Chatbots Will Revolutionize the Way Businesses Offer Customer Support
- Sep 11, 2017
- 2 min read
For many businesses, customer support is the most human resource-intensive department. Customer support resource staff spend their time answering customer inquiries via the phone and web and the entire operation is constrained by the number of support staff the company can deploy to this operation and how quickly they address customer questions and concerns.
The resource drain that customer support represents to many organizations, coupled with the popularity of new messaging platforms along with the customers’ willingness (if not desire) to communicate via chat has paved the way for a revolutionary technology- the chatbot.
What are Chatbots?
Chatbots are cutting edge computer programs that are designed to simulate human conversation via chat. For customer support organizations, chatbots present the opportunity to streamline the interaction process these departments have with customers. They can also increase customer engagement and automatically collect valuable data from customers through each interaction.
Additionally, well-designed chatbots can enable businesses to take advantage of the massive growth we are seeing in mobile messaging. With chatbots, companies will be able to program automated communications to handle their most frequently asked and repetitive questions, while providing a pleasing and timely overall experience to the customer.
Let Your Chatbots Handle the Customer Support Basics
The idea is to let chatbots handle the basic requests that the customer support team handles today. By offloading these requests to your chatbots, you are freeing up your staff to handle the complex requests and more strategic initiatives.
Some of the inquiries you can offload to a chatbot might include:
What are your business hours?
Are you currently running any sales promotions?
Do you offer a refund policy?
At what time do you stop serving breakfast?
What time is check-in?
What is Driving the Trend Toward Chatbots?
For the most part, consumer preference and demand is driving the demand for chatbots as more and more consumers are happy to communicate via chat, rather than waiting on hold for an available support representative. In fact, studies indicate that today’s consumer finds it more empowering to navigate a brand’s terrain via chat and that over the next few years, nearly 90% of consumer interactions will be handled without the need to ever speak with a support representative.
Given these new consumer preferences and the opportunities that chatbots can offer for operation cost savings and efficiencies, chatbots have the potential to seriously change the game when it comes to customer support.
Are you interested in a customer support bot for your organization?
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