Why Should Businesses Integrate Chatbots to Improve their Customer Service?

Effective customer service is the cornerstone of every business, and the key to earning customer loyalty is to improve your customer’s experience. Over the past few years, with increased digitization, customer expectations have evolved significantly. Today, customers expect prompt response to their queries from businesses irrespective of the time, location and channel. That’s where chatbots come into the picture. Powered by Artificial Intelligence, customer service chatbot functions as an automated tool for improving communication as they assist in providing immediate assistance to customer queries without the involvement of a human operator.

Research conducted reveal 40% of online business customers prefer bots to virtual agents.

So, if you are willing to improve your customer service, you must consider making chatbots a part of your marketing strategy. Listed below are some ways how chatbots are improving customer service outcomes by assisting agents in providing better customer experience:

Improved Communication with Stored Data: A live agent dealing with new customers might not have knowledge about their needs and why they are reaching out. To assist users, live agents must deduce the information from the ongoing conversation. Since a chatbot has access to stored data it can grab details about customer preferences and their personal information. This capability simplifies the process of addressing users’ needs enabling the chatbot to tackle the problem at hand.

Round-the-clock Support: Most companies cater to a global customer base, which means customers could be from any location and time zone. Since customers expect prompt response, it’s crucial to have in place an auto response tool that can handle the majority of customer queries. A chatbot is active round-the-clock and is ready to be engaged. A chatbot can be programmed to raise the query to a human customer service rep if a certain query cannot be addressed by the chatbot. It can also be programmed to serve customers' queries in multiple languages, which improves convenience for your customers.

Reduces Hold Time: When a customer has a query, they might experience a delay in getting assistance from a customer service representative. This might be due to a higher-than-usual volume of calls on a certain day, the waiting times can extend, leading to customer frustration. However, by implementing a chatbot, customers can enjoy immediate access to help at their convenience. This significantly reduces wait times for all customers and demonstrates how AI can augment the overall customer experience. AI chatbots are designed to comprehend and address a wide range of concerns, such as customers seeking quick access to shipping details, updates on reservations, or troubleshooting guidance when setting up a new product or service.

Reduces Human Error: Chatbots are employed for various reasons, one being freeing up time of service reps for other activities while delegating tasks to automation. Chatbots possess a remarkable memory and are not forgetful, which makes them trustworthy. They are designed to tap into extensive knowledge resources, enabling them to provide precise answers to customer inquiry.

Personalize Customer Experience: The enormous amount of data provided by a chatbot enables the creation of long-term customer service strategies. Powered by AI technologies, a chatbot empowers service reps to pinpoint common issues and opportunities for enhancement. Chatbots can be trained by leveraging customer feedback or by discerning data patterns that emerge organically. With time, the chatbot refines its capacity to grasp context and intent, ultimately elevating customer experience.

Reduce Costs and Increase Efficiency: Utilizing chatbots in customer service offers the benefit of cost reduction and enhanced efficiency for your business. By employing chatbots, you can reduce the need of recruiting and training additional human agents, as well as lower costs associated with infrastructure, software, and upkeep. Furthermore, chatbots can enhance the efficiency of your customer service operations by automating mundane assignments like scheduling appointments, verifying orders, dispatching confirmations, and gathering feedback. Implementing chatbots allows you to achieve time and monetary savings while concurrently augmenting the caliber and effectiveness of your customer service effort

Generates Leads: Chatbots have the potential to drive lead generation and boost sales for your business by fostering awareness of your products or services. They can function as virtual assistants, delivering information, responding to inquiries, and handling objections related to your offerings. Chatbots can assist customers throughout the purchase journey, offering recommendations for pertinent products or services, implementing upselling and cross-selling strategies, and facilitating secure payments and transactions. The incorporation of chatbots can elevate conversion rates and revenue, all while ensuring a streamlined and user-friendly customer experience.

Foster Innovation: Employing chatbots in customer service can drive innovation for your business, granting you a competitive advantage and a distinctive value proposition. Employing chatbots offers a distinctive advantage over competitors, as they provide a dynamic and captivating way to interact with your customers. Additionally, chatbots can customize solutions according to individual customer needs and preferences. Moreover, they enable you to foster innovation in customer service by providing a platform to explore new ideas, features, and products while gathering valuable feedback and insights from your customer base. Embracing chatbots allows you to showcase your creativity and expertise, ultimately attracting and retaining a broader customer audience.

Increase Customer Loyalty and Satisfaction: Using chatbots offers the advantage of strengthening customer loyalty and retention through the establishment of trust and rapport with your clientele. Chatbots have the capability to generate a positive and immersive customer experience by employing authentic and conversational language, injecting humor and emojis when appropriate. Additionally, they can deliver supplementary services like providing advice, suggestions, discounts, and incentives, thereby augmenting customer contentment and loyalty.

The Bottom Line

So, if you’re willing to jazz up your customer service department, it’s time to integrate chatbots. For businesses using a CRM-integrated SMS App as a business communication tool, it’s prudent to integrate a chatbot within the App to ensure quick and seamless communication. An example of chatbot-integrated SMS App is the GirikSMS App, which is a Salesforce SMS App that is built natively on the Salesforce platform and has several advanced features that drive customer engagement.