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Even though chatbots have been around since the 1960s, they have only recently become popular. Today, they are widely used by businesses across different verticals to ease their workload. Some chatbots are made to answer simple questions, while others can handle even the most complicated requests. So, what are the different benefits of chatbots, and how can businesses leverage them in the growth journey?Let’s understand them in detail.
But before that, here are a few stats to make a note of.
- Gartner predicts that chatbots will become the most widely used customer service channel by 2027.
- According to GlobalNewsWire the market for chatbots is anticipated to reach $3,411 million by the year 2030, which is truly an incredible increase, considering its market size in 2021, was only $521 million.
- Reportlinker reveals that conversational AI tools and technologies market witnessed accelerated growth from 31.3% to $3.3 billion in 2021.
- 56% of businesses claim chatbots are radically changing their industry (Accenture).
- By 2023, consumers and businesses will be saving over 2.5 billion customer service hours because of chatbots (Juniper Research).
These stats clearly show chatbots are undoubtedly here to stay. Building a chatbot to serve your customer on multiple fronts, such as your website, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, opens the door to endless opportunities.
What are Chatbots?
Chatbots are also called conversational AI (Artificial Intelligence)conversational bots, etc. In simple words, it is a piece of software, which helps in conducting conversations in natural language through text or audio. Companies use chatbot technology to save 3 things:
- Time
- Money
- Manpower
Customer support & after-sales are key areas where most organizations implement chatbots, followed by sales, CRM, and marketing.
That’s because they work well and have evolved in recent years. If you look at Alexa, Siri, and Google, you will realize what is waiting for us in the future. No, we do not mean the imminent technological apocalypse, but rather how AI (Artificial Intelligence)-based chatbots will alter the business aspects and how we can communicate with them.
10 Benefits of Chatbots for Your Business
So, what could this mean for your business? In a single word – profitability. Chatbots are the future of how we are going to engage with customers. They have multiple benefits, and that’s precisely what we are going to explain to you in this article today.
1. Available 24×7
One of the best benefits of chatbots is their 24/7 availability. Since they are automated, they don’t take breaks. Many companies have 24/7 customer support throughout the year. However, this needs massive teams, with employees answering phone calls day in and day out. Yes, it’s good to see how far a company can go to keep its customers happy. But even with such enormous human resources at the organization’s disposal, customers still tend to wait. We bet you would have heard music playing when you call a customer care agent expecting a quicker response. The case with chatbots is entirely different. Since they are automated to answer what customers ask, they answer instantly without getting tired. This feature makes customers satisfied and happy. It also makes things much simpler when approaching international markets because you no longer have to be concerned about hiring fluent-speaking customer executives from other countries.
Learn how we helped a health benefits service provider handle more than 36,000 multiple interactions in 6 months, 24/7.
Learn how we helped a health benefits service provider handle more than 36,000 multiple interactions in 6 months, 24/7.
2. Cuts Down Operational Cost
Implementing a fully functioning or advanced chatbot is much cheaper and quicker than hiring human resources for every task or building a cross-platform application. A single person can handle only 1-2 people simultaneously, and if this exceeds, the process becomes hard for an employee.
Hiring new executives (who can support customers throughout the year) and appending other basic things for them can turn out to be highly expensive for the company. It cuts down the cost on employee and further, prevents human errors.
Implementing Virtual Agents (VA) can help a business to save at least 30%.
According to the Juniper Research report, chatbots are expected to save $11bn annually for retail, banking & healthcare sectors by 2023.
Chatbots will help companies to save a lot of money and still be effortlessly changeable to meet various needs, depending on the application.
3. Offers Personalized Experience
Undeniably, “personalization” has always been one of the important needs of marketers. But there hasn’t been any scalable personalization, especially in the “lead generation” funnel.
According to a Statista report, 44% of survey respondents are willing to switch to brands offer personalized messaging.
What’s even more interesting is nearly 32 percent of US consumers say they accept all cookies, when opening a website. Chatbots are exclusively designed to give customers an interactive environment so they feel exactly the way they would when conversing with a fellow human. So, this means chatbots can make the marketing process as personalized as one-to-one sales. Chatbots collect information about your website’s visitors and adapt based on their preferences.
When eight different markets were surveyed globally, it was found that 91% of the customers say they are more likely to shop with brands recognize, remember, and offer them relevant offers.(Source)
4. Multi-Lingual Support
One of the biggest benefits of chatbots is they can be programmed to support multiple languages. It allows you to give a personalized customer experience, by allowing them to converse in the language they are most comfortable with. Whether you have an international customer base, or your target audience group prefers native language support, the right vendor can help you meet customer expectations in their native language.
5. Enhances Engagement and Sales
If you truly want to boost your sales, then it is crucial to keep your customers engaged. And for better engagement, companies implement chatbots, especially for social media marketing.
When you engage customers via social media, it increases sales by 40% (maximum).
Facebook has one of the highest success rates for asking current customers to share their positive experiences.
The flexible structure of chatbots makes them extremely easy to integrate with other platforms, increasing customer engagement in return.
A good example of this would be “online reservation.” The moment a customer communicates with the chatbot and shows interest in booking, the bot immediately leads the customer to the booking page and closes the sale. This leaves the customer happy and satisfied because the service is quick and hassle-free. Chatbots can also be programmed to have a personality, sound natural and humorous, making them appear more humanlike. This makes a customer’s experience more pleasant.
6. Monitors Customer Data and Gives Better Insights
Chatbots are interactive tools. This makes them capable of collecting and evaluating lots of data. They gather them by communicating with different people, much like humans do. The feedback or experiences shared by different customers can help improve your services, products, or make your website enhanced for your visitors. Say, for instance, if your online store or LP (Landing Page) has a good amount of organic traffic pouring in but fails to convert, you can figure out what is actually wrong with the help of chatbots.
A chatbot can tell you why customers are leaving your web page without making a purchase. It is also smart enough to track different behavioral patterns. This can prominently influence your marketing decisions.
It can give better insights into how things can be marketed differently to improve your business growth.
7. Automates Repetitive Tasks
Here is the truth – no one likes doing the same task over and over again. In the case of human beings, repetitive tasks are more prone to mistakes. This is where chatbots play an important role.
Chatbots help in automating tasks are to be executed often and at a specific time. They help people increase productivity and save time.
8. Implementation is Easy
One of the key reasons chatbots are becoming popular is that chatbots are easy to implement. In most cases, it is just a quick install, and once done, visitors can start interacting with them. Although a few platforms can be a little complex when compared to others, it isn’t hard to set them up.
Chatbots are constantly improving with updates, making them more accurate, precise, intuitive, and react to specific queries in a better manner.
Say, for instance, if you have a WordPress website, you can implement a chat program easily and have it reply to all queries simultaneously. Since the interest to implement chatbots is on the rise, it becomes easier with each version.
9. Meets Customer Expectations
Chatbots are exclusively designed to push brand values to an extensive range of prospects. They interact in a friendly way and build a good relationship with customers. Talking about customers in specific, they look for simple business interactions. And this needs practical responses to their queries or complaints.
Chatbots can comprehend issues clearly and provide possible resolutions instantly.
Here are a few things chatbots can do to boost brands and help customers to meet their requirements:
- Reduced bounce rate: A chatbot can interact with the customers proactively and give them instant responses. Due to this, websites with chatbots tend to have reduced bounce rate when compared to emails.
- Increased engagement: A chatbot can easily send visual information regarding product offers, new product launches, and other discounts to keep the customers engrossed. This, in turn, increases engagement.
- Personalized experience: To see growth, it is vital for a business to provide a personalized experience across multiple touchpoints. This can be accomplished by designing a pleasant and fun chatbot interface. This increases sales and ensures customers stay satisfied.
With a chatbot, a customer gets necessary information any time. This makes them trust your brand and come back for more the next time. It reduces the frustration of waiting for an executive to respond or waiting until the support hours opens.
These factors completely take care of “customer retention” and help them earn positive feedback, increasing brand value in return.
10. Applicable to Different Industries
Companies across all industries are using chatbots to improve customer service and boost sales. Brands like Nitro Cafe, Sephora, Marriott, 1–800 Flowers, Coca-Cola,Snap-Travel are good examples of this.
But, there are a few industries, which are revolutionized by chatbots, these include:
- Online marketing & e-commerce: One of the most common spaces where you will come across different types of chatbots is certainly “ecommerce”. For example: Nitro Café increased its sales by 20% after implementing a chatbot. It was exclusively designed to help customers to order easily and make direct payments safely.
- Healthcare or hospitals: From sending medical details to booking appointments and refiling prescriptions, the benefits of chatbots for the healthcare industry are abundant. What’s more beneficial are chatbots that provide medical assistance to patients. For example, reminding patients to take medicines and monitoring their health periodically.
- Real Estate: The moment a customer visits a real estate website, he or she has unique requirements. Since it is properties and infrastructure, the requirements vary. Rather than having online forms or other offline ways to collect data, chatbots can interact with visitors directly and ask some questions (pre-defined) so you can get to know what exactly the customer is looking for.
- Banking & financial sector: Chatbots are revolutionizing the way finance & banking industry works. Given the transactional nature of banks, Chatbots are a perfect addition to banks and financial institutions, which are inclined towards digital interactions.
- HR & Recruiting: Chatbots can automate each stage of the recruiting process. It can search for candidates, evaluate their skills, and can tell you if they are truly qualified for a particular job posting. They can serve as advisors here.
Conclusion
Chatbots have evolved in recent years, and today, they are changing the business landscape in more ways than one. They are interactive, effective, and a great way to improve your business growth. At Eleviant, we have helped many companies generate qualified leads and improve customer service by seamlessly integrating intelligent, custom chatbot solutions. If you are looking to take your business up a notch with a custom chatbot, talk to our experts today!
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on August 1, 2019 and has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
