We’ve all had customer service horror stories.
Whether you’re trying to get a status on the delivery of your order, request a refund, or just have a simple question about a certain product, low-quality customer service can be huge deterrents to your experience with a brand.
What’s a possible solution, you may ask?
While nothing beats quality human interaction when it comes to providing quality customer service, sometimes that’s just not feasible for a variety of reasons, like lack of human resources or inability to support 24/7 service.
In situations like this, or when a brand is simply looking to scale their customer experience operation, Artificial Intelligence-powered chatbots can really hold their own when it comes to delivering quality customer experiences.
And no, we’re not talking about those automated robot calls you get dialing a customer support #. We’re talking about sophisticated and to the point chatbots powered by AI and previous data factors it’s collected to provide you with the answers you’re looking for, quickly and without hassle.
If you’re a brand owner or representative and have been hesitant about the perceived value of Chatbots, here’s a list of reasons why they might be worth a shot for your business.
1. Always Online, Always Available
As mentioned above, there’s nothing that can replace quality human interaction. However, sometimes customers are simply looking for a quick and complete answer to a question without too much interaction.
Or perhaps it’s late at night, and a customer’s having an emergency problem with their product that isn’t answered in the site’s FAQ.
With chatbot’s, there are no human constraints limiting the experience. The fact that they’re able to be operative around the clock, seamless across time zones, and will never get tired, makes them a valuable asset to your customer experience department.
2. Great For Scaling
Say you have a team of 3 dedicated customer service reps that can more than manage your current load of customers.
It’s a holiday season, and one of your products got picked up by a few different social media pages as one of the hottest buys, unsurprisingly, your site and store gets hit with a huge wave of traffic, and ultimately, questions for your customer service team.
When you’re not able to provide human interaction for answering questions, what can you do instead of making your customers wait?
Chatbots provide an amazing opportunity for scaling your customer experience operation based on their reliability and flexibility of applications. Whether you’re scaling alongside a human team, or on their own, they allow you to respond to an increased demand of customer support, whenever that may occur.
3. Make Routine Tasks Automated
Along with general customer support, there’s a lot of small automated tasks that customer service reps have to do every day.
Whether it’s following up with emails, sending out delivery statuses, or other customer interactions, these tasks can rack up human resources over time.
Most chatbots are able to automate these tasks during or after a conversation with a customer, taking care of the entire journey without having to have an actual interaction.
Being able to digitize the customer experience saves you time, and makes your customers happier when they can get their questions answered or problems solved in the first go.
4. Save Costs, Increase Efficiency
Instead of hiring a whole new team of customer service reps in anticipation of a big sale or season, making a one-time investment into chatbots could be a better solution.
By reducing the number of hours you’re hiring people to do mundane and repetitive tasks, you’re not only saving time and money, but you’re freeing up resources to hire those same people for more complex and productive tasks.
5. Learn with Data
One of the biggest benefits of having a solid customer experience strategy and team is learning from those dozens (or hundreds) of daily interactions with customers and see what’s working well, what needs to be made more clear, etc.
By having automated conversations that produce data and learn from their own interactions, your chatbots are not only teaching you what’s working well, but they’re actually getting better, thanks to machine learning and artificial intelligence working hand in hand.
The data that chatbots provide can also help you get an overview of your customer KPI’s and work smarter and more efficiently towards your goals.
The Future
Chatbots are just the beginning of an AI-powered customer service future. How exactly this will impact the marketing and sales landscape in the long term is still up for debate, but the early signs and results are overwhelmingly positive.
If you’ve been on the fence about AI-powered CX tools, now may be the right time to give them a go and see the impact they could have on your business and customer journey for yourself.
