How AI chatbots can improve your customer retention

Over the years, technology has influenced the way consumers shop, engage with brands and communicate on the whole. We have gone from physical mail, home phones and pay phones, and fax machines to email, WhatsApp and free international calling with an internet connection. When you think of the timeline, the days of sending and receiving letters were only a few decades ago, and fax machines were still in wide use throughout the 90’s. Most people over the age of 30 would remember these things, along with floppy disks, cassettes, Walkmans, dial-up internet (yikes!) and reverse charge calls. We can hear you breathe that sigh of relief, knowing that you’ll never have to deal with some of those headaches again, like waiting 30 minutes for your email to load, only to have it disconnect because the phone rang.

Today, we have social media running the majority of the communication around the world, email in the corporate realm and live chat as instant support. Consumers no longer accept waiting days for a response from a company, even more than a few hours is considered unacceptable, with minute-level response rates being the target for most contact centres. When you think of the intense pressure that creates, the level of demand that everyone expects to be dealt with immediately, it is no wonder contact centre agents really feel the pinch. The pressure to perform at peak condition around the clock at lightning speeds, deal with customers one after the other, while maintaining a calm and polite demeanour, and meet seemingly impossible targets would affect anyone.

Technology can play a much bigger role in ensuring that customers are engaged, agents aren’t under so much pressure and contact centre agencies meet targets and improve customer service satisfaction rates for clients. Live chat can alleviate the pressure by providing an avenue where a single agent can chat with three or more customers at a time, rather than only one by phone. This will help improve their mood and motivation overall, thus improving the quality of service, which is a win-win situation.

But wait… There’s more…

What if there was a way to further improve this win-win situation? What if you could have a virtual assistant who engages a customer immediately, and gathers basic information for your agents? What if it could reduce the time spent with each customer and increase conversions? This is where artificial intelligence comes into play. An AI chatbot is a virtual assistant that does not sleep, does not need to take annual leave, does not have any complaints, remains neutral no matter how angry a customer is, and can speak with an unlimited number of customers at the same time. This virtual agent can literally turn your client’s brand into an always-online, immediate response brand, giving them a competitive advantage.

When customers are immediately engaged, they are more likely to make a purchase, increasing the conversion rate instantly and the overall customer service satisfaction rate also. Customers prefer to be instantly engaged, even by a virtual assistant, rather than wait in a queue or send a message and not know when they will get a response. If they have an issue or complaint and are greeted with a virtual agent for the first few minutes, they would have calmed down by the time the chat is transferred to a human agent, making the resolution much easier, and reducing work-related stress and pressure directly for the agent.

An AI chatbot is an invaluable member of your customer service team. They turn your business from strict hours to 24/7 engagement, and give your clients an ‘always-online’ approach. By reducing costs and pressure and increasing conversions, revenue, productivity and customer service satisfaction, all while engaging an unlimited number of website visits at the same time, the Click4Assistance AI chatbot is more than worth the investment.

If you’re interested in deploying Click4Assistance, the UK’s premier GDPR compliant live chat software solution, to level up your contact centre in 2020, give us a call on 08451235871 or send an email theteam@click4assistance.co.uk and one of our team experts will be with you right away.