Chatbots are the latest trend in customer engagement.
How?
Chatbots are replacing the old fashioned customer engagement techniques by automating tasks and eliminating over time consumption. Time is important to everyone, and 70% of the fall outs of leads is due to slow responses and slower customer engagement tactics. Older techniques of customer engagement fell out of the market because they were repetitive, costly, time-consuming and often mismanaged. Hence, chatbots came into the game.
Chatbots help the customers with fast responses, suggestions, online booking platforms, reminders and much more!
Importance of chatbots
The attention span of the entire human species has decreased all the way down to 8 seconds, 1 second less than even that of a goldfish. People don’t want to spend their time talking on a phone to a customer service representative. They want to get their work done as quickly as possible and get on with the rest of their day. Afterall, which rational-minded person would want to waste minutes on something that could get done in seconds?
But a chatbot doesn’t just improve the customer experience, it even saves the business a lot of time and money. By 2019, about 30% of US financial firms had employed bots to improve their user experience, and these firms do know quite a bit about financial impact.
Source – Engati
Even in 2017, the number of customer service requests around the world was about 265 billion a year, which cost businesses $ 1.3 trillion to handle. We can expect the number of customer requests to rise even further in 2020, but the cost to service them does not need to remain this high. Infusing chatbots into the customer service process can actually reduce the cost of customer service by over 30% and simultaneously improve the customer experience by enabling the customers to get quicker responses to their requests.
The automated process will even improve the customers’ perception of the company by reducing the scope for human error. Imagine a local business that provides services like on an appointment basis. If the customers have to book the sessions by messaging a human executive, who then needs to update a database with regard to the booking, there is a lot of scope for error. If the executive has many other responsibilities, she/he may very simply forget to update the database, which would certainly result in a seriously dissatisfied customer. A local business may not really be able to afford another executive to be specifically responsible for this task, and that’s where a virtual assistant would come in. By automatically accessing and updating the database as and when the customer wants to schedule an appointment, it would reduce the scope for human error.
With chatbots being operational 24×7, all customers and website visitors can be attended to. Information can be gathered and service requests can be handled at any point in time, so those who visit your website or face an issue with your product or service at odd hours will not end up being left unattended and feeling frustrated.
9 ways chatbots help in customer engagement
Source – Freshdesk
#1 Make the customer understand your product.
Chatbots engage customers by making them understand your product better. When your customer fails to understand something, the chatbot will read this and send them details about your product and help them in decision making.
#2 Keep customers hooked with different methods
Chatbots use a variety of methods that keep the customer hooked during and even after the customer starts interaction with the chatbot.
#3 Notifications
Once the customer comes in for a query, or to find out about your product, chatbot will automatically take this as a user attribute and automatically send them notifications about the product post-conversion. This way the customer will have gentle reminders about your product and this can keep them engaged for a long time.
#4 Reminders
When you schedule an appointment, have a booking or a deadline, the chatbot will automatically send you reminders or you can even set reminders in the chatbot. This way you can use your bot for multiple purposes.
#5 Send images, videos, audios
Visual representation is always nice to look at, easy to understand and more engaging. Chatbots can send your customers – images, videos and audios related to your products and engage in a better way.
#6 Follow ups
Follow ups are important and are a vital part of keeping your customers hooked. This can be done with chatbots using methods such as emails, notifications etc.
#7 Broadcast messages
Broadcast messages can keep the customers engaged by sending them regular updates on new product launches, most viewed products, discounts and much more which will keep the customer engaged even after they’re done talking to the chatbots. Social media chatbots, such as WhatsApp chatbots are the best example here, to broadcast your message to all your customers on their preferred communication channel.
#8 Track engagement
Tracking engagement refers to tracking traffic and keeping a watch over your customers activities on your website. With chatbot development platforms like Engati, you can track engagement and know what area you have to work on better for better customer retention. Another advantage is that you can track engagement on multiple channels, and pick the conversation on the channel of your customer’s preference.
#9 Quick solutions
One of the best parts about chatbots is its quick engagement with instant replies. Slow replies lead to less retention rates and it’s a bad engagement technique. Chatbots can avoid this by quick replies and solutions to the customers. By doing this, the next time the customer
How are chatbots changing customer experience?
Chatbots have revolutionised customer experience and also put extensive efforts of customer services to rest. Here are a few examples-
- 24/7 hours assistance
- Fast replies and instant resolution to any customer queries
- Lead generation and customer engagement
- Makes suggestions, plans, bookings, schedules appointments, payments and much more.
Source: Innocom
How chatbots contribute to your digital marketing activities?
Bots are gaining popularity day by day and businesses honestly cannot afford to perform digitally without a chatbot. Let’s look at a few instances through which chatbots provide business as well as customer support.
Better understanding of what your customers want
Majority of the customers prefer texting over speaking over the call – That’s a given. So, there’s no harm and only an advantage at integrating your business website with a chatbot. On the other hand, human agents are busy responding to a deluge of customer queries so they cannot possibly find time to entertain all requests immediately at once.Therefore, it’s important that you give a personal touch to your bot while building it. You may give it a common name that your customers can relate to. Design a relatable logo and create greeting messages that sound personal but not too overwhelming.
Gather quality leads for your business needs
Spray and pray is a long lost strategy when there weren’t really many means to measure your performance and strategies. In fact, while designing and giving structure to your bot you’ve got to ensure customers feel like you care for them.This way, you will be able to generate good quality leads that will pass through the sales funnel faster. Moreover, you can also integrate the LIVE chat feature with your bot so that whenever a customer wants real human support, your customer support agent can jump in.
Bots will make your product sell on its own
The bot is extremely capable of managing your customers so you can sit back and relax and intervene only when required. So, you only have to manage the initial-level inputs so that the rest of the journey is taken care of by the bot.
A seamless user experience will help you measure business success
Did you know, more than 70% of online customers like it when they see personalised, and not forced, advertisements. Bots can easily collect user data and help you create personalised customer journeys according to the user path.
How to build your customer engagement bot?
There are two ways of building a bot-
- DIY chatbot building platforms– Easy to build, no coding, easy integrations, customisable, nominal pricing, use of AI and the fastest way of building a bot.
- Coding a bot– time consuming, more expensive, coding needed for integrations, team required for regular chatbot testing and less retention rates, however, with the right software development process it can be really effective.
These days, almost all enterprises and businesses are opting for the former method to create chatbots because of obvious reasons, of course. Though it’s easy and fast, building these bots from DIY chatbot platforms also do have certain steps and tools that you need to implicate to build a robust and ideal bot for your business.
Wrapping up!
Chatbots have single handedly revolutionised the customer experience and people are a lot more engaged now. With chatbot development tools like Engati, you can even track your customer’s traffic and activities which allows you to make further improvisions.
We hope you found this blog helpful. Happy botting!
