In recent years, conversational chatbots have become so ubiquitous that we can talk about a genuine chatbot invasion. Early adopters include the big businesses in the travel industry, real estate, banking, and even health care, but smaller businesses are quickly catching up.
There are multiple reasons a small or medium-sized business could benefit from chatbot adoption. We have handpicked the most common five.
Trimming Operation Costs
Chatbots designed to handle complex customer requests can help a company trim operation costs substantially by automating repetitive and dull tasks to leave human agents more room to handle more complex issues. It is estimated that in the banking industry, the adoption of chatbots brought more than $200 million in savings in 2019. Savings could total $7.3 billion by 2023 for this industry alone.
The cost of running a chatbot is relatively low, with rates ranging from 50 cents to $2 per query, while a human operator costs up to four times as much. Moreover, as the technology goes mainstream, costs are expected to sink even lower.
Supporting the HR Department
The HR department must deal with repetitive, boring, and even annoying tasks and queries on a daily basis too. A smart chatbot can take over much of that extra work, such as new hire training, job applicant questions, and any inquiries related to job interviews, payroll, and vacation. If the task cannot be handled by the chatbot, the user is forwarded to a human operator.
Boosting Sales
AI-powered chatbots can harvest data on current and potential customers and make relevant product recommendations that can help increase sales company wide. It is one of the many strategies that has made Amazon and Google so successful. Bots can also help increase sales due to their round-the-clock availability and nearly instant responses.
Multiple reports show that a chatbot can increase sales by around sixty-seven percent if implemented correctly. The most commonly cited reasons for this increase were fast response times to user inquiries and enhanced customer experience.
Creating a Brand to Remember
Chatbot technology can get your customers to remember your brand in a positive way in the long term if your team manages to get creative. AI advances, like natural language processing and deep learning, can help create a customizable chatbot that is hard to tell from a human operator.
Chatbots can be visually styled in ways that match your brand identity, infused with a personality that sticks, instructed to chat in ways that resonate with a certain demographic group, and even trained to tell jokes or share trivia with your potential customers to make them come back just for the fun of it.
For instance, Zurich Insurance UK saw a twenty percent increase in customer interactions about six weeks after the launch of its customized chatbot Zara. It took the company just one week to design the bot and two weeks to implement it.
Driving in More Traffic
Even less sophisticated chatbots than Zara can help you drive more traffic to your online business. In recent years, there has been a surge of chatbots on Facebook Messenger and other texting apps as companies try to reach out to younger generations. In 2018, there were more than 300,000 active chatbots on Messenger alone.
Sephora, for example, has seen an 11% increase in customer traffic after launching a Messenger chatbot that allows customers to choose a convenient location for a makeover and schedule an appointment in less than five minutes. In-store sales have also seen a slight increase due to the implementation of chat bots.
Conversational bots appeal to Millennials and other customers that find phone calls and emails dated and time-consuming. By 2025, Millennials will account for around 40% of the global workforce, so they are a target audience that should not be ignored.
Conclusion
Businesses can benefit from chatbots in ways that they cannot fully predict. If done correctly, chatbot implementation can help customers remember your brand, drive in more traffic even to your brick-and-mortar store, and allow you to slash operation costs dramatically.
Chatbots can also help you get to know your customer base better in ways that are less invasive and less anxiety-inducing than classic methods. They also appeal to younger generations like the picky Millennials or detached Gen Zers.
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