Chatbots: Why you Should Consider Them for Your Business

Customer support is important for every business. No matter how good or foolproof your product or service is, it is likely that your customers might be stuck with queries or problems. As a business, it is your responsibility to ensure that you can help your customers by providing them a tried and tested solution for their problems.

As a business grows, customer support becomes more difficult due to an increase in customer queries. Customer support also becomes more expensive as you require more resources to deal with the increase in customer issues. This is where a chatbot comes in.

A chatbot is a tool that can be used to automate business processes such as customer support and lead generation.

A chatbot can simulate a discussion/conversation with a visitor or customer when integrated with a business website. Visitors can communicate with a chatbot with both text or voice.

Chatbots can be added to your business website pages, social media accounts, and mobile apps. Chatbots appear as small chat icons that users click on to initiate a chat.

How Chatbots Work

Chatbots work with the help of preset software algorithms. These algorithms help the chatbot interact with users as a normal human would with the help of NLP or natural language processing.

These algorithms can be rule-based, AI-based, or a hybrid of the two. The algorithm asks users about their pain points and then recommends a solution. The solution is pulled from the backend database of a chatbot. This solution can be a help article, a video tutorial, or a link to what a user is looking for.

Chatbots can be deployed for two major operations in a business. The first, as mentioned above, can be customer support. Chatbots make excellent customer support resources and are popular with businesses around the world.

The second is lead generation. Lead generation chatbots are special chatbots created to generate leads for the sales teams of a business. Lead generation chatbots converse with website visitors interested in your business and its products/services. These chatbots help your sales team connect with these visitors by receiving their contact information.

Why Businesses Should Create Chatbots

The success of chatbots is no small feat. While businesses were initially skeptical about chatbots, they seemed to have gained popularity in recent years. The increase in the popularity of chatbots is because of the many benefits it brings to a business. Here are a few reasons why businesses should create chatbots.

Customer Satisfaction: According to research, almost 60% of customer queries and complaints are repetitive. A chatbot can ensure that your customer support is consistent. In addition, chatbots have been known to raise customer satisfaction and improve customer relations.

Chatbots answer your customers immediately, reducing the resolution time of a customer query. According to a survey, 64% of customers actually preferred chatbots over human support agents.

The reason for this support is the chat window interface. With the smartphone boom, messaging in a chat window has become the main source of communication for lots of people. A chatbot helps bring this familiarity through its chat window and helps visitors feel comfortable when interacting with your business increasing customer satisfaction.

Availability: Chatbots can be deployed to work 24*7. Unlike people hired for customer support, chatbots can work tirelessly and be available when needed.  Chatbots require very little maintenance and are usually self-serving. Also, multiple chatbots can be created for different purposes meaning that you can deploy chatbots temporarily if needed

Cost-Effective: What kept many businesses away from chatbots was the cost involved in creating them. AI-based chatbots use machine learning technology and involve high investment initially. However, in recent times, chatbots have become extremely affordable.

Once deployed a chatbot will require very little maintenance. In addition, a chatbot can single-handedly take over your entire customer support apparatus. This helps you save on resources as you won’t require a massive customer support team.

Thanks to the advancements in technology, a business can create a chatbot within a day. There are a few no-code development platforms available online that help you create chatbots without coding. Platforms like Appy Pie Chatbot also allow businesses to deploy no-code chatbots for free.

Automates Lead Generation: Lead generation is extremely important for businesses. A chatbot can help automate the process of lead generation. Lead generation chatbots can be deployed on your product pages and can converse with your visitors to receive information from them. This information can then be used to increase your sales.

Conclusion

Chatbots are adopted by more businesses each day. According to research, nearly 50% of all businesses are considering making chatbots a part of their brand. Businesses generally deploy chatbots for customer support, social media campaigns, and lead generation. It is predicted that chatbots will become the main form of customer support within the next 10 years. Creating a chatbot is a good way to future-proof your business.

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