who interact with you have opted in.
When You Shouldn’t Use Chatbots
Today, chatbots are being extensively used for services such as customer service outsourcing. Chatbots offer many benefits but they also have certain limitations which makes them unsuitable in certain situations. It’s beneficial to automate interactions with your customers; however, overusing chatbots can lead to severe problems.
Don’t Use Chatbots when a Human Touch Is Required
Sometimes, AI doesn’t get it. Only humans are equipped to handle inevitable frustrations such as missed deliveries, damaged products, or bad customer service experiences.
In emotional situations, human customer service agents can respond with empathy, making sure they resolve customer’s concerns. Thus, if a customer engages with a chatbot during a complicated or emotional situation, you should automatically transfer the customer’s call to an online support agent to ease the problem and prevent it from escalating.
To offer excellent customer service, use chatbots with the ability to recognize when it’s time to transition. So, your chatbots should be able to sense shifts in a customer’s tone or emotionally charged language. At this point, they should immediately alert a human customer service agent that it’s time to take over.
Don’t Use Chatbots to Handle Sensitive Information
In today’s digital world, data security concerns are a top priority for online consumers. In fact, 64% of consumers only shop with brands they know are responsible with data.
Thus, with consumers now more cautious of potential data breaches than ever, it’s your job to assure your audience that their personal information is safe. This means it’s crucial to avoid using chatbots when collecting sensitive information from customers such as credit card numbers or other financial data.
To Get Maximum Benefit Out of Chatbots, Listen to Your Customers
As with any emerging technology, it’ll take time to incorporate chatbots perfectly into the customer experience. However, the best way to speed up the process is to get feedback from your customers and use their feedback to deliver a great customer experience.
How is a customer’s journey with your brand? How do your customers access information? What’s causing frustrations, and what’s working well? Before implementing chatbots, it’s essential to understand these touch points. And you should know how chatbot technology will improve your customers’ experiences.
Listening to your customers will help you implement chatbots that offer positive experiences for customers, keeping them loyal to your business long term.
NOTE: I shall continue sharing basic information about chatbot features in the next few series. You may view live demo on how chatbot work by clicking ‘Can I help you‘ featuring myself as a chatbot at the bottom right corner of this page. This demo was created using ConversioBot. If you need more information, please email your enquiry to services@ads.my
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