A customer advisor available 24 hours a day, tireless and automated as you wish? A utopia? Not quite since the appearance of the first chatbots in customer services!
In recent years, many major brands have understood the remarkable strengths of this conversational agent accessible online, whose artificial intelligence analyzes customer questions to provide a relevant answer or refer them to the competent advisor, while holding a conversation.
Constantly improving, the chatbot represents a remarkable opportunity for digital customer relations, too often congested by recurring requests and with low added value.
What is a chatbot?
You’ve probably talked to a robot before and didn’t even know it. And you might have even heard the term “chatbot” on the radio. But what is a chatbot? How are Chatbots an opportunity for brands? How do they work?
Definition of a chatbot
The Oxford Dictionary gives the following definition of a chatbot : “a chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate a conversation with human users, particularly on the Internet.”
Beyond this definition, a chatbot, also called chatbot, is a “chatbot” that imitates human conversations and with which you interact via a chat interface (eg Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Slack, Telegram, site web) or with voice, for example, applications for personal assistants such as Google Home or Google Assistant on your smartphone. Have you probably used Siri, Alexa, or Cortana on your smartphone to set an alarm, call a friend, or hold a meeting? So you see you’ve used a Chatbot!
The simplest of sculpins are rule-based services and predefined dialogue scenarios. The most powerful, those we prefer at the agency, rely on artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language recognition (text or voice).
Interaction with a machine via natural language is made possible thanks to advances in artificial intelligence. The chatbot recognizes the meaning of your sentence and provides you with an informative response, maintains the context of the dialogue, and is indistinguishable from human (ideally). We are not that far away!
To achieve this, the artificial intelligence of a chatbot relies on Machine Learning (Deep Learning) and also what is called natural language processing and recognition (NLP or Natural Language Processing). This language processing can be applied to a text entered in a messaging system, but also to the voice.
The analysis of the feelings or the emotional state of those to whom the Chatbot is addressed is also made possible by artificial intelligence (AI). The Chatbot is thus able to detect whether your comments are positive or negative and it can adapt!
An opportunity in terms of customer experience?
Today, the number of users of messaging applications like WhatsApp, Slack, Skype is growing. Facebook Messenger alone has over 1.2 billion monthly users! In other words, your customers and future customers also use these messaging services. No ?
With advancements in artificial intelligence and the rapid growth of messaging applications, sculpins are opening up new perspectives and opportunities for businesses. Although bot technology has been around for decades, Machine Learning has improved considerably thanks to the increased interest of the big players in Silicon Valley (Google, Facebook, etc.) and these technologies are now accessible on the Internet, technological and budgetary plans… even for an SME.
Chatbots can be useful in many areas: 24/7 and faster customer service, product suggestion or selection, customer engagement through targeted marketing campaigns, online sales. Pizza Hut USA, for example, offers you to use a Facebook Chatbot to order your favorite pizza via Facebook Messenger! The Chinese bot WeChat already allows you, for example, to make medical appointments, call your taxi, send money to your friends or check in on a flight.
For businesses, chatbots also save time and money by automating the processing of certain tasks, such as customer support.
Ultimately, sculpins (text or voice) could even replace the applications mobile by providing a much more simple and intuitive way to interact. The fields of application of sculpins are potentially limitless and their development is now correlated with progress in artificial intelligence .
Gartner predicted that by 2020, over 85% of customer interactions will be handled without human intervention. According to a recent Botnation study , 28% of European people ignore chatbots, 59% of consumers say they appreciate this experience for only 13% of recalcitrants! What they like is getting a quick response without waiting for an advisor to be available and what they say they don’t like is the misunderstanding of the wording of questions for certain simplistic chatbot types.
Why develop a Chatbot?
- The cost of developing a Chatbot is lower than that of a mobile application and it can be easily deployed on your website, Facebook via messenger, Twitter or Slack for example
- Unlike a mobile app, users do n’t need to download a Chatbot
- A Chatbot is more viral than a mobile application (in the marketing sense of the term, don’t worry!)
- A Chatbot is easier and cheaper to promote than a mobile application
- The retention rate of a Chatbot is greater than that of a mobile
- Chatbots can help you improve the customer experience
- A Chatbot can allow you to automate certain tasks
- Sculpins are inherently innovative
What are the benefits of chatbots for your business?
A customer relationship chatbot responds directly to the need for autonomy and immediacy expressed by a growing number of customers, especially among the younger generations. In this, it constitutes an important tool in the service of your customer self-care strategy.
The advantage of the chatbot is in particular:
- To meet the needs expressed by the customer. During the resolution of the problem, the bot can thus formulate a proposal that the customer would not necessarily have thought of by himself, but that he is likely to accept, such as subscribing to a new formula;
- To orient the client’s next action in the right direction, which avoids a situation of failure or frustration;
- To offer the best product or service of the brand according to the context.
- Whatever the situation, the immediacy of the response provided constitutes the chatbot’s greatest benefit.
A real plus for the work of your teams
There are many benefits to customer service staff from implementing a chatbot. The tool, in the purest spirit of digital care, encourages customers to solve their problems on their own and therefore automatically frees up working time for your advisers, who can then devote it to complex requests with high added value.
The conversational agent, by definition , can also immediately redirect his interlocutor to the most competent person and therefore prevents all employees from wasting time by taking calls that are not intended for them.
Even sales teams can benefit from valuable support for their business, in the form of a customer relationship chatbot to help and give advice on sales.
Would you like to get more information about chatbot development? Contact us today.
