DO I NEED A CHATBOT – THE SURPRISING REASONS A CHATBOT MIGHT BE A GREAT IDEA
In this post I would like to answer the question, Do I need a Chatbot, the answers may surprise you.
Small business owners have a lot of responsibilities that need to be taken care of in order to make their business successful.
One thing that may help them out is to get a chatbot for their small business in order to gain a competitive differentiator when it comes to customer service.
A study by Harris Interactive shows that 88% of customers are more inclined to do businesses with good customer service, than the type of product or service they provide.
That’s why it may be beneficial to get a chatbot for your business to ensure that you give your customers the best customer service.
If you own a small business and are looking for ways to provide excellent customer service, then read on!
What Is A Chatbot Used For?
Big businesses have an advantage that small businesses don’t: the ability to spend tons of money on customer service representatives. The more customers they have, the more representatives they can afford. For this reason, many times when I’ve called customer service lines for large companies and been sent to operators in India, it’s taken five minutes just to converse with the person until we finally agree on a mutually agreeable resolution.
I know it sounds impossible that I would need so much time trying to talk someone through how to do something as simple as transferring me to someone else on their support team who could actually help me with my problem, but honestly, it happens much more often than you’d think.
The small business owner’s dilemma is that in order to get amazing customer service, they have to have an employee on the payroll who can answer each and every question a customer asks them, which takes up a lot of time that could be spent selling products or providing better service to current clients. There’s got to be a better way, right?
Big businesses use chatbots to help solve this dilemma. These are software programs that can respond to simple questions and assist the customer with their needs based on an algorithm. Have you ever interacted with an automated attendant when calling most large companies? That’s what I’m referring to here. Just think of a chatbot as a more advanced version of that. Chatbots are especially useful for queries that have simple answers, like “can I get this product in pink?” or “how do I use this feature in your app?” That way, customer service representatives can move on to solving other problems and helping customers who need more assistance in other areas.
Chatbots are not just for big brands anymore. Smaller businesses are starting to adopt chatbot technology for improving customer service and operational efficiency.
By adopting a chatbot, Small businesses can:
- Reduce costs related to hiring human resources and customer support operations.
- Offer better customer service with the use of built-in best practices and technology that is powered by artificial intelligence.
- Improve productivity in marketing and IT functions.
- Enhance business processes.
“For small businesses, the adoption of chatbots means being able to build a customer service team that is available around the clock,” said David Marcus, vice president at Facebook Messenger.
The chatbot industry has grown rapidly in recent years as more people are using messaging apps. The number of monthly active users on messaging apps has risen to 2.5 billion globally across both smartphone and desktop platforms.
A 21 st century customer is always looking for the fastest, most innovative way to get the information they need in order to make quality decisions for their business or personal lives. Customers are used to having information at their fingertips thanks to technology like smartphones and social media. They no longer have the patience to wait for an hour in a queue or leave voicemails that are never returned.
The future of customer service is already here, but how can small businesses benefit?
Small businesses are instinctively committed to providing excellent customer service, but sometimes they just don’t have the necessary resources and funding to maintain a team that can answer every call and email right away. Chatbots are the perfect solution for small businesses looking to be competitive in today’s marketplace by ensuring their customer support is available 24/7, all within an automated system that doesn’t require much upkeep to work correctly.
What Is A Chatbot
Chatbots also provide better brand-building techniques that make them the driving force for business efficiency. Chatbots allow for automation in a customer service department where humans are now freed to handle more complicated tasks. They can also lead to higher sales because of their ability to communicate and analyze data, on top of assisting customers to find what they need.
If you’re a small business owner, Chatammo is a new social commerce platform that delivers an end-to-end customer experience. Chatammo enables customers to shop from your store with just one click of a chat button. The sale happens within the app so there’s no need for them to leave and go to another site. You also get the added benefit of free messaging apps because they’re integrated into our solution and are designed with eCommerce features in mind. And as well, we have built-in e-commerce features and analytics that eliminate shopping cart abandonment so you can be assured that you’ll more likely close every deal.
Chatbots are increasingly becoming an important part of every business. Chatbot development is the future of business efficiency, as long as it continues being developed with user needs. Chatbot technology is revolutionizing customer service and allow small businesses to reach millions of people in seconds. And finally getting your small business to own their own customers.
What Is The Purpose Of A Chatbot?
Small businesses can experience a lot of problems. You’re either not getting any interaction, have reduced views on your posts, or don’t see any growth in followers. Chatammo tackles these problems in 3 ways:
Auto-posting, auto-replying, and taking your customers away from the algorithm.
Chatammo is a revolutionary way to use your social media accounts. You can auto-post on your Facebook and Instagram, thus removing the reduced reach that they have implemented. The posts will be posted either hourly or daily, also giving you the opportunity to get in front of more people because the algorithm won’t just be choosing when your post goes out.
1 – You can also auto-reply, allowing your customers a quick response. If they message you or comment on one of your posts then Chatammo will automatically reply to them within 5 minutes with a series of preset messages that have been created by the user of Chatammo.
2 – The biggest way in which Chatammo is able to help small businesses is by removing them from the algorithm. By getting customers onto a mailing list, you have complete control over what they see and when. This means that you can use an auto-responder (either email, SMS, or through messenger) to promote your products and services without having them cluttered up with posts about other things.
Chatbot adoption in the market is increasing at an average annual rate of 29.7%.
Chatbot benefits to business include increased customer engagement and improved sales cycles.
Chatbot benefits include reducing operating costs and more.
What Are Chatbots Best Used For?
Do you need a way to help increase your customer outreach? With the use of chatbots, you can increase your customer engagement rates and sales funnel. Chatbots are able to talk to customers without any delay and round the clock; you can find an example of this functionality by going to Facebook messenger. In comparison, email is only in a one-way conversation so it’s significantly less engaging; with chatbot technology, you’ll be able to engage with your customers in a two-way conversation.
To learn more about chatbots and how they work, click here.
Small and medium-sized businesses can boost their lead generation with a chatbot. Customers are interacting with different channels, so business owners need to use an omnichannel or multichannel approach for optimizing their marketing strategy.
For example, chatbots can help small companies interact with customers where they are active in the digital ecosystem. It can also provide a way for customers to interact with the company at all stages of their customer journey by guiding them according to the business’s needs.
Questions on the bot should be designed in a flow that will lead the customer to provide the right solution for their queries, which will result in increased conversions and revenue for these businesses.
Chatbots can also help companies win back lost customers by providing solutions to common queries, in addition to building customer loyalty.
The principle of chatbots is to be a soft-copy solution in your business processes and not create any stress for the customer. Chatbots should assist customers on their journey and help them with anything they need without any barriers. Here, we can understand that chatbots are helping businesses’ bottom line by making it easier to get connected and acquire their target customers. It can also improve your business marketing analytics by analyzing the number of leads generated from different chatbot interactions and their overall performance through single or multiple channels.
Best Chatbot For Small Businesses
Small business owners know that in order to grow their business, they need more high-quality leads. Other than the typical marketing channels such as radio ads and TV spots, there are other ways to generate new leads and revenue for your small business.
Start with having a chatbot on your website or app to qualify leads. These bots can ask questions and redirect them to the relevant department for quick actions such as by providing specific details or booking an appointment if the team is busy.
Next, turn those qualified leads into customers who will buy your goods or services by nurturing them appropriately so they don’t disengage from the process of buying your product or service. Lead nurturing includes making them aware of future discounts and coupons. For instance, you can have a chatbot that notifies customers about upcoming promos and when they will expire.
If your small business is already established, then you might want to focus on customer support instead of lead qualification or nurturing. These bots help answer common questions quickly while providing a way for customers to contact human representatives.
Increase Profits With A Chatbot
You can include chatbots that increase your revenue. Many small businesses are now using chatbots to market and sell their products or services directly. You could use them to show popular goods or services or even recommend different packages based on each customer’s needs. Just make sure that the interface doesn’t distract from sales and instead offers customers more.
We all want to be there for our customers, but sometimes other commitments or limited resources can get in the way. What if we could have customer service on demand? Chatbots are the best way to solve this problem.
Chatbots work great because people want instant responses to their questions. They’re helpful to answer any raised queries from your customers, and they’re really easy to use.
Chatbots have been proven by many companies like Salesforce as a solution for customer service. It’s just so much easier for your customers to start using it, and it’ll make sure they keep coming back!
Chatbots and customer support is the new way to improve customer satisfaction. As per Chatbot Magazine, using a chatbot, companies can reduce their overall customer support cost by up to 30%.
A chatbot is an advanced way to tackle the customer’s issues more realistically at less cost. Chatbots will not replace humans, but they can help companies reduce the number of customer executives needed.
A chatbot can solve all the basic queries and beyond that and leave only complex issues transferred to the customer executives. Humans are more expensive than chatbots; also, they can be available 24/7 to customers. It also helps you maintain your customer retention rate, the satisfaction that, in turn, enables you to improve your ROI.
If you are a small business owner, you should know that a chatbot can help you in gaining your customer intent.
- Chatbot collects the necessary information from the customers like their name, purpose of visiting the bot, and similar others. That information can help the team understand the user’s issue of intent and get ready with the probable solution for it.
- “The initial step in surpassing your customer expects to get insights of those expectations.” – Roy H. Williams.
- Even chatbots can analyze the collected data from themselves and provide the necessary answers to the users that can engage users.
- Consider an example of Sephora; it’s a cosmetic brand that provides chat support to its users and suggests to them the product or services based on their requirements on its own, even in the form of videos. Users ask for product reviews, trending products, recommendations, and many more.
Improving Your ROI With Chatbots
Chatbots are the next big thing for small business owners who want to boost their sales and customer experience. Chatbots can handle common queries such as order status, delivery boy contact number, return policy, or delivery time without needing human intervention.
For every business owner deploying chatbots, it means less time spent on manual queries and more time spent on creating marketing campaigns to drive more traffic to the website. 47% of customers prefer chatting with a chatbot over traditional customer service and that we expect this number to grow in the near future.
Is your customer service center struggling? Is your team spending hours answering basic questions with customers who are usually in a tricky situation? Your staff can be better utilized in other ways. You may end up losing valuable time and sales opportunities if you don’t keep up.
A chatbot is a computer program that interacts with your customers via instant messaging or context-sensitive text and voice prompt that simulate human conversation. A chatbot is designed to understand the intent of the customer, answer basic questions about products or services, provide feedback, recognize patterns from previous conversations, and influence purchase decisions by using chatbot capabilities.
A chatbot provides 24/7 support without any extra cost for salaries or benefits for employees. Chatbots help keep customers satisfied. If customers are happy, they become loyal to the brand and keep giving positive feedback, resulting in customer retention rates. In turn, it increases revenue and improves growth for businesses.
It doesn’t need a smartphone because customers can connect on PC as well. Also, a chatbot helps you keep track of customer queries and solve issues faster. It saves money for customers as well as businesses by allowing them to connect with each other in real-time.
Small business owners are always looking for ways to better their business. Chatbots and Live Chat support from humans can both be very helpful. A chatbot can answer general questions and complex issues, or where the bot can’t understand the user intent, humans will take the chat control and resolve the problems. Chatbot + Live chat can make the smooth flow of the process provide real-time responses to the customers.
The steps you can take for optimizing your chatbots includes:
-An improved form of greetings
-Pricing changes
-Offering more relevant products or services
-Providing further details
Chatbots should be evaluated and optimized based on the following factors:
a. Average time spent by users.
b. Number of users who find it useful or not.
c. The ability of chatbots in handling different queries (or not).
How would a chatbot serve the purpose of your conversational marketing strategy?
This is a question many marketers struggle with. This isn’t surprising given that most marketing strategies these days are built on video, slideshows, and other types of content. However, it doesn’t mean there’s no alternative for your business. It’s just a matter of finding the right one – and in this case, that could be chatbots.
Conclusion
If you own a small business, a chatbot can be an essential way to provide 24/7 customer service! It also never gets frustrated with repetitive queries and can reply appropriately with the right message at any time. Chatbots are also beneficial because 64% of customers expect round-the-clock service from them and 55% for instant response.
Learn how Chatammo can help you create a customized chatbot for your business that will satisfy all of your needs. As a business owner, you need to focus on creating the best customer experience, Chatammo empowers you by enabling you to add valuable features and improve retention rates from your customers. Get in touch with us today and learn how we can help you reach your goals!
