Are We Ready for Chatbots?

Chatbots are the preferred method of customer service communication by 63% of customers - are we all ready for chatbots, or is it not time just yet?

Businesses are always looking for ways to streamline their efforts. We need to deliver quality services, and one of the best ways to do this is to utilise the right tools. In today's oversaturated market, there are a core group of tools that businesses could not live without. Customer resource management systems are one of those key tools that build bridges between the customer and the company, but when it comes to communication, many would argue that tools are irrelevant. However, this is where chatbots can prove to be an amazing resource. Chatbots that provide automated responses to customers when they contact a business can help to keep customers engaged, while also providing key information without needing to reach a customer service agent. Is the business world ready for chatbots?

How Do Customers Really Want to Contact Companies?

If your business is only operating with an email and a telephone number, chatbots could be the future for you. The Humanity in the Machine report showed that 63% of people are already happy communicating with a chatbot, and another study pointed out that 29% would rather speak to a chatbot than use email.

Customers may prefer to contact businesses via chatbots because it gives them the information they need without actually needing to communicate with a human. One could argue that this is a generational thing, especially as Millennials and Generation Z are more comfortable interacting with machines rather than people because they grew up interacting via social media or web chat.

What Businesses Need to Remember About Chatbots

Chatbots are a great way to help customers contact businesses. If you are looking for the best live chat solutions for websites, we can provide support, but it's important for any company looking to integrate a chatbot into their live chat functions to remember some of the following:

Chatbots Need to Be Good

Customers need their answers instantaneously. Interacting with a machine that is not playing ball only adds to our frustration. When we integrate a chatbot into our live chat functions it needs to provide two key things:

• A high level of service by displaying the right information.
• It needs to communicate like a human.

The latter may appear to be harder to achieve because chatbots are only meant to be an automated function, however, chatbots are customisable. Due to the advent of NLP (Natural Language Processing), chatbots can be programmable to mimic natural language and speech. This will be invaluable to businesses that wish to rely on chatbots to communicate with customers.

Chatbots Are Not a Replacement for a Customer Service Agent

A customer getting in contact with a business needs certain information. A chatbot can provide a wealth of information when customised in the right way, but it's important to ensure that a chatbot is your first port of call when a customer contacts your business. If it is not answering the customer's queries, it needs to be able to defer to a customer service agent. The right chatbot can get the balance correct by allowing customers to get all the salient points, but if they want to get more information in greater detail, the chatbot can transfer the customer to an agent.

A Chatbot Needs to Be Transparent

We don't want to pull the wool over our customers' eyes. Chatbots are there to help customers get all of the relevant information, but we cannot use them as a replacement for customer service agents, and we must provide that transparency upfront. Chatbots are commonplace on many websites. If you want the best live chat solutions for websites, chatbots are a fantastic answering service.

Do Not Overestimate What a Chatbot Can Do

A chatbot serves as a gatekeeper, which is a fantastic tool to increase productivity in a contact centre environment, they can also be used to automate many tasks that were originally performed by customer service agents and can be used to gather essential information before being passed onto an agent, but we've got to remember that a chatbot is not going to solve every single problem.

The right tools like customer resource management software are there to aid productivity in simple ways. There will be times when customers do not want to engage with a chatbot and they need human interaction, which is where live chat is invaluable. Many customers have become savvy about what chatbots can actually achieve for a customer, and will engage with a chatbot when they need information during off-peak hours. A chatbot offers great 24/7 coverage for a company and can minimise customer frustration, but you would not be able to please everyone. The people that need quick answers, which, luckily, are most of us in the modern world, can benefit from chatbots, but they cannot replace human interaction.

Are We Ready for Chatbots?

While statistics say that we are ready for chatbots, if you are looking to boost your business in ways that can keep customers satisfied before they get to a customer service agent, a chatbot is a great way to provide simple and effective information. 68% of consumers like chatbots because they provide quick answers. But being “ready” for chatbots will depend on the type of customer your business predominantly deals with. It would be impossible to use a chatbot to solve every little problem, especially when it comes to detailed queries. But a chatbot is a perfect way to stimulate customer satisfaction across a number of channels.

A lot of the time businesses need to offer quick information, and when a customer contacts a business hoping to speak to someone, waiting for an inordinate amount of time just to ask a couple of simple questions, this is where a chatbot is invaluable because it can easily solve these queries, reduce call queuing times, and increase customer satisfaction in the process. For these reasons, we are more than ready for chatbots.

If you are looking for the best live chat solutions for websites, chatbots could be an invaluable tool because it doesn't just bridge the business and the customer but can be a fantastic way to increase productivity across all areas of your business.