Are There Any Benefits of Using a Chatbot in Your App

The benefits of using chatbots or virtual assistant software are increasing daily as on-demand messaging has risen rapidly over the past few years, changing how customers interact with brands. Many businesses are integrating chatbots into their operations to deliver better customer support.

Chatbots have entirely changed the game in specific industries, such as banking, insurance, and healthcare, where high-volume customer engagement is at the core of the business. Compared to the executives fielding the calls, they help save over 4 minutes on average for every customer inquiry, with a high success rate per engagement.

What Are Chatbots or Virtual Assistant Software?

On a logical level, most people have interacted with or heard about chatbots.

It has developed into a necessary element for many companies with customer service or a service help desk, mainly if they operate in a developed or important sector with significant market competition and high consumer expectations.

Powered by Artificial intelligence (AI) software, chatbots and virtual assistant software can imitate human speech or communicate via messaging platforms, providing seamless yet secured interactions to end users over social media platforms.

Chatbots and virtual assistant software assist personnel by managing routine tasks and replying to typical yet challenging inquiries. They also keep and gather customer data to create leads or target future customers.

What Are the Types of Chatbots?

Regarding customer service automation, there are two basic types of chatbots in use.

• Rule-based chatbots: These are based on pre-programmed responses that are either driven by given keywords or directed by a decision tree. They are frequently used in Facebook Messenger to automate specific customer service functions. They are commonly divided between a sales track (sales funnel) for gathering contact information and a support track (solutions to common questions or connections to more information). Rule-based chatbots are generally restricted to simple tasks and have limited capabilities.

• AI-based chatbots: Artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbots employ machine learning and artificial intelligence models to improve their functionality, understand user intent, and, in certain situations, resolve customer concerns without the assistance of human agents. Additionally, API interaction with back-end systems can make it possible for bots to carry out activities for clients rather than just directing them to self-service options. They become a helpful asset for larger businesses in the public sector, the banking industry, or telecommunications.

Benefits of Chatbots for Companies and Customers

There are some essential benefits of chatbots that provide value both for the user and the organization.

1. Make Customer Service Available 24/7

Chatbots don’t require sleep, unlike your customer service staff. Your company may be present for customers when they need help, even after regular business hours.

Individuals may get assistance without waiting for an email or voicemail response, which promotes higher customer satisfaction.

2. Eliminate Tedious, Time-Consuming Tasks

Chatbots may replace many monotonous, repetitive duties that customer service people now carry out, which is one of the benefits of chatbots. People may find these tasks boring and draining, but a bot won’t ever complain, even when a consumer becomes angry or aggressive.

3. Offer a Smoother Customer Journey

Making customer engagement more frictionless is one of the significant benefits of chatbots. Anyone who engages in online sales is familiar with the pain of losing customers midway through marketing efforts. It only takes a little to discourage customers from making an online purchase, whether it’s a complicated checkout process or hidden fees.

Businesses can use bots to speed up the purchasing process by appearing on any page and performing actions like:

• Provide more details about the products or shipping.
• Customers should get more information from linked video content.
• Offer coupon codes.

4. They Increase Customer Satisfaction by Assigning Cases to Agents Responsible for Results

Because people frequently conclude from their past experiences and engage in group thinking, they may respond to inquiries in customer service by doing what they believe to be proper. However, even if most employees listen to manuals, this does not ensure that clients receive the correct response because manual needs to be updated. With a suitable answer, customer service agents will rely on their interpretation of a potentially out-of-date manual to provide accurate or insufficient responses.

The SME can review how the issue is handled through discussions and offer suggestions or edits more easily. This makes the procedure more consistent and ensures that the data provided is accurate.

For example, HCL Clara, an Intelligent Virtual Assistant Software specifically designed for HCL Workload Automation, understands human input, provides answers by tapping into a rich, specialized knowledge base. Clara allows direct interaction with HCL Workload Automation product in natural language to execute routine tasks and enables users to quickly learn how to use and troubleshoot the product. Clara goes beyond FAQs as she also transforms routine tasks into unique experiences, which increases end-user’s satisfaction because they can get simple things done using contextual conversation.

Conclusion

Virtual assistant software provides a lot of advantages that are too important to overlook. The ability to significantly reduce customer support costs, gather valuable data for sales prospects, and enhance the employee training program is an enormous benefit from a marketing perspective based on the industry and particular use case. From the customer’s point of view, a chatbot delivers a personalized experience, and better meet their expectations. Companies will only catch up to everyone if they start investing in automation.