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7 Benefits of Chatbots for Businesses and Customers

Chatbots have been around for decades. But only the recent advancements in NLP (Natural Language Processing), and generative AI have made them much smarter and efficient. Even though they are still far from being perfect, with the right solution and implementation strategy, AI-driven chatbots can truly bring a wealth of benefits to businesses – from delivering round-the-clock support with zero wait times and qualifying leads to improving sales conversions and reducing operational costs. Let’s take a closer look at these and other benefits of chatbots for businesses in more detail. 

Rule-based vs. AI-powered Chatbots

To start off, let’s distinguish between early-gen rule-based chatbots and AI-powered chatbots. Rule-based chatbots are limited to scripted responses and predefined workflows. They lack contextual understanding and only respond based on keywords, often leaving customers frustrated with stiff responses and unhelpful information. 

Modern AI-driven chatbots use NLP and conversational AI to provide truly natural, human-like experiences. They are capable of listening, understanding context, reasoning, and even taking action – something that rule-based chatbots simply weren’t able to do due to technology limitations. Better yet, AI chatbots can leverage machine learning to learn from past interactions and improve the accuracy and relevance of responses they provide over time. 

Key Benefits of Chatbots for Businesses and Customers

Rule-based chatbots with limited capabilities aside, these are the key benefits of AI-powered chatbots for businesses and customers:

Chatbots can deliver customer support 24/7

First things first, an AI-powered customer service chatbot can operate 24/7, delivering instant support to your customers even when your human reps aren’t available, including outside of your standard operating hours, on weekends, and holidays. And considering that 83% of consumers expect an immediate response when they contact a company (according to Salesforce), AI chatbots can help you improve customer experience and customer satisfaction by eliminating wait times for consumers and delivering instant responses they have come to expect. 

Chatbots reduce the load on your support team

AI chatbots don’t just improve the experience for your customers but for your support agents, too. By handling routine customer service requests and answering the most common questions, AI chatbots reduce the number of requests that need to be handled by your human agents, reducing the overall load on your support team. In fact, based on Intercom’s research, businesses that have implemented AI report that AI chatbots successfully handle up to 30% of their support requests

Chatbots enable your support team to focus on higher-value tasks

AI chatbots aren’t just great at answering common questions. When integrated with back-end systems like CRM, helpdesk tools, calendar software, or e-commerce platforms, they can actually perform specific actions. These are, for example:

  • Booking appointments
  • Tracking orders and deliveries
  • Processing returns and refunds
  • Updating account information
  • Managing subscriptions

Think about a typical e-commerce business where WISMO (‘Where is my order?’) requests can account for up to 35% of all customer support interactions. An AI chatbot that is integrated with your e-commerce platform can handle these requests independently, freeing up your support team to focus on higher-value tasks and interactions where human touch is critical. 

Chatbots can support your customers in multiple languages

Did you know that 75% of shoppers want to make purchases in their language? Fortunately, AI chatbots can support your customers in multiple languages. And having an AI chatbot that can respond to your customers in the language of their preference not only increases customer satisfaction. If your business operates globally, that also means you don’t have to hire language-specific agents to scale your global support, which may result in significant cost savings. 

Chatbots can automate lead generation and lead qualification

While it’s true that AI chatbots excel at customer service environments – they have also been successfully used by businesses for automated lead generation and lead qualification. Statistics from Outgrow show that 36% of businesses use chatbots to enhance their lead generation strategies, and 55% of those using chatbots report an increase in high-quality leads. AI chatbots can instantly qualify your leads by asking them pre-qualification questions, capture leads’ details, and even score and prioritize them for more efficient follow-ups. 

Chatbots help improve customer engagement and sales conversions

This is particularly helpful for e-commerce businesses. Firstly, AI chatbots can engage with your website visitors proactively by offering timely assistance before they even ask. These proactive chat invitations can be triggered by events like the time spent on a specific page or scrolling behavior.  Secondly, AI chatbots can engage users who have added items to a cart but haven’t finalized the purchase – they can offer checkout assistance or discounts to encourage users to complete the purchase. 

On top of that, some AI chatbot solutions can offer hyper-personalized product recommendations to your site visitors based on their browsing behavior or past purchases. And that can help you increase sales dramatically. Intercom’s report states that 41% of businesses using chatbots for sales have experienced a revenue increase of approximately 67%.

Chatbots can help businesses reduce operational costs

Last but not least, if your business usually handles a high volume of support requests, implementing an AI chatbot can ultimately help you reduce operational costs. The fact is that in North America, for example, the average cost per call is approximately $10 – and it can get higher than $25 per call in industries that require more technical support. At the same time, the cost of a chatbot interaction can range from $0.50 to $2.00 per interaction, depending on the chatbot’s complexity, features, and the platform used. 

And what’s more, an AI chatbot can handle dozens or even hundreds of support requests simultaneously, eliminating the need for you to hire and allocate more reps to handle peak hours. 

Wrapping up

With the right AI-powered chatbot that seamlessly integrates with your internal systems (and there are plenty of solid AI chatbot providers out there on the market), you can unlock a range of valuable benefits. From providing round-the-clock support and qualifying leads automatically to delivering personalized product recommendations and helping you drive better sales conversions – all while reducing operational costs and improving the experience for your team – these benefits aren’t just an AI hype. Bottom line: if you haven’t implemented an AI chatbot yet, now might be the perfect time.



source https://www.monetizemore.com/blog/benefits-of-chatbots-for-businesses-and-customers/

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