90% of consumers expect an “immediate” response when they approach a brand with a customer service query on an online platform like a website or social media.
When viewed from a customer service point of view, chatbots are solving a very obvious problem. Giving impatient paying customers a delightful experience filled with prompt responses is almost impossible without having a chatbot taking care of your customer service communication channels.
With that said, customer service is not all that this brilliant piece of technology can do. In fact, chatbots can do such much more that only using them for providing automated customer service is somewhat of a missed opportunity.
Here are a few ways chatbots can help improve the experience and results of other areas of your business:
Sales And Product Recommendations:
Believe it or not, but chatbots can effectively make sales in many B2C industries like retail. Chatbot assistants can offer a personalized shopping experience to the prospects visiting your online or social media stores.
One of the best real life applications of chatbots for making sales was seen when LEGO assigned their AI-powered chatbot Ralph to help their online customers pick out the perfect gifts for the holiday season.
The result?
LEGO enjoyed a 71% reduction in their cost per purchase while also enjoying a 1.9X higher average order value.
While LEGO-based their personalized experience on a set of answers that their chatbot would ask the visitors, you can also use your chatbot to deliver personalized product recommendations based on the browsing behavior of a prospect on your website.
Moreover, chatbots can be also programmed to keep a track of your inventory and inform your prospects if a product is unavailable. To take this a step further, chatbots can also be programmed to suggest alternatives from your store or inform the user when the product will be in stock again.
If, however, you are selling a product that is a little less well-known and a little more complex than LEGO products, don’t get disheartened. While the exact same strategy may not work for all brands, chatbots can still do a lot to contribute to your sales process.
Read on to the next point to find out how.
Engaging Customers And Prospects:
If you are selling a more complex product, like a SaaS tool, the strategy that worked for LEGO is not relevant for you.
However, this doesn’t mean you cannot take advantage of chatbots to improve the sales experience of your prospects.
Just like chatbots can be used to deliver personalized product recommendations, they can also be used to have personalized ‘conversations’ with your prospects.
Let us understand this with an example of an SEO tool website.
Let’s say an interested visitor lands on the website and is checking out the features offered by the tool. At this time, the chatbot window pops up with a message like, “I see you are checking out the free backlink checker of our tool. Did you know this feature lets you spy on your competitor’s backlink profiles? Want me to show you how?”
From here, the conversation can be used to nurture the prospect’s interest in the product and can eventually be directed to collecting an email or simply connecting the prospect with a sales representative that can close them as a customer.
The best part is that you can chart out the responses of your bot in a way that it can cater to both, the prospects that want to learn more about your product before speaking to a sales rep, and the prospects that are visiting your website searching for a way to speak to a sales rep.
Sending Confirmations And Upsell Offers:
Before we look at how chatbots can send order confirmations and upselling offers, let’s look at how the same is being done right now.
Right now, once a customer places an order, the order confirmation email is sent directly to their email address. To check the confirmation email, the customer is expected to exit your website, log into their email inbox, and view the confirmation there.
Now let’s say it’s two days later and the customer wants to track their order. They will have to log into their inbox, find the confirmation email, and then click on the order tracking link. The link will then take them back to your website where they will find the tracking information.
Now, imagine if all that back and forth between your customer’s email inbox and your website could be avoided.
European online fashion brand Zalando does exactly that with the help of the Facebook messenger bot. As soon as one places an order, the chatbot sends the order confirmation in the form of a Facebook message.
Sending Reminders And Notifications:
Sending reminders is the lifeblood of many sales processes. After all, the money lies in the following ups, right?
Now, you may have already set up an automated mechanism to follow up with customers, send notifications to existing customers, and send reminders to your customers about renewals or re-purchases.
However, how many times has it happened that a subscription service that you subscribe to sends you an email about renewal and you miss it?
For many businesses, their customers are not constantly hooked to their email inboxes. In fact, there is a good chance that a significant percentage of most B2C prospects go days and weeks without ever checking their email inboxes.
However, the same is not true for social media, where you can use chatbots to send automated reminders, notifications, and follow-ups to your prospects and customers.
Market Research:
Market research surveys are another thing that is usually conducted using forms and emails. As a result, many of the responses get lost because of low email open rates and even lower click-through rates of people that actually open the form.
Then, you can lose an additional set of respondents who turn away after looking at the size of your form and the complexity of the answers involved.
Now, with a chatbot, you can improve the results of your efforts in multiple ways:
- The chatbot will only survey people who visit your business’s social media profiles and website. This means you will only survey people that directly fall into your target audience.
- The chatbot will turn the survey into an interaction. This way, at least a few of the respondents will not turn away if you have a long questionnaire prepared.
- Even in the cases where a respondent does not stick around to answer all the questions, you will have answers to at least a few of your questions.
- The chatbot will help reduce the number of steps a person needs to take in order to open and complete the survey. There is no dependence on email open rates or click-through rates.
Employee Learning:
If you take your employee training initiatives seriously, you already know that not all employees learn in the same manner. Moreover, it is critical to ensure your employees are consistently exposed to learning opportunities that are tailored to suit their career trajectory. The best way to do this is to invest in different trainins and mentoring programs that will equip employees with the necessary skills and knowledge to excel in their roles and advance their careers.
While personalizing employee training in this manner can be incredibly beneficial, implementing this kind of personalization is a lot of work. The work turns into an administrative nightmare when you have a large pool of hundreds of employees that you want to train.
An AI-based chatbot can make the learning experience more engaging and more personalized. Chatbots can even be used as a tool to reinforce training. The technology is already being used in the real world by the likes of Target.
Employee Support:
Training is just one of the facets of the human resource function of business that can be assisted by chatbots. From onboarding to employee training, chatbots can assist HR functions to free up the time of your HR team, while also making life easier for employees.
In fact, chatbots can help new employees navigate employee resources and company policies to find information that is relevant to them, without having to reserve the time of an HR representative.
This is especially advantageous for businesses that only comprise a small team and no full-time HR department, as is the case of many of the most successful digital agencies around the world.
Conclusion
Chatbots are already disrupting industries left and right. Businesses that invest in chatbots right now will enjoy early adopter benefits and those who don’t will soon find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.
Are you using chatbots to empower your business and automate repeatable and predictable conversations? How has your experience been? Share with us in the comment section below.
