More and more businesses are using chatbots for their online platforms. Why do you think that is? Chatbots are a quick and easy way to communicate with potential clients and customers, and you’ve likely seen plenty of them just browsing the websites of your favorite brands and businesses. The trend has some good reasoning behind it. There are several chatbot uses that can make it far easier to run certain parts of your business.
7 Practical Chatbot Uses You Should Consider
So, are you already using chatbots? If not, you might want to take it into consideration. Chatbots aren’t just for fun conversations with an AI anymore. They have utilitarian purposes that can really boost your company to higher heights For more information about chatbot applications and how you could be using them, keep reading. Here are a few ways that chatbots can help you take your business to the next level.
1. Lower Your Costs with this chatbot uses
If you’re a business owner, costs are likely always on your mind. Keeping costs low and results high is the name of the game, and that can be tricky in the current landscape. Good workers are expensive, and good programs can also burn a hole in your wallet.
So what is there to do?
Consider a little chatbot that uses AI to help pick up some of the slack. Many daily messages to companies are as simple as troubleshooting. They involve issues that are relatively easy to solve but can be made more lengthy and troubleshooting with a human on the other line. Your workers likely have essential things to deal with. There are some problems that AI can’t fix (at least, not yet). Your workers should be spending their time helping the customers who have more complex issues that require the brainpower and nuance of a real person.
Why should you have your employees waste time on issues that can be answered with a few short words and instructions?
Your workers probably also sleep at some point during the day, meaning there can be some lag between a customer messaging your business and them getting their response. While this is incredibly normal and understandable, many people want instant gratification and giving them that gratification can be beneficial. Having a full-time around the clock team devoted to answering basic troubleshooting questions (“have you tried turning it off and back on again?”) is going to be really expensive. If you’re a small business, you likely can’t afford that. A chatbot, however, is affordable. They can handle simple inquiries and ensure that your customer is getting a swift response. If the inquiry is too complex, then it can go to a real person.
2. Chatbots Are Always Improving
Chatbots are technology, and technology is always making advancements. Sometimes these advancements are made without your knowledge at all. This means that if there are better ways for your bot to serve your business, there are likely already people working behind the scenes to make that happen for you. Your employees are also constantly learning (as most people are) but their learning is most likely experiential rather than based on algorithms and statistics. Your employees can still help you in the more complicated areas of work, but a chatbot can make the easy stuff even easier. There’s no teaching, just troubleshooting and importing information when something needs an update. Your chatbot can work consistently every time that it’s needed.
3. Chatbots Improve Customer Service
Honestly… How many times have you called or emailed a business about a problem and not received a response?
Reall, how many times have you had to play phone tag for hours? How many times have you sent in a chat request or called just to be moved around from department to department because you’re being misunderstood? All of these processes can take a long time, and they can be frustrating. Would you stick with those businesses if there was a better option? Probably not. A chatbot doesn’t replace your essential staff. It provides a way for customers to get instant attention, even if a solution isn’t immediately available. Ideally, the customer’s query is simple enough that the bot can deal with it then and there. However, if it’s more complicated, the customer has already been addressed, and they may feel more willing to wait it out.
Some chatbots are capable of directing a query to the proper helper or department. Why should a tech issue go to sales? A chatbot doesn’t think that it should. The bot provides a little barrier to your actual employees. If the answer is simple, it saves your employees the effort. If it’s complicated or requires a human touch, it can direct the customer to the right human. Quick customer service is excellent customer service, and you can’t get much quicker than “instant”.
4. Chatbots Can Market to Your Customers
Have you ever gone to a Facebook page for a business and immediately had a chat screen come up? Often, these screens have a brief list of potential options that you can talk about or links that you can click. When you’re on the Facebook page of a new business, you might just be investigating for future reference, but now you’re being provided with options. Sometimes these bots show you menus (if they’re restaurants) or they immediately start displaying a recent product and inquiring about the customer’s interest. The customer may not have been truly interested in these things before (just curious, of course) but now, seeing them displayed right there, that could change. You’re missing out on a serious direct marketing opportunity if you’re not using chatbots to reach out to your customers on your websites or social media platforms.
5. Chatbots Can Collect Information For You
When you’re working on marketing strategies, one thing that you need to be aware of is demographics. Who is it that is buying your products or needing your services? Who exactly is coming onto your page? These demographics can help you to reach new audiences or tend to the ones that you’re already attracting. Some chatbots have the capability of collecting certain kinds of information. They may ask for this information specifically, and some may come through their programming. This information is safe to collect and use for your business and marketing efforts. It can be difficult to get accurate customer information. Chatbots communicate with them like friends and begin gathering contact information to build customer profiles which are later used on the marketing side of things.
6. You Can Keep Your Valued Employees
There’s always some anxiety about technology replacing the human workers at their various businesses. While some of it might be reasonable, the fact is that chatbots are still just AI. They’re not nearly advanced enough to replace all need for human communication. Chatbots give you the opportunity to use your employees at their full potential. We’ve mentioned before that a good employee shouldn’t be wasting their time answering simple queries on Facebook or your website. There can be dozens of those per day even for the smallest of businesses.
Your employees aren’t being paid to answer when your business opens or closes 20 times per day. They’re being paid to handle serious or complex customer service problems, or for marketing, or for tech work. You’re under-using and undervaluing your employees by giving them busywork tasks and you’re interrupting their workflow.
7. Going Global is Easy
If you’ve decided to take your business to an international audience, congratulations! That’s great and it’s an important step towards growth. Do you have all of the employees that you need to handle basic questions in the native languages of the countries that you’re expanding to? Maybe not. A chatbot is an easy way to help your new international customers communicate in their own languages without any trouble. They can get their simple questions answered in moments and in their own timezone rather than having to wait around until the workers in your timezone are awake. Improve your customer service and retention globally, not just domestically, with a chatbot.
There Are Many Chatbot Uses For Businesses
There are so many helpful chatbot uses and they increase in number all the time. As chatbots become more advanced, they’ll be able to handle more problems and cover more ground, freeing you and your employees up to deal with issues that need a human touch.
If you want to amp up your customer service, improve your marketing, and maybe even save a little bit of money on the side, consider getting a chatbot for your online platforms. For more information, visit our site and check out what our chatbots have to offer your business.
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Founder Clepher