Time is the most valuable asset in the world and like the saying goes, “Time lost cannot be regained”. Regardless of a company’s type of service, products or size of business, customer experience is a key differentiating point for companies. The greatest expectation of customers and employees is prompt and immediate solution to a request at any given time. Meeting this expectation is always burdensome for live customer service agents, as they take care of repetitive and routine requests or rerouting issues to other departments. AI chatbots simplify and can effectively handle routine requests and daily tasks without the risk of a breakdown or getting bored of doing the same tasks many times a day.
What Is an AI chatbot?
AI — Artificial Intelligence — Chatbot is a computer program that simulates a natural human conversation. Chatbots interpret and process users’ words or phrases, and give an instant pre-set answer. With the increasing technological advancement, traditional methods of engaging customers are also advancing. Industries like banking, entertainment, healthcare, fashion, academia and many others, have adopted chatbots. AI chatbots have been found to be able to carry out almost all the tasks which a live agent handles, but in a situation where the chatbot comes across a complex task it cannot handle, it reroutes it to a live agent to take care of such tasks. This method eases service delivery, and makes customer service more effective. Brands like Touchabl Apollo Agriculture and many others, use chatbots to offer their services.
Some of the areas AI chatbots are transforming customer experience include the following:
Improved Service and Productivity
According to a study conducted by PwC on positive customer experience, “Good customer experience leaves people feeling heard and appreciated. It minimizes friction, maximizes efficiency and maintains a human element”. AI chatbots have proven their worth in ensuring customer’s satisfaction by their ability to deliver instant answers to customer’s queries and challenges quickly and effectively. Chatbots are available to serve any customer 24/7, any day of the week. This is unlike what is obtainable with live agents who can either get tired, go on breaks, or be generally unavailable to serve customers 24/7.
Reduced Agent Workload
As was stated earlier, AI Chatbots can only reroute complex tasks. The integration of Chatbots reduces the tasks handled by live agents, and this gives the live agents time and space to focus only on complex tasks which these chatbots can’t handle. This gives room for division of labour, such that everyone focuses on his or its area of specialty for better productivity and improved services.
Scaling Business Efficiency
With chatbots, firms can scale to extend their customer services round-the-clock without the need to employ staff who might have to work day and night. Chatbots are very necessary for a firm that serves customers from different countries with different time zones
Collecting Feedback and Customer Details
One of the most important and integral tasks of a business or a company is collecting feedback from customers. This is important to ascertain how customers feel about a company’s product/service and the support. The traditional method of collecting customer’s feedback has been surveys. However, replacing this with chatbots will be more effective. There is a high probability that customers may ignore emails containing a feedback survey or questionnaire. With chatbots, feedback through conversations can be collected whilst the customer is still on the website, and this will result in more effective and accurate feedback as the customer’s experience is still fresh.
Monitor Social Media
Social media presence is one of the important metrics customers use to rate a company’s success. Customers often use social media to grab the attention of a company. As such, integrating chatbots to a company’s social media handles can bring more social media engagement to the company. The chatbots used on the social media are known as social chatbots and perfect examples of platforms with which they are employed are Facebook, Twitter and many other platforms where these social chatbots assist in marketing activities.
