By Ellie Richards
Customer service is considered one of the most critical activities determining the overall client satisfaction, which is why many firms tend to outsource it to specialized companies. However, these third parties frequently lack in-depth knowledge about your products and services or charge more than you can possibly afford as a small or medium business owner. Chatbots offer a balanced solution in this sphere since they allow you to set up an automated response system operating on a 24/7 basis at a reasonable price. Below, you will find the 7 key reasons for using this tool to improve online customer service.
- Availability
Chatbots can monitor various online media and other communication channels at all times providing a prompt response to any emerging customer problems. While they may not possess some unique expertise to address the issues requiring professional interventions, they can collect initial problem descriptions and offer some basic solutions. For customers, this means that the company recognises their issues and proactively seeks to address them as soon as possible.
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Time Economies
The worst thing in traditional customer service is having to talk to endless operators describing your problem over and over again. Chatbots can instantly create a helpdesk entry containing all critical information in written form. Hence, the customer support specialist calling back the next day will already be aware of the issues you have encountered. This way, consumers get ready-made solutions without endless back-and-forth.
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Competence
A well-designed chatbot has access to all company databases and can process queries in a matter of seconds. Asking it to show you all items in an e-store matching your parameters can actually be faster than setting up all search conditions manually. Similarly, they can inform your customers about your goods return policies or additional services. This saves their time that could be spent on searching your website or calling live customer support.
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Lack of Direct Contact
Let us face it, many people find talking to others awkward. Online chats remove this barrier and allow your customers to communicate more openly in discussing their problems. A chatbot can further reduce this inconvenience and address some consumer issues in a fully automated manner. This option may be especially lucrative to millennials who are generally willing to get a response as soon as possible without being kept hanging on the line.
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Self-Learning
Remember how many times you have to revise your customer support guidelines to prevent new mistakes made by your employees. Remember how many times they repeat the same mistakes over and over again forcing you to conduct random inspections and training drills. With chatbots, any corrections to their mechanisms stay this way forever. A corrected mistake is a mistake never made again. They can also utilise machine learning to evolve and become better over time.
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Reducing Stress Levels
In many areas, a large share of valuable personnel working time is wasted on processing simple requests. Delegating this element to chatbots can substantially reduce the workloads and allow customer support specialists to really focus on the issues requiring their close attention and expertise. In this aspect, chatbots are working in a manner similar to a funnel mechanism by sorting out the simple customer requests or scheduling new helpdesk entries to streamline their further processing.
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Quick Redirects
When calling the customer support, you usually have to get through the ‘first line’ specialist to actually be redirected to the specific department or person capable of resolving your problem. This can steal a lot of your precious time as some random person puts you on hold, switches you over to another line multiple times or accidentally disconnects your call making you go through the same tedious procedure again. Chatbots can analyse the keywords in your request and send your problem description to a specific expert who can call you back later with a solution to it.
Chatbots are a relatively new solution and many customers shift between ‘love’ and ‘hate’ attitudes to them. They may not be the go-to solution for all businesses and consumer audiences, which is why business owners frequently find it difficult to decide whether they should install such systems. Keep in mind that adding chatbots to your website or social media pages does not limit the hybridization opportunities available to you. You can still redirect complex queries to live specialists or only use automated replies during non-working hours. Consider chatbots as an additional opportunity for you to experiment with and choose whether it should be discarded or expanded afterwards.
Author bio: Ellie Richards is an online Marketing Manager for Original PhD, specialising in PhD thesis writing. She is passionate about researching and writing on various topics, including Education, Marketing, and Technology.