10 Reasons You Should Have A Chatbot
In the year that’s it been since we wrote about adding live chat on your site, the space has exploded. It’s no coincidence that as more of us spend time in messaging apps, we also expect the sites we visit to have live chat.
As we explained live chat definitely has its benefits; conversions increase, customer experience improves and costs can go down. However, having a live chat button on your site means that customers expect instantaneous responses, no matter what time they send their message.
As a result we’re seeing more business’ adding chatbots to their support process.
You may or may not have used a chatbot before but they are fast becoming a powerful tool in the management and marketing of your business. It’s worth the time to investigate further to see how they could impact your business.
What is a chatbot?
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a chatbot is a computer program that mimics conversation using AI.
It’s not a new thing, in fact some of you may be remember Smarterchild from the early days of the 2000s. However, they’ve recently seen a surge in interest due to the number of people who are spending more time in messaging apps than on social media.
Previously messaging apps where a space that was inaccessible by brands unless that app offered advertising. However with chatbots, business’ can now speak direct to their customers, much like they would in a brick and mortar store.
10 reasons why you need a chatbot
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You are a business with customers all over the world
Chatbots are perfect for your first line of customer service. If you have customers across the globe, maintaining a high level of service can be tricky, after all you need to sleep at some point! A bot will will be able to reply immediately, and if it’s unable to help, capture your customer’s contact details seamlessly for you to follow up on.
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A lot of your enquiries are similar
Unsurprisingly a lot of the questions and enquiries that you get from customers on a daily basis will be very similar. This provides you with a good starting point when deciding what focus your chatbot should take. Your chatbot can reply to frequently asked questions instantly and if unable to help a customer service assistant can always take over.
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Your customers need help finding the right product or service
One of the reasons that online stores haven’t completed obliterated brick and mortar is that sometimes customers don’t know what they’re looking for and need a friendly face to help. Why make your customers search your website when they could do it by asking your chatbot some questions? After a few messages it could recommend the appropriate product selection.
Natural language recognition is becoming more accurate allowing your chatbot to improve and understand your customers questions with more accuracy.
Hipmunk Facebook Messenger Chatbot
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You are looking for a new way to engage with your customers
Messenger platforms such as Telegram or Facebook Messenger have large, active user bases and with a customer profile likely to be the same or very similar as your own business’.
A chatbot is different to a lot of other automated communication channels in that it can be personalised so that the end user feels like they are interacting with a human or brand mascot. If executed well, you have a digital employee available 24/7.
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Generate more data
Through the engagement of customers using your chatbot you will generate more data informing you of what your customers are looking for, asking and how they are engaging with your chatbot.
This is powerful data that will not only enable you to greater understand your customers but to generate new ideas to implement into your business.
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You are an early adopter
Your competitors look to your business to see what you are doing, they use your service or business to see how they could improve their own or you like to be at the front of technology and to test new ideas to see how they could improve and grow your business.
If either of those statements apply to you, then you should be able to consider yourself as an early adopter and will be already looking to see what benefits a chatbot could bring to your business.
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Grow customer engagement
Integrating your chatbot on a platform such as Facebook messenger enables you to engage with them with a platform they are already in engaging with and are demonstrating it is a preferred medium of communication. You can send messages to your audience based on a range of data i.e. gender, demographic allowing you to target your messaging more accurately than before.
GrowthBot Facebook Messenger App
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Generate leads
Generating leads can be time consuming and expensive process, when initially researching your product or service, potential customers will be looking for quick answers to their initial questions, a chatbot enables you to engage and hold your customer’s attention to guide them through the initial stages of the buying process.
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Showcase new products or services
Implementing a chatbot can increase the size and engagement of your customer audience, this can be an effective channel to promote new products or services
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Get smarter
Utilising the automation chatbots can provide you with the correct implementation allows you to start to work on the business rather than within. A successful implementation of a chatbot (bots) to your business should enable you to provide instant support to your customers and automate the initial lead generation process.
So if this is a channel you have not yet fully explored it is definitely worth looking into, however time should be taken over the planning and implementation process to ensure a positive contribution to your business operations.