Importance of Chatbot in Every Business in 2022 and Beyond

A chatbot, in simple terms, is a computer program that enables the simulation of human conversation with digital services. Be it written or spoken conversation, and it appears as if a real person is interacting with you and not a machine. ELIZA and PARRY are two of the earliest attempts of chatbots. Since then, they have come a long way. Some of the successful and modern chatbots include Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant.

The technologies underlying Chatbots are Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Therefore, as the user interaction increases, these bots respond more and more human-like by learning over time.

Chatbots are of great help for high customer interaction businesses, including insurance, banking, retail, HR, and healthcare. As compared to the executives answering calls, chatbots save an average of over 4 minutes per customer inquiry. And this is not it! We will explore further benefits of chatbots in this blog.

What are the types of chatbots?

Although it is a fast-evolving subject, some of the common chatbots are

• Keyword recognizing chatbots– These are a bit complex kind of chatbots. This happens because they pick out keywords from the users’ responses and combine them with Artificial Intelligence to respond suitably. But these chatbots struggle with redundant questions and repetitive keyword use.

• Contextual chatbots- These data-based chatbots are again of the complex type. Since they use AI and ML, they remember earlier conversations and interactions with the users. This enables them to grow over time and self-improve quickly as compared to others.

• Quick reply (Scripted) chatbots– They act as per a hierarchical decision tree, like most other chatbots. And they answer the users’ questions based on a set of predefined questions.

• Menu-based chatbots– These chatbots use menus to answer questions to gain better insights into customer needs. Therefore, users can select the successive questions from a predefined menu or list.

• Voice recognizing chatbots– The voice-enabled chatbots are considered the most advanced chatbots. It is because they take audio input from the users and respond accordingly. These chatbots can be developed using voice recognition and text-to-speech APIs. Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple Siri fall under this category.

Benefits and Importance of chatbots in businesses

1. Provide website visitors with AI-driven support

contrary to conventional belief, chatbots can provide valuable and contextual support to the customers and not just the predefined queries. AI enables this feature of chatbots. And this can significantly aid the daily working of businesses.

2. Save costs

Traditional customer service infrastructure makes businesses spend a lot of money on employees’ training and salaries. Researchers suggest that businesses spend almost $1.3 trillion attending around 265 billion customer requests. But replacing them with chatbots could help save a whopping 30% of this amount. In this fierce business world, that can give a competitive edge to your business.

3. Better customer engagement and sales

A chatbot is an excellent medium to better engage with the customers 24/7 in multiple languages. And research suggests that businesses can increase the expenditure by customers by 20% to 40% just by better engagement.

One amazing example would be making online reservations. The chatbots lead the customers to the reservation page as soon as the customers intend to reserve something. And the hassle-free experience that the customers get through chatbots is extremely invaluable.

4. Better analysis of data

By integrating chatbots into your existing IT infrastructures, you can have better insights into sales, customer experience, and growth. This becomes possible because of AI-enabled chatbots.

5. Save time

Indeed time is money, especially for businesses. Chatbots resolve almost all information-based queries. Therefore, these forward just the complex ones to the executives. This ensures that human power is spent only on crucial issues. Thus, these save a whole lot of time along with money.

6. Better leads and deal conversion rates

A chatbot is programmed to generate leads quickly by persuading customers leading to higher deal conversion rates. Also, it is better able to identify the KPIs, including budget, timeline, resources, and relevancy. Thus it helps you in staying away from time-consuming deals.

7. Multiple uses in a business

Chatbots can be used in a wide range of areas and not just in answering customer queries. And some of these include-

• Sales
• Marketing
• IT Service Helpdesk
• Customer service

8. Omni-channel support

AI-enabled chatbots are capable of supporting customer queries via various channels like Facebook, Instagram, websites, etc.

Conclusion

Getting the most out of the chatbots through customer insights, lead generation, customer support and all can grow your business to great lengths. And we already know that technological advancement will be the future of businesses. Then why stay behind. Research suggests that 47% of businesses will be using chatbots for customer support and 40% as virtual assistants. This is an investment that can prove to be a fruitful asset. This is evident from the use of bots in HDFC (EVA), Nestle (NINA), and SBI Cards (ILA). 

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