Craze for AI Chatbots – What Makes you run Behind a Bot?

Craze for AI Chatbots – What Makes you run Behind a Bot?

The internet plays a major role in the growth of businesses today. Businesses have their websites to talk about the various products and services. Customers can subscribe to newsletters to stay updated about the running promotions and introduction of any new product/service. There are social media pages to provide the customers real time information about what is happening with the company. Given all these channels between the customers and the businesses, there is one other new face of communication that is recently becoming a rage and that is Chatbot. The number of customers who try to get in touch with the business and the number of times the customers try reaching the business are both continuously increasing.

No installation Needed

The number of interactions that happen through chat windows outweigh the number of interactions that happen over the phone. One cannot deny the fact that having an immersive app delivering a rich user experience can be beneficial for business. But apps have to first be noticed among the millions of other similar ones in the app marketplace. Then the customer would have to install it to use it. For a regular customer who makes purchases or who uses your products and services frequently, this totally makes sense. But consider the new customers, the potential customers who are trying to know about your business? They might not always have the time and patience to install an app and then get their information. Chatbots would help in this scenario. This is why chatbots are known to help a great deal in customer acquisition. Chatbots are always there. Customers need not install any separate apps to get in touch with your business’ chatbot. These can directly be integrated in the already available messaging platforms and can be readily available for the customers.

No Call Goes Unanswered

With telephone lines to take customer queries there are always days where the load outweighs the capacity. So customers are burdened with long wait times and sometimes the call doesn’t get through at all. Such failed attempts in establishing communication can be very frustrating for the customers. But with AI chatbots, they are made so as to simultaneously handle any load. They are always there to answer the customer’s questions. Be it the simplest of questions about the products and services or some query about the order status or any other business-related information request, you can develop chatbots to handle them all. Your chatbot could also redirect any customer to an actual customer care representative if the situation calls for it. This way, load can be streamlined and so at the end of the day it is not just the customers that are happy but also your customer care teams.

There are Several Ways to do it

Chatbots have been made so much simple these days. You would be able to find a lot of platforms that help you customize a chatbot that exactly meets your requirement. The crucial step is to pick the right framework to create your chatbot. This would determine the features and the efficiency of your chatbot and the options to upgrade it. The popular messaging platforms including the Facebook messenger all offer simple ways to integrate chatbots and these are very popular among businesses all over the world. And if you are looking for a scalable option that would not cost extra when on any day the load increases then chatbots are the perfect answers. And given the fact that people now use the messaging platforms more than the social media sites, this is the right channel to tap to actually get to the customers.

They can Save Time and Effort for the Business and Customers

When your customer has some query to clarify or a grievance to record, there might be cases where sending or receiving media files or links would make things simpler. This cannot often be achieved through phone interactions. With a chatbot however, if a customer places a question in front of you your chatbot could reply with the relevant instructions to tackle the situation and also provide any suitable links if needed. This would make it easy for you to answer your customers and your customers would find it easy to understand what is being conveyed as well. And with all the popular messaging platforms sharing links and media files can be achieved in a jiffy. So the whole process can save a lot of time and efforts for both the parties. This would make sure that a more relevant conversation happens without any ambiguity.

Tech Giants all have Taken their Step

Google has acquired API.AI, Microsoft has Bot Framework, and every major tech player out there has taken its step towards supporting and enhancing the growth of chatbots, not without a reason. Even Apple, with the recent iOS update has integrated smart ways to do several smart things with the iMessage like say, sending money directly from the messaging interface. So we now find chatbots everywhere. Without even realizing that we are using them we are using them, to a large extent, every single day. Why wouldn’t we love them, they are so convenient after all! Truly smart AI powered chatbots are still not fully developed. These would be the bots that do not sound like bots thanks to the integration of the Natural Language Processing system. Though we still do not find a lot of such NLP-based chatbots there is work going on in favor of reaching there. Siri itself is proof enough to see how much chatbots are evolving. Have you checked out the new and improved Siri that iOS 11 brought? It comes with a more human sounding voice and a powerful machine learning algorithm that allows Siri to learn from the way you use your phone and to give you relevalnt prompts here and there. This is just the beginning. The craze for chatbots is not something that would settle down anytime soon. So it is a great time to invest in one that can really improve the customer engagement and the customer experience.