This is a user generated content for MyStory, a YourStory initiative to enable its community to contribute and have their voices heard. The views and writings here reflect that of the author and not of YourStory.
AI Chatbots: Uplift Customer Support, Marketing, and Lead Generation
Business cycle twirls around marketing, lead generation, and customer support. Though all these are deeply interconnected with each other, companies often find it difficult to link the connecting dots and boost operations. This is where AI chatbots can help businesses create a connected world.
This is a user generated content for MyStory, a YourStory initiative to enable its community to contribute and have their voices heard. The views and writings here reflect that of the author and not of YourStory.
As per Gartner’s 2019 CIO survey, companies that have implemented Business-AI have reported annual growth of 4% to 14% from 2018 to 2019. Many organizations including MSMEs, government institutes, and full-grown enterprises have introduced some sort of AI to smartly automate the day to day tasks.
The applications of AI ranges from cloud networking, cybersecurity, and augmented intelligence. But, majorly it can be implemented as a conversational interface to enrich the communication and strengthen the dialogue between a business and its customers.
What Does AI in Next-gen Chatbots Stand for?
Intelligence in humans can be defined as the ability to understand and answer the questions, perform a given task accordingly, and most importantly make decisions for self.
Unlike humans, business chatbots are programmed differently. They are here to serve business motives rather than chase personal goals. Therefore, it’s important to understand what does it mean when we say a chatbot is AI-enabled!
To make it easier for you to understand, let’s begin with the definition of chatbots. The term chatbot can be sliced into “Chat and robot”, combined, it means a “Robot that can talk”, based on the predefined sets of instruction. Since the time of inception of chatbots, today they have evolved a long way, and now in 2019, they are not dummies.
The previous generation of chatbots wasn’t smart enough to decode the user queries when asked in a different manner w.r.t to the predefined ones. That’s why such programmed bots were proven to be a poor business companion.
At present, with the advent of AI in the world of chatbots, handling business operations has become easier than rolling off a log. On the other hand, artificial intelligence has made it lenient for the customers to get in touch with the businesses at any hour of the day and get their queries answered.
Business intelligence lies within AI chatbots
AI chatbots are the new business brain. They feed on data, learn from user responses, analyze them to better understand their preferences, and create an end-result that falls in the interest of the users. All such information can be applied by businesses to get a better understanding of their audience and magnify the relationship with them.
What differentiates AI chatbot from just a simple chatbot?
Artificial intelligence based chatbots are smart, precise, and fast when compared to the pre-programmed bots. They can understand the same query in a hundred different ways and can answer it accordingly. This ability of the AI bots impresses the customers, and make them indulge in deep conversations.
Whereas, pre-preprogrammed chatbots fail to understand a query, when asked differently. As a result, they begin displaying the same message again and again. Hence, were proven to be ineffective in providing customers with the right solution that ultimately degrades the user experience.
AI + Automation is the need of the hour
AI chatbots can efficiently handle routine work, that includes answering the repeated queries, marketing the products, and get user details. 80% of the time, all these processes include the same steps. So, by automating them, a business can enhance work productivity and as well as reduce the operation cost by 3X–7X.
The Blend of AI & Humans: The Best Thing that Can Happen to Your Business
From a business perspective, AI chatbots are a dream come true.
Businesses have always thrived to connect with a larger audience. But, with slack tools, it was a distant dream. Nonetheless, today businesses are turning towards conversational platforms like AI chatbots to connect with their prospects. A chatbot can actively initiate the conversation with thousands of website visitors and funnel out the prospects. Plus, it can also send the user details to the concerned team in real-time and enable the instant connection between customers and businesses.
A perfect business suite: Handle multiple operations incessantly
A live chat agent can at max handle 6 users at the same time. Beyond it, it gets unmanageable, and not to mention that each user has to wait for some time to get a response. Whereas, in the case of tele agents, they can only handle a single client at a time. Hence, such business tools and resources eventually burn up more time, and money.
On the other hand, AI chatbots are a perfect business suite. They are infused with Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence. They can understand what a user is trying to say and how to assist him accordingly. Plus, by saving user preferences as an attribute, a bot can market relevant products, services, and make the marketing campaign a big hit.
Automate customer support
Customer support is the main aspect of winning more customers. By automating the monotonous queries of the customers via AI bots. Businesses can reduce the average resolution time of Tier 1 queries to 6.4 minutes from 39 hours.
If you categorize customer queries in Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3, then 80% of them will fall in the first category. These queries are repeated and monotonous, therefore answering them gets super easy via AI chatbots, that can understand a query even when asked in a hundred different ways. This relieves the human agents from answering the same query again and again. As well, enhances their productivity and makes it easier for them to handle complex queries of the users. As a result, it hugely improves customer satisfaction and experience.
Market products to the right audience
Personalization has become the driving factor in making marketing campaigns success. But are you able to catch the attention of users with traditional tools of marketing?
Getting hands-on user preferences has served as the intelligence core of marketing. No doubt, that’s why marketing products and services are always considered a challenging and tricky job. Therefore, to make a campaign successful, businesses often find trouble in pitching the right products to the right audience.
But, on the other side, the same job can be executed perfectly via AI chatbots. They can learn about the individual’s behavior based on their preferences. And, use the same information to tailor a personalized marketing experience. That eventually enhances the user experience and makes it easier for them to get to the transactional phase.
Generate genuine leads by 5X
Only 14% of people like to fill web forms, so the idea of generating genuine leads via forms sucks for real!
On the business revenue part, getting hands-on genuine prospects is no less than a goldmine for businesses. In fact, lead generation is considered as the focal point of revenue generation. In plain terms, more leads mean more business and greater revenue. The process of lead generation includes the same set of user details like name, user preference, buying period, budget, etc.
However, to get all this detail, most of the businesses rely upon forms and human agents. In the case of web-forms, the engagement rate is below 15%. And, for human agents, getting all these details is a tedious and monotonous process. However, AI chatbots can make it simple and interactive. By initiating two-way communication with the users, bots can enhance the lead generation by 5X. Plus, by verifying the user credentials by OTP sent via Email/SMS, bots can help businesses to get leads that matter.
Capping the operation cost
ROI is directly linked with the operation cost. And, Capping it can help businesses to get better results. But are you able to do so with traditional tools?
In this conversational era, traditional tools have become unfit for today’s businesses and customers. To be specific, the ineffectiveness of such tools is the driving factor behind the high cost of customer support, marketing, and lead generation. However, the same is not the case with AI chatbots. They are proving to be cost-effective, fast, and accurate in handling the day to day business operations.
The future of AI & rise of conversational commerce
The future of AI holds immense potential. Businesses can leverage this next-gen tech to solidify their relationship with the customers.
Selling via a chat-based interface can facilitate a strong communicational relationship between buyers and businesses. And, AI chatbots are a great fit for fulfilling the needs of both customers and businesses. They can make it easier for users to compare products, filter items as per their preference, and place orders. By saving the user preferences a chatbot can mine critical information about the customers and help businesses to understand their buying pattern including what they like and dislike. Moreover, by making use of such conversational tools, businesses can also enable 24*7 customer support and enhance the user experience.
Click here to read more about the future of marketing, customer support, and lead generation.