Chatbots are the way of the future. They’re easy to communicate with. They solve a wide range of customer-related problems. Plus, they’re highly adaptable.
In fact, chatbots are so popular that Gartner foresees 70% of white-collar workers having daily interactions with conversational platforms by 2022.
And aside from the amazing benefits that it offers customers, it will also facilitate a better, faster and highly improved form of collaboration in the workplace.
What Are Chatbots?
Short for ‘chat robot’, chatbots are a computer program that simulates human conversation.
It’s essentially a piece of software that interacts mostly through instant messaging. In the same way that humans communicate, these bots are able to artificially replicate speech patterns from human interactions.
Because speech and communication is so intricate, there are a variety of data science principles that make chatbots work.
Things like Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Named Entity Recognition and Augmentation each play a role in a well-functioning chatbot.
Some of the Big Benefits to Having a Chatbot
The number of businesses that make use of chatbots has certainly grown, but many have yet to realize the true potential of this technology.
We’ll take a look at a variety of different benefits around using chatbots in your business.
Lead Generation
Using this technology can help enhance lead generation. You can use chatbots to help make suggestions on everything from products to services, allowing more capacity to upsell or cross-sell to customers.
Sales teams can then focus energy and time on chasing new prospects, avoiding distractions along the way.
Using this tool in your business will help capture targeted leads in half the time.
24/7 Online Support
The costs involved when offering 24/7 support tend to be exorbitant. With a chatbot, websites become available at all hours of the day and can be programmed to offer advice, answer questions, do tasks or make bookings.
Your organisation might not have the staff available to respond to customers or end users during non-business hours or weekends.
Chatbots also help to create a more personalised experience by behavioural design and machine learning. To top it off, they can also be used to collect information from customers and improve with that data over time.
Chatbots Help Reduce Operational Costs
While they won’t completely replace human communication, they can help to reduce operational costs through their 24 hour availability.
And to top it off, chatbots are reported to reduce customer service expenses by up to 30%. That’s shorter call durations, less calls in general and reduced labour costs.
Error Reduction
Humans often make mistakes. Whether it’s sales, customer services or support, mistakes are often made.
Whether it’s in relaying the wrong information to customers, or an employee having a bad day, there is always room for error.
With chatbots, that error rate is heavily reduced.
Chatbots can share accurate information without any judgement or emotion attached.
Chatbots are Better than Email
There’s a war brewing in digital marketing. And it’s between chatbots and email.
Unfortunately for email, the bots are just better.
Research has shown that messages sent by bots have much higher open and click-through rates than email.
Take the average clickthrough rate (CTR) of an email, which is 4% and compare it to a chatbot, which sits at anywhere between 15%-60%.
Get Yourself a Chatbot!
Using chatbots in your business can be extremely beneficial and can help generate increased profits, improve lead generation and boost conversions.
To learn more about chatbots and how you can have one in your organisation:
