10 ways to use chatbots effectively

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Although we are all fond of robots, given the lovely ones shown in movies, there are always some lingering suspicions about their use.

In reality, robots and other forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are here to make life easier, and not to take over the world.

Today you will get to know how you can leverage chatbots to make the user experience on your website great and improve how they interact with your products or services; this will, in turn, increase your revenue generation.

How Chatbots Can Help YOUR Business GROW FAST!

So, What Exactly Are Chatbots?

Sometimes when you visit a website, you will see a little box popup, sending you greetings and asking if there is anything you would like to know about the products and services offered on the site.

These are the chatbots.

Chatbots are created so they respond in a predetermined way whenever they recognize certain keywords and questions posed by customers.

Some of them can even use Machine Learning Technology to become even more intuitive as people continue to use them.

There is a wide range of chatbots for you to choose from based on the needs of your website.

Some can be outrightly funny, while others can be more formal in the way they respond to customer queries; choose the one that best suits your business.

There are two types of chatbots:

  1. Transactional chatbots.
  2. Conversational chatbots.

A transactional chatbot is one designed to give the customer a pre-determined range of options to choose from.

A customer can select an option that will give an immediate answer to what he or she needs.

A customer may also select an option, which will lead to other options that go narrowing down to the final answer that the customer is looking for.

This is the kind of chatbot used by banks, restaurants, and other online delivery services.

A conversational chatbot is designed to behave more like a human being.

This type of chatbot is equipped with AI technology and has the capacity to learn more as people continue to use it.

The chatbot can access a wide range of information so it can properly answer the questions asked by the customer.

This is the most common chatbot used by businesses today.

Why Are Chatbots Necessary?

Statistics show that customers rely on chatbots when asking about various products and services, proving that they are a necessity to building a thriving business.

  • There are over 2 billion messages exchanged by customers and businesses in any given month.
  • 53% of customers trust businesses that give them the ability to message them about their products and services, thereby increasing the sales of these businesses.
  • 56% of customers prefer to send a message to a business rather than call their customer service hotline.

Over the years, businesses have responded to these statistics and added chatbots to their websites, and this has greatly improved their engagement with existing and prospective customers.

These are the reasons why you need to have a chatbot on your business website.

But do you know how to create and use one effectively?

This is the main question that we will be answering so you can know how to use a chatbot to improve your revenue generation, and customer acquisition, and retention.

#1: Use chatbots to reduce abandonment rates by offering contextual support

Imagine that you are applying for a bank loan for the first time.

You go to the loan application form and are bamboozle at the number of terms that you are not familiar with.

Traditionally, you would have to call the banks, customer service to have them explain how you should fill out the form.

Today, you can simply ask the chatbot and it will give you all the answers you need to complete the loan application.

Chatbots can reduce abandonment rates by answering questions about issues that would otherwise make the customer leave the website.

#2: Educate your customers about your products and services to aid in the selection process.

A good chatbot should be able to improve customer experience on your website by taking them through product information that will help them make the right choice when buying your products.

If you are providing services that are closely associated, you will need a chatbot that will help the customer decide on which service is better suited to his or her needs.

A good example is a web hosting service that has small differences in the hosting solutions they provide.

A chatbot can be designed to answer questions about what the differences are, and what the implications are based on the needs of the customer.

#3: Design chatbots that can answer complex questions

You need to go a step further to create chatbots that can handle more complex issues posed by customers.

This is especially true in the medical and financial industries, where the information given can have far-reaching consequences.

The customer should be able to ask very deep and sensitive questions and get the correct answer in return.

Today, chatbots placed on retail websites have a knack for answering deep questions about products and services offered on the website, but it is expected that industries such as finance and health will soon catch up.

This kind of focus ensures that customers get relevant and useful advice, recommendations, and answers, which will make them trust your business more.

#4: Improve customer relationships through timely and useful outreach

Imagine that you have communicated with a chatbot and it has referred you to a customer service agent. You want for more than 2 days before the agent gets back to you. This can be truly infuriating, right?

It is a good rule to ensure that you have timely outreach with your customers in such scenarios.

Chatbots can be programmed to reach out to customers if the help ticket they raised is taking longer to be solved.

This will show the customer that you are concerned about the question he or she asked and you will give it to them within the next few hours.

The chatbot should also raise a flag and inform the agent it assigned the ticket to, that it is already overdue.

This kind of concern for your customer is one way that you can improve customer retention in your business when you use a chatbot properly.

#5: Answer repetitive customer queries

Running a successful business is all about efficiency, and you should not burden your customer service agents with answering repetitive and/or generalized questions

You can have a chatbot to deal with these types of questions, leaving your customer service agents to deal with sensitive questions that require to be handled by a human.

The time taken for your customer agents to respond to sensitive questions will also affect how people interact with your business.

A chatbot will improve this response time, by freeing them up from answering simple questions.

When deploying a chatbot, ask yourself which questions should be answered by the chatbot, and which ones should be directed to a customer service agent.

#6: Chatbots can improve employee experience with translate to better customer experience

Knowledge is usually provided to employees on an as-needed basis by employee-facing chatbots. This way, they can handle questions that the chatbots cannot answer sufficiently.

You need a chatbot that provides a seamless interface for employees to be able to answer these questions in the shortest time possible.

This can happen in several ways; for example, the employee-facing chatbot should be able to automatically log the employee in, to avoid time wastage when the employee has to log in every time a serious question arises.

#7: Enable chatbots that can handle off-hour customer support

Any website should be able to deal with customers no matter which time zone they are in.

Once your customer service agents go home for the night, your business is still being accessed from a different time zone where it is probably noon.

It is crucial that you are able to serve these customers effectively and efficiently.

You need to have a chatbot that can handle off-hours customer service; should any question go beyond the knowledge base of the chatbot, it should be able to communicate this to the customer and assure him or her that an agent will get back first thing the next morning.

#8: Create a chatbot that can take over some of the administrative tasks that you do manually.

There are chatbots, such as the one used by Pipeline Ops, which can ask for customer information right from the start.

This is a great tactic to collect information about prospective buyers turning them into qualified leads.

This is an administrative marketing and sales task which the bot can assist you with.

This is also ideal when you are segmenting your prospective customer database since you will be able to create advertisements and other incentives which are directed by the questions that they ask.

#9: Include proactive features on your chatbot

I bet when you first started seeing chatbots, you simply waved them away as a sales widget, that had no other value other than to sell you something; this is quite a common perception.

However, you should ensure that your visitors know that the chatbot is there to help.

It is not enough to just add a chatbot and let it sit at the corner of your website.

It would be great if the chatbots can launch, pass on a greeting and let the visitor know that its purpose is to help should the visitor need any assistance on the site.

This way, the visitor knows that any information he may require can be accessed by interacting with the chatbot.

#10: Use the chatbot as a guide around your website

If you have a large website, it would be a great idea to have a chatbot that serves as a guide.

Users can be a finicky lot, and if they don’t get the information they need quickly, they can easily leave the site and you lose a prospect.

Some chatbots are designed to display the most pertinent information so the customer can decide where he or she wants to navigate to,

This is similar to those signs that you find in supermarkets guiding you to the aisles where you can find specific kinds of items; this saves you from walking around the supermarkets for a long time looking for a single item.

Do this and your customer will get the required solution faster.

These are some of the best ways that you can use a chatbot to increase interactivity with your customers; answer their most important questions and build a great relationship that translates into higher revenue generation.

Other general tips on making your chatbot useful.

  • Give your chatbot a personality.

This may be done by giving it a name and also a character who appears when the chatbot is active.

Giving your chatbot a personality humanizes it and makes it seem less like a robot.

It also serves to improve your brand identity, which prospective and current customers can identify with.

  • Include a call-to-action at the end of your conversation

Once a customer leaves, it would be a great idea if you could ask them for feedback or to share their experience or o to a particular page where they can perform certain tasks that may enhance the way you understand them.

Having a CTA is a great way to keep customers talking about you, even on social media. It can also be a tool to assess just how well you are catering to your needs, perhaps by asking them to rate the chatbot based on their experience with it.

  • Test your conversation

Make sure that you thoroughly test the conversation with the chatbot before you make it live. It would be horrible to create a chatbot that does not respond as you had intended.

Test every conversation before it is launched, and you can be sure that the tool will serve your purpose effectively and efficiently.

Take away

Chatbots provide your business with a wide range of opportunities that not only help your customers understand your products and services better but also help build a long-lasting relationship with them.

When a customer leaves your chatbot satisfied, the conversation will linger and he or she will surely be back when in need o your products or services.

Take advantage of this fantastic and intelligent tool to help you serve your customers better and aid you in finding and retaining news ones.

 

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