Guest Post for Re:amaze by Sam Makad. Sam Makad is an experienced writer and marketing consultant. His expertise lies on marketing and advertising. He helps small & medium enterprises to grow their business and overall ROI. Reach out to Sam Makad on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The rise of AI-enabled chatbots has made it easier than ever before for companies to interact with their customers. These intelligent machines not only allow 24/7 issue resolution and lead generation for businesses, but they also don’t get fatigued or irritated, which means they can handle multiple questions simultaneously.

Customers are demanding (and rightfully so).

Not only do they seek faster, and more personalized digital experiences from brands, they also demand human interaction when it suits them.

And therein lies the dilemma for brands at the threshold of automating their customer touch points.

According to Deloitte:

“Customers are increasingly demanding instant forms of communication — messaging apps and social media have replaced emails and phone calls — especially in personal life.”

The report by Deloitte also lists that “chatbots can bridge the service and communication gaps between an enterprise and its customers” as they are available 24/7 and are data-driven.

No wonder, chatbots are used by more than 67% of consumers worldwide, and are estimated to save businesses up to $11 billion in support costs by 2025.

But What About the Human Touch?

Chatbots are not effective in 100% of situations. In a study, only 9% of consumers found chatbots useful in their attempt to purchase an expensive item. However, chatbots have proven their usefulness in many other situations, especially by improving the customer service levels of brands through instant interactions round the clock.

For example, a European telco employed a chatbot in a pilot program on a set of common customer queries. The bot resolved 82% of interactions by itself. This number rose to 88% of interactions when combined with live intervention by a human agent. This level of performance was reached with only a few weeks of training the chatbot.

Today, chatbots have become more intelligent due to machine learning capabilities. Instead of solving problems according to pre-defined rules, such chatbots learn by experience and are also able to understand the questions posed by customers, thanks to NLP (Natural Language Processing), leading to more natural conversations or routing the customers to agents best equipped to answer their queries.

Are Chatbots Really Killing Customer Service?

A Forbes article mentioned last year how chatbots are killing customer service. Written around a survey conducted by CGS, the same article suggested that chatbots can increase customer satisfaction when deployed in addition to human agents to streamline customer support.

That’s correct.

Complete automation will not enhance your customer service, but intelligent automation will. We recommend you to consider two important factors when implementing a chatbot. First, understand what a chatbot can and cannot do. Second, dedicate a team member to spend some time each week to analyze the responses and performance of your bot.

According to a survey, here’s what customers generally depend upon a chatbot for:

• Quick answers to their questions in an emergency (37%)
• Detailed answers or explanations (35%)
• Means for getting connected with a human (34%)

Here are four ways in which chatbots can improve your CX, leading to higher customer satisfaction rates:

Faster Response Time

Research shows that 33% of customers feel frustrated as they have to wait long enough or repeat themselves multiple times to customer service representative. At least 40% of customers want service reps to respond to their queries faster.

But human beings have limitations. Chatbots do not; they neither get tired, not irritated.

Chatbots can sieve through large amounts of data at high speed, providing detailed information to users in a jiffy. Besides, bots do not have emotions — they do not get bored or frustrated, even if a customer uses foul language or repeats a question continuously. Moreover, they don’t feel fatigued and are perfect to offer polite customer service to your customers in real-time, 24/7.

Reduced costs

Money matters, and chatbots are poised to save you a lot of money in hiring and training several human customer service agents for frontline customer service. This is achieved by streamlining your support process wherein a chatbot is equipped to resolve simple and common queries instantly. Complex queries and qualified leads are filtered and passed on to relevant members of the customer support team for further action. The result is a faster response to customer queries, better customer experience, and time savings for both customers and agents.

Did you know that up to 29% of customer service positions can be automated through chatbots, leading to $23 billion in savings for US businesses?

Here’s an article that shares how an eco-conscious baby products business enhanced its customer service by implementing Re:amaze chatbots and other technology.

Proactive customer service

What do you feel about the suggested items that often crop up on your screen while shopping on Amazon? Now, what if you could personalize that experience further by initiating conversations with your customers pro-actively using a chatbot?

Yes, many businesses are using chatbots to make the buying process on their websites easier, fun, and more rewarding.

For example, intelligent chatbots can begin a conversation and inform customers about ongoing sales and promotions. Or, they can share links to content such as blog entries, video tutorials, or products matching to a customer’s recent searches to increase engagement on the website. The example below shows a Re:amaze Chatbot offering customers a personalized shopping experience from Facebook.

Track Customer Satisfaction Rates

Chatbots can track and compile customer satisfaction data for your business. The process is simple. All you need to do is build a quick customer satisfaction survey, and your bot will share it through messenger, leading to better engagement as compared to traditional modes like email.

Conclusion

When appropriately utilized, chatbots can improve your CX and help you ‘kill’ the competition instead of ‘killing’ customer satisfaction rates. That’s precisely why companies like Acquire, Re:Amaze, and Octane AI are continually innovating to build AI-driven, intelligent bots that will add more value to your business.

Unsurprisingly, 35% of customers want to see more companies using chatbots.

However, as we mentioned previously, chatbots are useful in answering common and straightforward queries, but they aren’t meant to replace humans completely. The reason is that some users may have more personal questions, that require a human to answer them. But the good part is that chatbots can recognize this and are equipped to transfer such queries to the relevant person in your team.

What do you think about the role of chatbots in customer service in the future? Leave your comments in the section below; we’d love to hear from you.