Among a gazillion other trends, 2020 also dramatically accelerated automation. Before the pandemic, many business owners and consumers thought they were not ready for automation yet. As we now know, most of them were wrong. Over a year into the pandemic, you can spot automation of one kind or another virtually everywhere. And conversational bots, or chatbots, are, perhaps, the most widespread façade of business automation. Let’s talk about them!
Conversational bots are software programs that interact with users like humans. By simulating human-like conversations, you offer customers an immersive experience every time they visit your website or use your app. With a dizzying evolution in chatbot development, you could create a deeply personalized conversational bot for your business. As building chatbots gets easier and more affordable, small, mid-sized, and large enterprises alike are adopting them for automating customer service. Here’s how conversational bots are reshaping the automation landscape.
Chatbots in Customer Service Automation
You can decide to implement chatbots for customer service automation in different ways. It could be a live chat on the website, engagement on social media, or email communications.
Access to cutting-edge AI
Chatbot development is one of the most dynamic areas in the software industry. It relies on a set of rapidly evolving technologies. That means, when you adopt custom AI solutions for your conversational bot, you get the latest breed of artificial intelligence. Using smart AI capabilities, chatbots can predict what customers may want to buy based on their purchase history. Chatbots’ growing popularity across the web and on social media platforms make them compelling.
Cost-efficient development
Chatbots are not just wildly popular these days. They are also becoming increasingly cost-effective. With the significant evolution in the chatbot development platforms, it has become easier than ever to build a custom chatbot. And with the increasing availability of chatbot development services, costs are declining remarkably. Besides, there are a slew of tools and technologies to test chatbots and check their usability.
Automated customer service operations
Customer service bots equipped with advanced capabilities can help you identify customers’ intent. They also enable you to analyze their experience and deliver insights-driven customer service. You could deploy a bot to ask, “How may I help you?” for generalized responses before you send any valuable human time. It would make the customer’s initial journey seamless while saving your time and money.
Chatbots are getting increasingly popular in digital transactions. For example, you could use a bot to fetch and store customers’ account information during online transactions. This is particularly useful for providing customers frequently sought info like the date of subscription expiry, payment due dates, etc. Small and big companies alike are deploying chatbots for this kind of customer service activity.
Augmented customer service team
Customer service teams often work under immense pressure. Things got even worse during the pandemic. With call centers and offices shutting down, customer service became more challenging in the pandemic era. But many tech-savvy business leaders promptly managed those challenges. Chatbot deployment was the answer. Conversational bots enable your organization to significantly augment the team’s capabilities. From automating frequently resolved queries to creating a step-by-step communication process, chatbots help you in many ways.
Benefits beyond customer service
While you improve the organization’s customer care capabilities, chatbots also bring a set of other advantages. Relying less on your staff —especially the customer service team —means your operating costs reduce. You would now need to spend less on training and managing people for meeting customer service demands. Besides, using suitable AI-powered tools, you could also automated lead generation and other sales-related tasks. Chatbots can also respond to answer sales calls seeking info about your offerings.
Wrapping up
How you deploy conversational bots needs to be determined by your specific business requirements. For instance, you could use chatbots to quickly answer customers’ questions, resolve a complaint, get info about your business, or just create a better communication process for your business. Due to an extensive array of extensive benefits, a growing number of businesses across industries are deploying chatbots. However, some industries are using them more than others.
For instance, the banking and food delivery industries are widely implementing chatbots to automate customer service. From giving you information about your bank account to telling the location of your meal, chatbots are redefining customer service. At OrangeMantra, we help you build incredibly customer-friendly chatbots for your business. Connect with us to discuss your customer service automation strategy.
FAQs
1. How much does it cost to develop a conversational bot?
The costs of building a conversational bot vary widely, depending on your requirements. Your industry and goals also matter. If you need a simple bot with basic features, costs are comparatively lower. OrangeMantra offers custom chatbot development at a competitive price.
2. How long does it take to build a conversational bot?
There is no predefined development time for chatbots. It depends on what kind of conversational bot you want to build. Chatbots with less training data and basic capabilities take less time. Bots with higher volumes of training data take more time. OrangeMantra has a track record of developing bots within a shorter turnaround time.
3. How do I automate my business?
The best way to automate business processes is to collaborate with a tech partner. Look for reliable tech solutions providers and elaborately discuss your requirements with them. Then choose the technologies the best suit your requirements and build automation solutions you need.
