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While companies benefit the most from a support bot. It’s AI as a whole that has been getting the lion’s share of all attention in recent years. From Elon Musk’s constant musings on Twitter to Sophia the Robot being granted Saudi Arabian citizenship. It seems as though we have hardly stopped hearing about AI of late.

Over at Clepher, we think there’s a good reason for this. Mainly because the capacity and possibilities of AI technology are constantly evolving and advancing. More and more, brands of all shapes and sizes are incorporating AI, in some shape or form, into different facets of their operations. From recruitment to marketing, to website support bots, there are countless ways in which AI can be used to scale and grow a business.

One of these “AI-driven” applications businesses have been taking particular interest in lately is chatbot services. Whether it’s over Facebook Messenger, or on a company’s own website, chatbots are increasingly popular across a variety of industries. No, and not just the tech-savvy sectors either. Industries like; beauty, travel, healthcare, and entertainment, and brands other from these fields have been experimenting with different types of chatbots.

And now, there is even strong evidence to suggest that it’s not only companies that are embracing chatbot solutions, but consumers too. Surveys carried out have found that 69% of consumers find chatbot services useful due to their ability to answer simple questions. Meanwhile, 64% of consumers appreciate the fact that support bots provide a 24/7 line of communication with a brand.

Cool, right? Well, later in this article we’re going to have a closer look at support bots across different companies. So, be sure to read on to get those case studies.

Support Bot Trends & Benefits

One clear trend we can see is that chatbots are increasing in popularity among both brands and consumers. Recent studies show that in the US, 62% of consumers like using chatbot services to interact with businesses. The same survey showed that in the UK and Australia, 70% of respondents had interacted with a brand’s support bot in the past year. The writing’s on the wall: Chatbots have conquered the world, and you can be sure they’re here to stay. As bots become an increasingly ubiquitous part of our everyday lives, what kind of advances can we expect to see in this area?

Predictions for the Next Big Chatbot Trends

• First of all, chatbots will only continue to become smarter and more efficient at their tasks. Technology is constantly advancing. As companies are focusing more and more on using customer data to personalize experiences. This means support bots are likely to become more accurate, helpful, and humanlike in their responses.
• Second, judging from some of the inventive ways brands such as Disney have been utilizing chatbots, it is likely that we are going to see a lot more of this type of creativity and innovation in the way support bots and AI are being used by big-name brands.
• Third, another big trend. The use of voice search and recognition to interact with support bots. Many brands are developing chatbot services that can process spoken words, and which can respond in either text or talk.

Ways Support Bots can Benefit Your Business

The benefits of chatbot services are many. The solutions they offer help to improve the customer experience in many ways. Chatbots drastically reduce the time a customer spends waiting for a response. They provide your clients with round the clock access to your business. Plus, they supply answers to commonly asked questions, and, in doing so, they free up more time for support staff to handle more nuanced or complicated questions. Support bots are not only helpful to consumers but to business operations as well. They have been proven to significantly cut costs and they provide unrivaled scope for easy scalability. They also increase customer satisfaction levels, which in turn leads to return business and higher revenues.

How 6 Leading Companies are Using Support Bots

Time to take a look at some real-world examples of how big-name businesses are leveraging chatbots for growth and using chatbot services to their advantage.

1. Amtrak

Amtrak is an essential service that is used by almost 100,000 passengers every day. In 2012, it debuted a chatbot service referred to as “Julie” on its website. The helpful tool was designed to answer commonly asked questions for passengers, but that’s not all it’s capable of. It can also help passengers to book tickets by filling out forms and taking them step by step through the entire booking process. So, what were the results? Julie’s implementation resulted in a 25% increase in bookings for the rail provider. It also helped to generate 30% more revenue per booking, and according to a case study, saved Amtrak $1,000,000 in customer service expenses in a single year.

2. AirBnB

A response to a crisis or unforeseen event can make or break a business. When COVID-19 began to spread around the world at the beginning of this year, many businesses were faced with a completely unheard-of increase in customers looking to them for support and guidance, with little or no time to prepare. One great thing about chatbots? They’re very fast learners. Airbnb was quickly and easily able to program its customer support chatbot, known as Helpbot, to respond to its customer’s questions and concerns relating to COVID-19. Helpbot has played a vital role in Airbnb’s response to the pandemic due to its easily adaptable behavior and ability to learn from contextual clues.

3. Domino’s Pizza

Over the years, Dominos has tried out many different AI innovations across its various platforms. But today we’re going to be talking about the one and only Dom. Domino’s Dom looms large in the annals of chatbot history. It revolutionized the pizza ordering process, lead to big increases in sales, and it was even nominated for a Shorty Award. Dom is a voice-controlled pizza ordering extraordinaire. Its two main functions (telling jokes and taking orders) helped to create a buzz around the brand at the time of its launch. It also gave Dominos a competitive edge over one of its biggest rivals, Pizza Hut when Dom was eventually rolled out to Facebook messenger.

4. Ikea

One of the best ways to improve the customer experience is to go straight to the source and ask your clients what you could be doing better. This can prove tricky, however, given the average consumer’s phobia of filling out surveys. Ikea implemented a chatbot solution to this age-old problem. Enter: ORC. Ikea created a chatbot called ORC to gather insights about its customers and their online shopping experiences. Chatbots attract more respondents than traditional surveys by using familiar language and emojis, offering incentives, and above all, shaking up the traditional survey-taking experience by reformatting the questions as a conversation.

5. Gett

Gett is a ridesharing app that operates in Russia, Israel, and the UK. A few years ago it experienced exponential growth. Its real-life customer support agents found themselves unable to handle the volume of messages they were receiving. Its customer satisfaction rates were dropping fast. Realizing it was struggling to scale, Gett made the savvy decision to invest in chatbot support. After rolling out its support bot, which began to handle 50% of all customer interactions, its customer service agents immediately found they had more time to give in-depth answers to customer’s more complex questions. Gett was also able to notice a sharp drop in operational costs, while customer satisfaction ratings shot back up to 90%.

6. Charter Communications

Charter Communications (trading as Spectrum) is a telecom company that serves over 30 million customers across the US. As can be expected, this company experiences an astronomically high volume of customer support messages each day. The thing is, most of these messages are coming from people with simple to solve issues such as forgotten passwords. The customer service team was spending valuable time answering questions that could easily be handled by a support bot. And that’s exactly what ended up handling them. As it turned out, when the media provider rolled out its support bot, it ended up handling a staggering 83% of all customer service messages. What did this mean for Charter Communications? A reduction in volume for its customer service agents and faster resolution of simple issues for its customers, all of which contributed to an estimated 500% ROI in the first six months.

Tips for Businesses Considering Support Chatbot Solutions

If these highly impressive success stories have piqued your interest, and you’re considering investing in your own chatbot solution, congratulations! Your business will thank you for it.

But beware: Before you decide on which chatbot service is right for you, there are some factors that are important to consider. Below are some things absolutely every business owner should at all times keep in mind when considering an AI chatbot solution.

Tip #1: Know What You Want to Achieve

Before you start the search for your perfect support chatbot, consider the following: what exactly do you want it to do for you? The answer to this question will go a long way toward informing you of your ultimate goal. Questions like, do you want to capture more leads? Are the support staff you currently have overwhelmed and inundated with daily messages? Do you want your customers to be able to avail of a self-service option on your site? You might have just one requirement you want from your chatbot, or you may want it to work for you in a number of different ways. Once you’ve clearly defined the basic functions you want it to perform, you’ll be a lot closer to being able to decide which one is perfect for you.

Tip #2: Take into Account the Solutions You Already Use

Think about all the different systems and social media sites that are currently associated with your business. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were possible to integrate your new support chatbot solution across all of your platforms? You will find that many chatbot support systems are already optimized for use with other digital platforms. It’s a good idea to cross-check and see if the ones you are considering will integrate nicely with all the different parts of your digital presence.

Tip #3: Always Make Sure to Do Your Research

Of course, this is purely common sense. But the amount of well-publicized faux pas involving chatbots over the years makes it worth mentioning. It’s always good to make your own inquires before deciding on your support bot solution. Don’t just settle for the one that seems most popular, or is offering the best deal at the time. Seeking out client testimonials and thoroughly scouring the website of any potential providers will help you to learn more about the specific services they provide. One thing which can be helpful, where possible, is to find out which businesses they already serve. Then you can head to their sites for an easy way to take their service for a test drive.

How Your Business Can Use Support Bots for Growth

Look, here are a couple of questions, I’d like to ask you:

• Are you looking to scale your business, but unsure of how to achieve this in the most practical way possible?
• Do you want to get a leading edge over your competitors?
• Would you like to improve your customer retention rates?
• Are you trying to break into new markets, with different time zones and spoken languages?
• Or do you simply want to offer the best possible customer service you can to your clients?

Now, even if you’ve answered yes to one of the above questions, your business could likely benefit from a chatbot. Clepher offers a range of chatbot solutions that can help to improve your marketing, lead capture, and customer service efforts. If you’d like to find out you can grow your business, get in touch with us today!

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