If you've ever had to call a company's customer service department, you know how frustrating it can sometimes be. You might be put in a queue for long periods, only to be transferred to another department and put on hold again. We’ve all had experiences of ending up in a time-consuming and ultimately fruitless loop.
If you need assistance outside of normal working hours, you may struggle to speak to anyone at all.
If you work in a marketing position where you're responsible for customer service or support, you know how important it is to provide a positive customer experience - and you know the consequences in terms of cost, time, and lost customers of a customer service system that isn’t working for you.
That's why you might want to consider how implementing a contact center chatbot experience can improve your customer service, if you have not done so already.
Chatbots are computer programs that can be accessed on your company website, your social media channels or via instant messaging apps like WhatsApp. They mimic human conversation, understand basic questions, provide stock responses to frequently asked questions and can hand over to live agents when required. They have the advantage of being available 24/7, and can also handle multiple chats simultaneously - meaning your customers will never have to wait on hold. Using well designed chatbots in call centers can have positive impact on customer satisfaction, costs and efficiency. Three areas which are at the very top of the priority list of any call center.
The goal of any call centre is to increase customer satisfaction. Chatbots can help you achieve this through a combination of factors:
By using a simple to build rules-based chatbot or by going even further and utilising new technology in the form of AI and NLP (Natural Language Processing) you can ensure a smoother experience for your customers.
AI and NLP enhanced chatbots can understand the customer's intent better and provide a more humanlike conversation. This leads to customers feeling like they're having a more genuine interaction with your company, which can help create loyalty and brand ambassadors.
An AI-powered chatbot is also constantly learning. So, the more interactions they have, the better they'll get at understanding and responding to customer queries. As you continue to run your customer service chatbots, they will be continuously learning and improving - making them an invaluable asset to your team.
Chatbots can handle a high volume of chats simultaneously, which can take the strain off your customer service representatives and can lead to a significant reduction in costs. What's more, chatbots never take sick days or coffee breaks, so you can be sure that your customers will always have a way to talk to you when it comes to frequently asked questions and straightforward tasks that do not require human intervention.
Also, it's worth noting, that a 2021 study by Chatbots Magazine found that chatbots can lead to a 30% reduction in customer support costs. That's extra money that can be funneled back into your business in other areas.
Customer service representatives’ time is often spent handling basic tasks or questions that could easily be handled by a chatbot such as FAQs, checking on the status of an order, or rescheduling an appointment. By using chatbots to automate simpler tasks, your customer service teams are freed up to handle more complex issues and provide a better overall experience to your customers.
You can also have your chatbots ready to operate on any channel, including your website, social media, SMS, and instant messaging apps.
If you're responsible for customer service or support, you should be seriously considering implementing chatbots into your strategy. Chatbots can understand and respond to customer queries in real time - and they're available 24/7. A well-configued chatbot can provide account information, order updates, answer your FAQs, and much more.
Not only will this lead to a reduction in costs, but it will also free up your customer service team to handle more complex issues and provide a better overall experience to your customers. A good customer experience will significantly increase your chances of getting your customer to come back to you again and again.
However, while they can take a lot of the burden off of your customer service team, it's important to remember that chatbots are not a replacement for humans. They should be used as a supplement to your customer service strategy, and not as a replacement for human interaction.
If you’d like to talk to unifonic about our chatbot solutions, contact us here or just try our chatbot in the bottom right of your screen.