They respond to customer queries instantly, they're cost-efficient, can be manipulated to drive interest in certain items and can even be a strong marketing tool. It’s not hard to see the benefits of using chatbots as a business.
No need to wait for ages in a telephone queue, no need to search through pages of content to get your answers, chatbot responses are instant and free. The benefits for users aren’t hard to find either, and a happy customer, means an improved business image - so another plus for the businesses using bots!
Well-designed chatbots engage in natural language conversations with their users and are becoming more and more prominent in all areas of business. Today, major companies such as Mastercard, Marks and Spencer and Pizza Hut are all reaping the benefits of making customer communication and purchasing easier through the use of chatbot technology.
Not only are the well-known tech companies, such as Apple, Amazon and Google tapped into the chatbot market, with each sporting their own virtual assistant devices, social-media giant Facebook also jumped on the bandwagon in 2016. With 11,000 chatbots initially available through a messenger, the demand for instant consumer/business communication means Facebook has seen the rise of an additional 90,000 messenger bots in the last 2 years. Approximately 1.3 billion users are currently on Facebook, making it a familiar and easy to access resource for communicating, not only with their friends and family but businesses too.
Where else would customers go to find information on your business? A bit of an obvious one… but your company website of course!
Chatbots can be added here directly to make finding those answers, or purchasing those items, even quicker for your site’s users.
Chatbots, however, can be so much more than just Q&A platforms. Games, notifications and suggestions can all be implemented and are all great ways to keep customers engaged with your brand, long after finding the answers they were after in the first place.
Take https://www.lego.com/en-gbLego as an example. Using the Facebook messenger platform, Lego uses a bot named Ralph who helps users find the perfect Lego gift through the use of a quiz. The chatbot interacts with the user by asking questions about the receiver of the gift and making recommendations based on the user’s responses. Not only does this drive sales, the chatbot also reinforces the brand's image by conversing in a fun, playful tone.
During Christmas 2017 Marks and Spencer took this idea further, not only did their chatbot suggest Christmas food ideas, the user could also sign up for daily notifications from the bot to get inspiration for their upcoming Christmas meal. This meant that when the user was not even thinking about the brand, they re-engaged with it daily and were encouraged to make purchases through M&S regularly on a mobile platform they constantly had access to.
Chatbots are great ways to create a positive customer experience and can be implemented across different, accessible platforms. The way you design, build and use a chatbot all depends on the needs and demands of its potential users, however, and if this isn’t taken into consideration, your users may end up more confused and frustrated. But fear not, we have a chatbot report which highlights the need for these considerations and the ways you could add a chatbot to your online services.
So, how will you consider using a Chatbot?
