Gartner predicts that soon we will have more conversations with chatbots than with our spouses. In fact, according to Gartner, chatbots will account for 85% of customer interactions by 2020. Chatbots are rapidly becoming omnipresent; they are also becoming increasingly more advanced: they talk, they are intelligent to the point where they can be easily confused with humans and, most importantly, they collect and draw insights from data.
So how can chatbots add value to your business?
Chatbots have actually been around for quite a while: the first chatbot called Eliza capable of imitating human conversation, was built in 1966. Most of us think of chatbots as means to enhance interactions with customers and rid the tech support officers of the hassle of having to answer repetitive questions. Today’s chatbots can do this — and much more.
Voice interactions
Think Siri, but with your own brand voice, that can actually talk to customers. By harnessing NLP (natural language processing) chatbots can successfully imitate human speech, form naturally-flowing sentences and give customer interactions a personal touch.
Machine learning
Advanced chatbots of today are AI-based; they leverage machine learning capabilities to remember previous conversations, learn from what customer has said and constantly enhance interactions.
CRM integration
Apart from collecting data, today’s chatbots can input it directly into a CRM system for further processing. Needless to say, this reduces the amount of manual labor and accounts for more precise marketing strategies.
Personalization
By collecting user-relevant data chatbots can address customers personally and offer them fully personalized experiences devoid of the stress human-to-human interactions may bring. Chatbots remember their previous choices and are capable of bringing them offers and services tailored to individual needs.
Direct sales options
This is mass-mailing taken to the new level: chatbots can target prospects, strike a conversation, instantly indicate who is interested, schedule sales appointments and finalize sales. By automating simple, rule-based tasks chatbots speed up your sales operations and infuse your customer communications with interactivity and agility.
From the customers’ standpoint, chatbots benefits are huge. A survey published in 2017, says, most people find chatbots entertaining and unusual due to the novelty factor. Some people say chatbots help them improve conversational skills without the fear of being judged. Most importantly, users who value their time say chatbots help them boost productivity and get quick answers to their questions.
The pros of chatbots are convincing. However, as usual, we cannot overlook the cons.
Most of the chatbots operating today are quite simple. They don’t improvise, don’t get sarcasm, can only answer the simple questions and go around the same conversational routine. If you use simplistic, cumbersome, rule-based chatbots, you risk increasing customer frustration instead of enhancing communication. To really stand up from competition, your chatbots have to be advanced and AI-based. You can’t build advanced chatbots using free services, the cost will increase in line with complexity. Hence, chatbots downsides include:
Price
Building an NLP and ML-based chatbot, integrated with CRM database requires time and expertise most companies don’t have. Most of the time, building such complex business-specific chatbots is outsourced to third parties, but the costs are often so high they contradict the chatbot purpose, which is to reduce expenses.
Relevance
The hype around chatbots is so huge, you can be easily misled into believing they are necessary for your business. If your business operations are too complex, figuring at which point using a chatbot will make sense may be too complicated. This will require a complete understanding of your core processes and, still, could end up in disrupting your company ecosystem.
Yet, if you are sure your business could benefit from these complex custom-made solutions, here’s a step-by-step plan for harnessing the power of AI chatbots:
1) Set your objectives: whether it’s improving customer service or streamlining operations, it’s always best to know what you want chatbots to do for your business.
2) Choose a developer company: outsourcing AI chatbot development to an offshore company may prove to be a realistic solution to a pricing problem. Choose a reputable company with a proven record of successfully delivered projects.
3) Refine your task and get to work: collaborate with your development provider to get a chatbot that fully complies to your needs. Ideally, you will get full control over the data the chatbot processes and collects, plus, will be able to tailor it to your preferences and make any corrections you deem necessary.