10 MIN READ

Automate your business with a chatbot, and you automatically improve the way your business caters to the market. Which, in turn, translates into increased sales and revenues.

Bold claim? I beg to differ.

See, if you have not done this yet, we over at Clepher recommend that you should. Especially now, it seems more companies have finally seen the light, resulting in even more businesses following suit after seeing what chatbot automation is doing for their competitors. And could you blame them? Chatbots do give a company numerous benefits, after all. I mean, just imagine having more time to focus and work on your other projects – all because you have automated the right processes with a chatbot.

But, this shouldn’t be the only reason to automate your business, of course. If you’ve been reading our blog regularly, you know that we’ve already given you tons of reasons why you should automate your business with a chatbot. However, in this article, I’d like to address the 4 key benefits a chatbot has to offer.

A Chatbot Improves Conversions

A chatbot can help improve conversions because it can answer questions the customer might have. If you’re an eCommerce business, the chatbot can answer questions from customers regarding products, shipping, and payment options – all without ever sending them to a phone call or email.

For example, suppose a customer’s question is beyond your scope as a business owner or salesperson. In that case, the chatbot will ask for your assistance and provide the user with some contact details to get their issue resolved. Now let’s say that you are in charge of handling support queries. If this is the case – you can rest assured. 

One of your support staff members won’t waste time addressing fundamental problems, while most complex ones are sent directly to you for review. This alone means more productivity for your business since the support staff will focus on handling more complex issues as a result. And by this example alone you can see that automating your business with a chatbot can be really fruitful.

Maximizing Sales Opportunities and Personalized Follow-Up with Chatbots

Customers who also interact with the chatbot will decide if they want to complete a sale or not. With an average online conversion rate at around 2% right now, this means that a lot of leads could be lost just because you didn’t have a chatbot in place. Let’s say you get 100 out of 200 people into leaving their contact details, but make it hard for them to finish their form submission — now profit is getting further and further away from you! How different would that number look if the chatbot was optimized to follow up with the leads that didn’t provide all the information? Seriously, how many other sales opportunities have been missed by not having a simple follow-up in place?

There’s a lot of money to be made in the follow-up segment of a sale because all it takes is just one more piece of information to get the customer interested enough to complete the purchase. With a chatbot, you can know exactly where your customers are in their sales journey when they’re talking to your bot. And what’s even better – you can take this information as well as the data gathered from previous conversations with future leads and present them with highly personalized offers or suggestions that will make them go “A-ha! I’ve been looking for something like that!” And then — they’ll most likely convert.

Enhancing Prospecting Efficiency with Chatbot Follow-Up

The initial prospecting stage is vital. If everything goes right during this period, profit potential increases rapidly once conversion begins. However — if prospects aren’t converted during the prospecting stage, it’s only natural that the sales cycle will stall, and you’ll have to go back to prospecting again, hoping for a conversion this time.

This is why it’s essential to have your chatbot focus on following up with leads whenever they haven’t completed their forms properly (most of the leads often don’t provide all the information). If you can gather more prospecting data from these prospects instead — you can use that info to better personalize future offers or push them towards converting if they’re leaning in that direction. Once again – that’s an increase in profit potential.

A Chatbot Qualifies Leads

Chatbots can help you qualify leads quickly and easily. It’s a great way to learn about the marketing goals of your potential customer without them having to tell you. Your chatbot can also filter out irrelevant information and show the most essential facts about a company. This will save you time and allow you to dedicate more of your attention to qualified leads.

You can use your chatbot to qualify leads by simply asking them what they are looking for. If you have a large enough database, you can find the relevant information about the company without actually having to call and speak with them. This will also help lead generation because if someone is looking for a product or service that they don’t really need, it makes more sense to send them in the direction of someone who needs it.

Building a Quality Lead List and Lead Qualification with Chatbots

The best way to build a qualified list of leads is to ask questions and get customer feedback on how they feel about your services or products. Do this regularly because not every lead will be relevant when you first add them to your marketing funnel. 

For example, if somebody is looking for a realtor because they need help selling their house, this might not be the correct lead. On the other hand, if somebody is interested in purchasing an investment property and has $100K to spend, then it’s one of your best leads.

A sales chatbot can also help you to qualify leads because it can give you a general idea of who is looking for your product or service and why. As long as you have the information an interested party or company has provided, this will allow you to choose which lead to pursue in detail. For example, suppose somebody expresses interest in purchasing a home by filling out a form on your website. In that case, their name and email address will end up going into an email marketing software program. From there, they may get an automated response from your chatbot saying that someone is going to reach out soon.

Automating Lead Qualification with Chatbot Surveys and Polls

Before you spend any more time trying to sell to anybody who comes onto your website, make sure that those people are actually qualified leads. You don’t want to sell to people who are not likely to buy from you. Polls, quizzes, and surveys are great tools to help qualify leads. But what if you’re able to automate this with a chatbot in a conversational style? See, you can create a quick survey through your chatbot to find out your customers’ opinions on a specific issue, what they think about you, or even what movie they want to watch that night.

All in all, your business will have better insights. And because of these insights provided by your customers through their inputting within the survey or poll. A famous example is a Facebook messenger chatbot that allows users to conduct surveys using a platform like Clepher. In fact, we have created multiple templates based on the most popular sales frameworks that you can install in just a few seconds. And *POOF*, your chatbot can now qualify leads. If you’re interested, here’s a link to one of them.

Efficient Lead Follow-Up and Maintaining Prospect Interest with Chatbots

What’s also cool is that a chatbot can help follow up with people quickly because you may not have the time or energy to do so. You could be too busy handling a lot of customers or getting new leads in the door. There’s no point wasting your time on following up with someone who isn’t going to buy from you – spend as much time as possible talking with your best prospects and avoid wasting time calling people who aren’t likely to work out for various reasons.

Let’s say that somebody fills out an inquiry form on your website, and then they don’t respond after two or three days. You could spend a lot of time trying to reach out to them, and if you’re unsuccessful, then it probably wouldn’t be worth your while. On the other hand, using a chatbot allows you to send that person a reminder in just a few seconds. This way, they will know that their information has not been forgotten about and you are still interested in working with them.

This can also help reduce the number of people who go cold because perhaps the salesperson wasn’t ready yet, or maybe they didn’t have any idea what they could do for the prospect. On that note, the idea of having to talk to a salesperson is not appealing to most people, so if you can provide some sort of convenience by offering an alternative service such as sending information via email or instant messaging, this will be much better received. An automated chatbot will allow you to deliver accurate leads and information quickly so that you can stay on point with the real prospects who are willing to work with you right now.

A Chatbot Can Automates Sales for Your Business

It is common to hear about how Facebook Messenger has taken over the world and conquered all users. Today, everyone uses Facebook Messenger for different reasons; however, certain businesses are taking advantage of this tool to expand their reach online by encouraging people to connect directly through Facebook Messenger. As soon as you start looking at your chatbox, you will realize that many brands have created chatbots specifically made for engaging customers about their products or services – even if those people never knew they wanted it in the first place!

There are several ways that you can use a chatbot to automate the sales of your product. You can create a chatbot that offers discounts and deals to customers throughout the day or week. You could also make a chatbot where people enter their email addresses to exchange your product at a discounted rate. This is basically how Groupon works. And it works surprisingly well, too.

Chatbots for Business Promotion and Customer Engagement

Nowadays, there are tons of businesses using chatbots to promote their business by automating specific tasks like taking customer’s orders and answering simple questions about their products or services. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, then just visit Facebook Messenger right now and open any random conversation with one of the businesses you follow – I guarantee you’ll see an automated message from that business.

Another thing you can do is have your chatbot send out promotional offers to your customers using Messenger. This way, you can offer coupons, rebates, and limited-time deals. Some businesses have found great success with this approach – in fact, there are a couple of online stores that exclusively promote their products on Facebook Messenger. You could also advertise your chatbot to customers by mentioning it on your website or social media accounts. If people see a little message at the bottom of one of your web pages encouraging them to connect with you on Messenger: they’ll click it. And if they connect and engage with the chatbot? Even better.  

If you plan on using your chatbot to promote sales, there are a couple of things that you need to keep in mind:

Make Sure Your Chatbot is Responsive

If someone sends a message to your bot and gets no response back, they’re not going to feel comfortable with the idea of buying something from it. They might wonder if it’s even working correctly or if the bot is being run by an actual person. You could have your chatbot respond immediately when someone sends it a message – but remember that this will probably annoy your customers, so try connecting with them at random times instead.

Don’t Overdo It 

If you send out offers every five minutes, people are going to begin ignoring those offers altogether. Even if you send out a really fantastic offer, people will just want to skip over it. You must keep sending out promotions at random times for your chatbot – otherwise, they’ll lose their novelty, and customers will stop engaging with them.

There are plenty of other ways to use a chatbot to connect with your customers and make sales. The key is to be thoughtful about it and try not to overwhelm people. Offer them great deals at random intervals throughout the day or week – don’t send them all in one message!

A Chatbot Provides 24/7 Support

Automating your business with a chatbot allows you to provide 24/7 customer service, which will reduce your staff costs immensely. Furthermore, chatbots can be programmed to deal with exceptional cases and exceptions, something a human agent cannot do quickly. In essence, you can create an instant worldwide support center without breaking the bank. Putting a chatbot in your support arsenal propels it to the front line of your business as it could quickly solve many problems that would otherwise be solved by staff members, allowing the company to fulfill its basic function. 80% of questions asked in any given support channel are repeated questions; that’s why it only makes sense to have a bot take care of those.

Seamless Customer Interaction and Efficient Navigation with Chatbots

However, if there’s a customer or prospect in need of human attention, you should provide a human escalation path. When you “program” your chatbot correctly, you can add a “live” person to the chat support. This is great when your customers need help with something that the bot does not cover or cannot do. This creates a seamless and interactive customer experience, one in which customers can make their own decisions and interact with your brand directly without having to go through an agent first.

Plus, most websites are a complex maze of information. Each page may have several links to other pages containing further information on specific topics. Thousands of data points interconnect with this information, updating daily. Finding your way on the site becomes challenging; links lead far from your initial search. In contrast, a chatbot’s programming understands information flow, precisely locating content on the site. This makes giving answers to that 80% of repeat questions mentioned earlier, go extremely fast.

Other Benefits when having your chatbot take care of support

Cost Savings and 24/7 Availability Through Chatbot Support

The first and most obvious benefit of having a chatbot providing support is eliminating human customer service representatives. This can quickly reduce your operational costs (such as salaries, benefits, and overhead) by at least 50%. It also enables 24/7 customer service without concerns about staff turnover or costly representatives limited to business hours.

Rapid Responses and 24/7 Availability with Chatbots

Another significant benefit of having a chatbot manage your daily queries is the potential for a significantly reduced response time. Regardless of where agents are located or what time they get to work, a chatbot will be able to answer any question in minutes. They also don’t require any lunch breaks or vacations. That’s right – a chatbot can be awake 24/7 and never tire. This is especially beneficial for businesses that are open around the clock.

Enhancing Efficiency with Chatbots for Simple Tasks and Support

Furthermore, a chatbot adds value to your business by solving simple problems that aren’t worth an agent’s time, such as password resets or basic questions about products. Agents typically complete these types of tasks during their downtime while more complex issues await their attention. 

If you manage a blog or forum, having a chatbot help people find what they need in minutes instead of hours will drastically reduce support revenue loss. Many forums experience 90% of people leaving immediately after redirection to an irrelevant thread, a common issue. A chatbot frees up staff to manage complex issues by providing information and reducing the need for questions.

When it comes right down to it, having a chatbot handle support will do two things: boost your customer experience and lower your operating costs. Many businesses have been using chatbots for years now – some with exceptional results – considering that chatbots are still very early in their development cycle. Whatever shortcoming they may have is an easy fix as long as you know what they are.

Final Thoughts on Automating Your Business with Chatbots

Many businesses have been using chatbots for years now. In this article, you received a lot of information about how chatbots can help you automate your business. In short, competitive companies want to fully leverage this technology today to avoid falling behind when their competitors begin implementing more advanced strategies.

And if you’re serious about automating your business with chatbots, then there’s only one thing left to do – get Clepher right now. The good news is that we provide you with a 30-day refund policy. So, whether or not it ultimately suits your needs, you won’t lose any money!

So, get Clever with Messenger and jumpstart your business growth through chatbot automation.

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