Chatbots Work Across Digital Channels
Without question, in terms of customer experience many customers prefer face-to-face interactions for service and support from their favorite brands. However, the data suggests digital interfaces have seized the lead in terms of channels customers prefer to interact. This is primarily due to the fact that chatbots and messaging platforms present themselves as a great complement to a brand’s customer service efforts.
In great part, this is because customer experience chatbots eliminate the friction inherent to downloading and using different apps to accomplish key tasks. Instead of demanding that users come to them in their own app, a chatbot can engage with consumers on their preferred channel. They can also interact on an individual, personalized way with an understanding of whom they are connecting with and the relevant history.
In most cases they can also have a human-in-the-loop feature which can rope in a customer service expert whenever the chatbot hits it limit in term of capability. This fast growing technology makes it possible for brands to support hundreds or thousands of personal conversations with their customers at the same time, ushering in an era where one-to-one marketing at scale.
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If you are considering designing a bot for your Business you will discover several benefits:‍
- Bots remain consistently on brand
- Bots can offer 24/7 around the clock customer service.
- Bots can automate mundane tasks that can take up time.
- Bots can respond rapidly, ending the wait in our On Demand.
We believe the place this makes the most sense is for customer self service. Especially to help customers find content through integrated chat on the website. Think about creating a search index of content or questions your customers and website viewers typically have and equip your bot to handle those questions first. As always we will recommend a natural language based approach to your bot so you can get a wider audience to trust your solution.
Overall, bots can measurably improve the customer service experience. While this benefit may not immediately translate to increased sales, improving customer experience is a valuable goal that can strengthen brand affinity over the long term. Even small businesses can take advantage of chatbot technology just given the affordability of building a chatbot relative to standalone mobile and web apps. Pairing a chatbot with a key social channel such as Facebook Messenger or Twitter can be a powerful new source of potential business.
A Customer Support Natural
Given their flexibility, customer experience chatbots can operate in the enterprise across digital channels, particularly for customer service. For customers preferring email as their primary customer support interface chatbots can easily respond to inbound requests.
Similarly, other customers preferring social channels or SMS, can easily interact with bots to get their support questions answered. With more users spending their time on messaging platforms than on social media, brands will need to shift their mobile strategy toward messaging and chatbots.
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