Did you know that the history of customer service chatbots dates back to the 1960s? Contact centers in the USA used voice synthesising technologies and were one of the first automated response systems. During the 1970s, companies began using interactive voice response systems or IVRs that used pre-recorded messages to guide customers. These systems were the foundation stones for automated customer service interactions. With the world adapting to a fast-paced lifestyle, users and customers often expect a quick response, which could be a burden on a company’s customer support team. Businesses can incorporate chatbots that ensure automated customer service, which helps reduce costs and optimise resource allocation.. Chatbots can help improve customer engagement, perform mundane tasks, and provide uninterrupted 24/7 customer support.
How Does Customer Data Gathered by Chatbots Help Businesses?
With data being the key driver for most businesses, customer data gathered by chatbots is essential as well. This data helps businesses to improve their knowledge base on customer issues during the service experience. It reduces wait times throughout the customer journey and helps service teams focus on significant customer interactions that demand human intervention. It gives better insights with relevant metrics for customer satisfaction and provides a more personalised experience for healthier customer relationships.
Improved Customer Service with Chatbots
Driven by computer programs that understand customer queries, chatbots provide appropriate responses automatically and simulate a human conversation. Customer service executives often face a lot of pressure to address customer concerns on time. They receive numerous calls and queries that take an overwhelmingly long time to address. In most cases, the queries have common answers that can be addressed by chatbots that provide automated responses. Chatbots can provide a plethora of advantages to improve customer support to a great extent. Here are a few ways how chatbots improve customer service.
Personalised recommendations
Chatbots are very sensitive and vigilant to the smallest of changes and can analyse customer behaviour and preferences to provide custom recommendations. They use machine learning-powered algorithms to comprehend individual customer preferences and provide tailored service or product suggestions. This increases the user experience and the likelihood of conversions. Most e-commerce websites often use chatbots to monitor a customer’s browsing history and provide suitable recommendations that result in higher customer satisfaction with improved sales.
Quick support
Gone are the days when customers had to wait for 3 hours or more to get a response from customer support executives. With chatbots providing instant responses to customer queries, they are able to handle FAQs and numerous inquiries from multiple customers at the same time. This enables businesses to provide uninterrupted assistance around the clock without the need for human intervention. Customer support bots are very sensitive and can understand the urgency of inquiries and escalate issues immediately and seamlessly.
Automated appointment scheduling
Businesses can easily save resources and time when scheduling appointments or meetings. Most secretaries and customer service executives spend a lot of time coordinating with the concerned persons and blocking a time slot in the calendar for an appointment. Chatbots can be integrated with a calendar or an organisation’s scheduling process and assist customers in scheduling their own appointments. Did you know that utility companies and healthcare service providers were one of the first organisations to integrate chatbots with automated appointment scheduling? This process helped service providers boost customer satisfaction levels as customers did not have to call multiple times to book an appointment.
AI-powered messaging
Chatbots can also be integrated with some of the widely used messaging apps for better customer engagement. They can provide a platform that ensures a familiar and convenient communications channel that can improve customer satisfaction. Businesses can reach a broader audience and provide more personalised replies to customers without relying on additional resources or tools.
Did you know that chatbots and customer support bots can also reflect a business's unique brand identity? They can be customised to reflect a brand’s language style, persona, and appearance, thereby creating an authentic and engaging customer experience. These bots use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand queries, handle complex interactions, and provide a flawless user experience. This enables your organisation to ensure easy communication, customisation, and continuous improvement.
Language support and translation
Chatbots use integrated AI with NLP to easily provide real-time translation services with capabilities that enable organisations to address a more diverse customer base with multilingual support. Businesses can ensure a wider reach with increased inclusivity. NLP powers chatbots to understand text-based queries, decipher customer intent, and generate suitable responses. It incorporates techniques like sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and information from messages to tailor their replies.
Training and onboarding
Chatbots can be used to help onboard new employees, agents, sales reps, etc. The bot can guide them through the training process even if the immediate manager or HR is unavailable. This is particularly useful for smaller organisations. The bots can help the employee or rep by answering questions in real-time and suggesting the best course of action or providing suggestions on reading materials and courses. Companies can also offer self-service chatbots that can answer questions on company policy, SOPs, and other do’s and don’ts.
Examples of Businesses that Have Improved Customer Service with Chatbots
Numerous organisations now use chatbots to broaden their customer base and redefine client-customer relationships. Companies harness chatbots to ensure cost efficiency, provide instant support, multi-task, and gain access to customer insights. Amazon has been using its chatbots to manage customer interactions, analyse a customer’s browsing pattern and purchase history, and suggest relevant products as well. Bank of America uses these chatbots to access customer information and easily finish transactions without having to hire customer service representatives. It enabled them to handle larger volumes of inquiries in a very short span of time. Marriot International, a renowned hotel chain, used chatbots to make hotel reservations and customer inquiries. This hotel received several customer complaints due to inconsistencies in service delivery and long wait times in response. Marriot International uses chatbots, which help build trust, consistency, and reliability with customers, which is essential in the hospitality industry.
Get the Best Chatbot for Your Business at Vajra Global
From rule-based or decision-tree chatbots to bots that use natural language processing to understand and respond to customer queries, we have come a long way. While both exist, AI has made it more accessible.
Finding the right chatbot for your requirements could be quite challenging. Vajra Global, a leading MarTech company, is here to help design the right chatbot for the best customer service. We have a team of expert developers who can design and develop a chatbot from scratch to meet your business requirements. They develop multi-channel bots powered by machine learning algorithms that provide a human touch to all interactions.
At Vajra Global, our strength in marketing, technology, and GenAI enables us to provide a more holistic and engaging customer experience. Our chatbots are designed to respond appropriately to user prompts and adapt to different customer requirements. They are programmed to provide immediate, accurate, and consistent responses to all customer issues and can direct customers to the relevant pages/sections to help resolve their issues. They can emulate human behavior when engaging in conversation, thereby providing a personalised experience.
With nearly ten years of experience in the field, we understand the common challenges faced by businesses in improving customer experience and customer retention rates. We understand the future of customer service, and our team is here to help bring a smile to your customers with quick responses. Reach out to us for more insights on chatbots.