Businesses may be different from one another. They may be providing different products or services. Nevertheless, all of them have one idea in common: there is no business without customers. Customers are the core of any business and everything else revolves around them. Therefore customers have to be treated as special and customer service plays an important role in an organization’s ability to generate income, revenue and thus to survive in business.
Customer acquisition and retention are key factors to running a successful business. If you have an awesome product, but a bad customer support service, you likely aren’t going to keep existing customers around for very long, much less attract new ones. According to Forrester, 72% of businesses say that improving the customer experience is their top priority. A study from NewVoiceMedia indicates that companies lose more than $62 billion due to poor customer service.
Providing a good customer experience is not an easy thing to achieve. The success of customer service interactions highly dependent on employees, who can adjust themselves to the personality of the customer. Most of the cases the customers will end up in very bad experience. And also it will be really hard to train the customer service agents for all the queries that they have to manage and also they will be having limited knowledge and resources to solve the customer’s problem. The customer problems don’t fall neatly between the working hours. They occur after-hours, on the weekends, and almost always on holidays or during vacations. When service problems occur, customers don’t care what time it is. They expect you to be there to deliver a fast response or resolution to their problem.
Some statistics
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the customer service industry is projected to grow 10 percent from 2014 to 2024.
• 42% of consumers complaining in social media expect a response within 60 minutes.
• 57% expect the same response time at night and on weekends as during normal business hours.
• In 2011, 7 in 10 Americans said they were willing to spend more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service.
• 75% of customers believe it takes too long to reach a live agent.
• 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated.
• 80% of companies say they deliver “superior” customer service.
• 8% of people think these same companies deliver “superior” customer service.
• 91% of unhappy customers will not willingly do business with the same brand again.
• According to Deloitte, 62% of brands and companies are progressively understanding the importance of customer service as a key competitive differentiator.
Chatbots in customer care
Chatbots are getting better day by day and are becoming a viable customer service channel. Most of the multi-national companies have chatbots integrated to their websites as well as to their social media pages. Chatbots can be trained for specific intents and also answer expected queries based upon the historical conversations or FAQs. They can also learn from the existing data and improve themselves.
Chatbots have come a long way in recognizing the content and context of customers’ requests and queries. Natural language processing and machine learning have given chatbots the ability to understand the meaning of conversations and to respond based on context and intent. Up to an extent, they can provide a human-like support or more than that.
Now chatbots are able to not only respond to requests and questions but also recognize when the customer is confused and seamlessly hand off the conversation to a live customer support representative. There is a miss consumption that Chatbots are replacing customer agents. Chatbots won’t be replacing humans in customer support, at least for the near future. But they will be able to replace some of the tasks that humans are handling.
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Why chatbots can be a good solution.
Chatbots can support your customers 24/7
Customers need support whenever they are in need. They don’t care if it is office hours or not. Also, most of the companies will be having clients from different time zones and it won’t be easy to provide a 24/7 human support. Chatbots don’t have any bad days and they don’t get frustrated by typical customers. So the best and most cost-efficient way to provide a 24/7 support is through a dedicated customer care chatbot.
Chatbots can provide Instant support
In most of the cases, the customers will be having a simple query. This is where chatbots have a great advantage. Customers get frustrated when they have to call a customer care agent and sit on a phone waiting to ask a five-second question. Instead, they can simply message a customer service chatbot and get their answer in a flash.
Chatbots can eliminate waiting time
The waiting time to get a customer service agent is one of the most annoying things a user have to face. At busy hours the waiting time will get worse. With the use of chatbots, we can avoid this issue. As chatbots can process multiple requests at a time so that the customers no longer have to wait.
Chatbots can provide better customer engagement
Chatbots are revolutionizing the way brands stay in touch with their customers. They give an opportunity to create memorable interactions with the customers and builds brand loyalty. It may be through a simple message on a customer’s birthday, or a quick check-in to ask if they are enjoying the brand’s product or service, chatbots are can really help in fostering brand loyalty.
Chatbots can reduce customer care expense by 30%
Automating the customer service with chatbots can help businesses to significantly cut labor costs. Even though complete automation of the customer service workforce is not feasible, automating a portion of the customer management and sales positions is possible through chatbots and this would result in considerable savings for businesses.
Conclusion
Studies and reports state that businesses are soon expected to compete mainly on customer experience. Customers these days are having more power and choice than ever before. So if you make sure the customer interaction with your company is smooth, pleasant and continuously improving, you will drive brand loyalty and stand out from the crowd. As customers want quick, frictionless solutions to their problems and answers to their question, chatbots will be the solution.
