Why You Can’t Avoid A Chatbot Anymore

Sophisticated AI-powered conversational solutions will drive the future of global business

You know it’s cool to have chatbots talk to your customers and service their needs, but have you pondered how it can impact your bottom line? Is it that you have taken to AI because it’s the “in thing” right now, or have you figured out how you might be drawing concrete returns through it? Whatever be the case, technology is not constant - it’s always evolving and replacing many things in our lives. You either keep up or fade out. The best way to stay afloat is to understand how it’s impacting your world.

Chatbots, the game changer

Chatbot, with its unique, novel technology interface, is revolutionizing the way customer service or enterprise operations are managed. You can get things done by chatting or speaking through an interface instead of typing or sending an email. The catch here being it’s not a live person at other end of the chat; you’re speaking to a machine that’s simulating human responses.

Consider these use cases, if you will: today, you use a chatbot when calling your bank to get your account balance. But you may also be speaking to a chatbot for the initial part of a customer service call, to convey information such as your name and the reason you are calling. If you’ve ordered Starbucks, a pizza, or an Uber ride, you may have probably chatted with a bot instead of a person at the other end. What 1997 was to Internet, 2018 is to the chatbots.

Not all bots are created equal though. Some rely on pre-programmed responses and can do little else than retrieve those canned answers.

Why Chatbot

Globally, the average age of a business consumer today is 37. Businesses should be suave enough to be able to communicate with her. A chatbot is a good idea because earlier forms of customer interactions are a passé. For example, many millennials dislike calling people on the phone (The Wall Street Journal recently reported they dislike answering the doorbell, too.) According to a study by a telecommunications company, the phone part of your smartphone is the fifth-most-used-app among the general public.

JPMorgan Chase eliminated voicemail for about 65 percent of its workforce, those who volunteered and don’t regularly interact with the public. The move means an annual savings of $3 million.

If your customers aren’t calling you, what options have you for communicating with your customers? While Twitter is a useful customer service tool, those interactions are public and may result in a lot of back-and-forths; it also requires a human to monitor it. Of course, you must have a way to reach someone by email. But chatbots have the advantage of responding immediately. Furthermore, they don’t require a human to help.

Chatbots have other advantages too, such as:

• Not sleeping. You can offer customer service online 24/7, perfect for your night owl customers or companies who have a global market.
• No waiting. Instead of being put on hold “to wait for the next available representative,” customers can ask about their problem now.
• Data collection. A chatbot gives you a record of the interaction. You can use this to learn more about your customers, their habits, the tone of the communication, and more. Such analytics are valuable for sales and marketing teams as well as the human side of your customer service.
• Strong communication. Humans have bad days. Humans may forget to send a card for a customer’s birthday. A chatbot can be programmed to do the latter and will never sound grumpy by accident. Chatbots can be programmed to work with humans, giving your team the power to jump into a conversation if needed.
• Happy customers. Seventy-eight percent of consumers have bailed on a transaction or not made an intended purchase because of a poor service experience. According to Financial Training Services, 96 percent of unhappy customers don’t complain, yet 91 percent of those will leave and never come back. It also costs far less to retain a customer than to get a new one. All that adds up to customer service being a critical piece of your company.
• Win over Humans. Chatbots can answer a query in 1 seconds to what a human might take up to 5 minutes and complete a task in 20 seconds, against 10-20 minutes of human capability. This is machine learning & AI. But the underlying is, a chatbot doesn't take too much time to be trained, works 24/7, can have omni-channel presence, costs a fraction per task v/s a human, can assist a human to retrieve information faster and most of all - converse with humans.

 It's All About Value

If it’s automation that you are looking at (to realize cost savings), you are right. Chatbots do that well, handling customer service and passing the next phase to a human. You can augment customer service, reduce wait times, solve issues faster and replace manual tasks. But natural language processing is soon changing the game: coupled with machine learning, AI programs can learn from experience and deliver substantial value.

While it’s unlikely that an entire customer service department will be replaced, a chatbot could save companies tens of thousands of dollars in salary and benefits costs. This also tends to result in happier customer service staff. According to BI Intelligence, this augmentation can automate 30 percent of contact center team tasks, saving U.S. companies $23 billion. Just think over!!!

Check out Chatbots 101 for a quick look into how to prepare for the conversational era.

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