Tanay Tulsaney (Co-founder, DigiLantern) tells us how businesses can take advantage of chatbots to provide better customer support & fast online growth. In addition to traditional customer service channels such as phone, email, and social media, businesses use chatbots to engage with customers, increase productivity and efficacy in a variety of ways.
Chatbots provide service representatives with the information they require in real time, serving up relevant resources regardless of the conversation context. Chatbots also speed up response times and resolve common issues such as checking the status of claims and order modifications.
What exactly is a chatbot?
Let’s start by understanding the basics. In simple words, it is a computer programme that simulates voice or text-based human conversations. But, even today what most people don’t understand is that chatbots are not only restricted to websites. These programmes can be modified and used in numerous ways. The majority of us are acquainted with bots for customer service in our consumer lives, but digital agencies like DigiLantern are utilising chatbots to automate popular conversation and messaging platforms such as SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp etc.
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Chatbots allow users to converse with a person (a sales representative or a support agent, for example) or with a programme that helps them discover answers quickly. The most essential way in which a chatbot can influence a customer relationship is by responding to requests more quickly and meeting customer expectations.
As Tanay says, “with the ability to provide immediate responses around the clock, chatbots enable customer support teams to apply their emotional intelligence to more complex inquiries.”
How does it work?
The simplest form of a chatbot system accomplishes duties by parsing customer input and then searching its database for articles that contain specific words and phrases. In essence, it functions as a keyword-based document retrieval system. For instance, a cosmetics company could develop a programme that asks users about their makeup preferences and then recommends products and deals based on their responses.
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In such cases, the computer programme underlying the chatbot follows a set of predefined rules and has limited ability to identify how people communicate. Consider the times when you typed a query into a website's dialogue box and received an illogical response. This is likely due to the fact that the chatbot programme recognised keywords in your query, but not their usage context.
How does it enhance customer satisfaction?
Reduces reply wait times
Chatbots reduce the amount of time consumers spend in queue. In lieu of waiting for an email, phone call, or response via another channel, chat windows provide instant answers to frequently asked inquiries. In today’s digital era, everyone is in a rush and delay in response means lesser chances of lead conversion for e-commerce and service based businesses. So, introducing chatbots is really a game changer move!
Resolves support cases
Chatbots are built in a manner to quickly resolve support cases. They can promptly respond to simple inquiries from customers to make them happier, and they can do so repeatedly. As a result, there are fewer cases for support agents to resolve.
Provides essential information to customers
Chatbots can instantaneously greet customers in a chat window with a branded greeting and efficiently direct them to the desired resources.
Helps identify prospects
By managing the initial support interactions with a customer or prospect, AI-powered chatbots help service agents initiate conversations. A chatbot could, for instance, ask a succession of pertinent questions and collect an email address, delivering a more qualified lead to a sales representative. They can then use this information to tailor future interactions with customers.
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Deflecting high-volume, low-complexity cases is a common strategy for relieving agents of their workload.Nearly two-thirds of service personnel attribute the decline in case volume to self-service.
AI chatbots have tremendous potential for scaling personalised experiences. As they learn more about customers and employ AI to anticipate their next move, the level of personalisation improves.
