Chatbots are totally changing the way that businesses are engaging with their consumers.
From customer enquiry to providing recipe suggestions, chatbots offer 24/7 consistent replies and yet, provide personalised meaningful conversations that can exceed expectations. In this article, we discuss how chatbots can positively impact your customer’s journey.
1. Convenience
Gone are the days of holding onto a phone and waiting for a customer service officer for a simple enquiry. These days, if people want any information or want to make a purchase, they can do so anytime. The benefit of using a chatbot for customers is that they get an immediate reply and there is no waiting time. Instant gratification checked. Customers can write directly to the business and get a quick one-to-one response any time of the day or night.
Chatbots provide convenience and quick customer support round the clock, ensuring that your customers are well taken care of even though your staff may not be around to handle their enquiries.
2. Personalisation
Imagine meeting a personal fashion stylist online, in the comfort of your own home, who recommends you the best fit for the season and for your style -not forgetting accessories and matching shoes. With Artificial Intelligence (AI), this virtual stylist can actually remember your size, preference and even budget without the need for you to comb through hundreds of pages to find suitable clothing. It can even direct you to the checkout page for you to make the purchase.
With the data gathered over time, the virtual stylist is able to deepen the relationship with the customer and thereby improving customer's loyalty by sending regular vouchers or the hottest offers.
3. A Smoother Journey
To provide guidance on the purchasing process for the customer, your chatbot can pop up on any product page to offer additional information, video content or even a discount code. Chatbots can also help customers with the process of gathering information - such as the item they wish to purchase, doing comparisons between several items, the method they want to use for purchasing the item, and how they want it to be shipped. At the shopping cart, chatbots can even upsell relevant items. This may reduce the shopping cart abandonment rates and increase sales at the same time.
After making the purchase, chatbots can help the customers to track their packages and provide an estimated delivery date. The end to end experience of a customer is enhanced with a seamless touch from the chatbot.
4.Gathering Feedback
Collecting useful feedback is an important task for any business to elevate their customers' experience. To assess how your customers feel about the product/service and the support, data is of utmost importance. Almost every customer conversation can be used as a chance to deliver a better experience.
However, emails with feedback forms or links sent to customers are often ignored. There is no better way to collect feedback than when the customer is still right in your store! With a chatbot, businesses can collect feedback virtually through a conversation while the customer is still on the website. Since the experience is fresh, the feedback gathered is likely to be more accurate.
5. Supporting the CRM System
All conversations between the chatbot and the customers are valuable interaction. It gives an insight into the customer's mindset, their preferences and their choices. High conversationals turns will mean that customers are engaging with the chatbots longer and these interactions should be monitored and used to encourage even more interaction.
All interactions should be reflected in the CRM system in a timely manner.
An effective chatbot platform will provide a real-time report of the conversations and an in-depth view of the individual interactions. Continuous training of the chatbot will ensure that it is always up to speed and well prepared to handle the next customer that comes along.
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Having chatbots does not mean that businesses should do away with real-life customer service. Although artificial intelligence is coming on in leaps and bounds, it’s no substitute for a real person, especially when it comes to complicated use cases or more difficult enquiries.
Chatbots should be used to elevate the virtual customer experience and helping customers in the way they want it, when they want it, 24/7.
