A bot is a simple computer program that makes things happen based on some
input. A chat bot is a bot that lives inside a live chat product, for example a
messaging app. The concept of using chat bot for customer support became
epidemic mainly because of resolving the need for repetitive interactions thereby
helping humans to focus on other high priority tasks. However, the success of a
business depends upon how efficiently they are able to use both humans and chat
bots based on the situational demand.
Hence by employing chat bots for closing repetitive support tickets such as
‘resetting a password’ during a live chat, an organization can benefit a great deal as
described below:
A. The customer experience improves a lot. Hence customer retention and
upselling becomes a lot easier.
B. The number of pending support tickets is drastically reduced. It paves way
for spending quality time for the live agents on high-value interactions.
C. The attrition rate of human agents falls down, thereby improving their
overall job satisfaction levels.
D. Of the recent times, sophisticated Chat bots with AI capabilities are leading
the game now, and are trying to beat the current shortcoming of the earlier
Chat bots.
“80% of customer’s queries have been resolved by chat bots without human
supervision”
- Claims a recent study by ‘Tagove’.
The main benefit of employing chat bots for customer assistance is their
availability 24x7 round the clock. They can handle large volumes of chats
simultaneously and is particularly handy for companies possessing a huge
customer base like e-commerce giants Walmart and Amazon. An instructed Chat
bot can consistently live chat for several hours without help from a human—thus,
it helps you to save time, money, and energy.
If your business is not available 24/7, you are going to lose customers because
customers expect you to be available always whenever they need support. If your
business is available to your customers at all time, your customers will have the
feeling that you care about them and will likely stick to your business.
Additionally, chat bots are comparatively cheaper than hiring and supervising live
chat agents on a day-to-day basis. Also, the response time of chat bot is almost
instant which is never possible in case of a live chat as it will depend on queue
position, availability of chat support representatives etc.
“83% of consumers still prefer dealing with human beings for customer service”
- Says a recent study conducted by ‘Accenture’.
Live chat is an awesome technology if implemented successfully, it can help you
move your visitors to the bottom of the sales funnel faster. Therefore, if a firm does
not deal with repetitive support queries and customer support is highly customized
then employing qualified human agents is the way to go, mainly for the following
reasons:
A. If a customer faces a negative experience with your company’s product or
service and they want to immediately cancel or return it, human agents can
convince their customers through their empathetic speech.
B. Similarly, it is easy for real humans to understand customer’s requirements
and upsell additional products or services by offering attractive offers and
discounts.
C. Trouble shooting of complex software or product requires the expertise of a
well-equipped agent who can fit himself in the shoes of the customer to
resolve his problems.
D. When a customer is facing serious issues with the product or service and the
chat bot is not able to understand his problem, it will create a negative
impression about your business in the minds of the customer. So, in such
cases the interaction with real human being is highly recommended.
E. Chat bot is not programmed to understand poor language and spelling
mistakes in the queries. So, it will make it almost impossible for people who
lack communication skills to get proper support.
A chat bot is only as clever as the knowledge it has been imparted with. It can also
not understand the exact context of the conversation and think outside the box to
satisfy the customers. So, whenever you decide to employ chat bot, make sure that
the customer requests does not require much of interaction. On the other hand,
whenever you are facing a heated debate or a frustrated customer, human chat
agents must be allowed to take care of the scenario as soon as possible. On a nut
shell, a chat bot can never replace human interactions, but can enhance them if
used appropriately.
In recent months we have seen Facebook, Telegram and Kik launch chat bot
platforms on top of their messengers, and everyone and anyone declare our bot
filled future. Though it is evident that chat bots will gain significant attention and
traction in the upcoming years and dominate the customer service domain, the need
for human support in live chat cannot be completely eliminated for sure. The
question is not about chat bots replacing humans, but rather how chat bots can
work together with humans hand in hand.
Chat bots will augment conversations between humans. They will help answer
simple questions in win-win scenarios. The future of live chat based customer care
will be a hybrid solution where bots are in the front line and humans are the back-
up. While, chat bots will reach out proactively to large number of customers, and
humans will deal with the qualified leads. Chat bots will help customers to
navigate in documents like FAQs, and humans will step in if the customer question
is too complex. In this way, chat bots will deliver great ways of product discovery,
support sales in a scalable way and humans will deal with customer care
conversations.
Hence, the discretion lies with you to choose the appropriate support channel based
on your business needs and personal preferences.
Comments
Post a Comment