A report by Research and Market forecasts that the global chatbot market will grow at a CAGR of around 25% between 2021 and 2026. Moreover, Insider Intelligence predicts that by 2024 consumer retail spend via chatbots will boom to $142 billion—up from just $2.8 billion in 2019.
This goes to show that the adoption of chatbots across industries is rapid, thanks to the myriad benefits it reaps to businesses.
Table of Contents
What Is A Chatbot?
According to Zendesk, a chatbot is a first-response customer service software that greets, engages, and serves customers and visitors in a welcoming way.
Chatbots can integrate with many software like help desk, live chat, knowledge base, video call, and more to offer one thing — exceptional customer service. Here’s an easy-to-understand video to see if you want to know how chatbots work?
Why Is Customer Service Important?
Here are some numbers to state the significance of customer service:
Across the globe, 96% of consumers say customer service is an essential factor in their choice of loyalty to a brand. (Microsoft)
Americans will pay 17% more to do business with firms with great reputations when it comes to customer service. (AE)
52% of consumers say they have made an additional purchase from a company after a positive customer service experience. (Dimensional Research)
Here’s an interesting read to elaborate further on the absolute importance of customer service.
6 Ways How Chatbots Can Be A Game-Changer For Your Customer Service
1. Reduces Your FRTs To The Bare Minimum
FRTs mean first response time. It means the time taken by your business to connect to a customer or visitor after they reach out to you with a query or concern.
The lesser the FRTs, the better you are serving your customers, as less FRT means you value your customers’ time.
According to Forrester, 66% of the customers say that the best thing a company can do to provide good service is by valuing the customer’s time.
Customers now expect more from businesses thanks to the cut-throat competition, which is raising the bar of customer service nonstop. They want quick services. Waiting in call queues or for a reply to an email no longer cuts it. That’s why businesses prefer communicating via a chatbot, as it helps deliver faster, more efficient service in real-time.
2. Saves Your Customer Service Agents Time And Energy
Chatbots take away high-frequency, repetitive tasks from customer service agents, giving them time to focus on other complex tasks.
They can be easily integrated with your knowledge base (blogs, articles, FAQs, and more) to help answer your customers by automatically sending the right assets to them. This means fewer calls, messages, or emails for customer service agents to handle. Agents are then supposed to only deal with complex issues.
Moreover, chatbots use AI and ML technologies, and this helps them learn from the inputs from customers and thus offers them personalized and humane responses.
3. Increases Sales
According to Outgrow, 47% of customers are open to making purchases via a chatbot. Moreover, some stats indicate that 36% of businesses primarily use chatbots for lead generation and that, on average, chatbots improve sales by 67%.
Customers make purchases emotionally. The more they feel good while dealing with the business, the more they’re going to purchase and come back.
Chatbots make the customers feel that a business values their time by giving them instant responses. It also allows for an easy channel for them to reach out to a business, that too, by just texting.
4. Offers Round-The-Clock Customer Service
Customers love round-the-clock service. Moreover, with business going global, offering 24/7 customer service is absolutely important.
Unlike service agents, chatbots don’t work from 9 to 5, and they don’t need to take breaks. Instead, they are accessible round-the-clock for your customers and visitors, whenever they need them.
Moreover, in the absence of chatbots, if you want to offer 24/7 customer service, you’d need to employ staff in double shifts, which is not a very viable option for all businesses.
5. Helps You Not Miss Out On Any Customer Or Visitor Query
AI-driven chatbots can be deployed over various messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and more to ensure customers get instant responses from any place they desire. This offers multiple touchpoints for businesses to offer great customer service.
Since chatbots are designed to reply automatically, every customer or visitor that reaches out to a business receives a response, unlike calls or emails that can go missing. Moreover, this data of visitors and customers are meticulously stored by the bots, which can later be used for sales and marketing purposes.
6. Integrates With CRM System For Excellent Customer Service
As mentioned before, chatbots can easily integrate with many software. Integrating them with CRM software can allow them to raise tickets for complex issues which they can’t solve themselves.
These issues are then routed to specialized representatives with all the necessary information required to troubleshoot the problem. Solutions can then be sent through emails or any channel the customer desires.
Chatbots – Every Modern-Day Business’ Necessity
Chatbots are the most potential customer service tool for businesses regardless of their size and type. They are convenient, cost-effective, data-driven, and most importantly, create happy customers that stay. For more such content, stay tuned to newslo.com.
