Chatbots as Web-Based Customer Support Software

Chatbots are continuing to prove themselves to be extremely powerful and strategic tools in a number of areas of business. Companies of all sizes and from many different industries are leveraging the power of chatbots to offload various customer-facing interactions from humans to these software-driven conversations. The power in chatbots is in their ability to be instantly available on a 24/7 basis and to collect valuable information from their customer interactions.

While many companies are deriving value from using their chatbots for internal team members, the majority of chatbots in use today are used for customer communications to streamline the process of getting the information customers are looking for in the most succinct way. These are often referred to as “customer service chatbots”.

Chatbots for Driving Web-Based Customer Support

Today, more and more businesses are looking to automate their customer support and sales functions in an effort to reduce costs while providing a higher-level of service and responsiveness to their customers and prospects. By offloading massive amounts of customer communications to chatbots, businesses are able to dramatically reduce labor costs and allow this cutting-edge technology to handle the most frequently asked questions and requests from online consumers.

It is worth noting that chatbots are not meant to pick up 100% of this workload as there will always be issues, particularly within customer support, for which human interaction will be required. But a well-designed chatbot can (especially as it is refined over time) handle the vast majority of online customer support requests.

Given this, customer support organizations are seeing a shift in investment away from hiring and training and toward web-based automation. In fact, it is estimated that by the year 2020, roughly 85% of online customer support requests will be addresses without the customer ever speaking to a human.

Customers are Helping to Drive this Trend

While the deployment of chatbots as a web-based customer support tool provides obvious benefits to business owners, consumers are actually helping to drive this trend. As it happens, many consumers are expressing an interest in not having to wait for and speak to customer support representatives in order to address their issues. They simply want their questions answered as quickly and efficiently as possible and chatbots seem to be providing a great solution to reshape the customer support experience.

Building a Customer Support Chatbot for Your Business

If you are considering the development of a customer support chatbot for your business, much of the success and acceptance you can expect will be determined in your planning phase. It is important to think about your target audience and what they deem to be important as part of the customer support experience. Consider their age range, gender, location, and social status among other things in order to build a chatbot that communicates with a personality and style that will create the highest level of acceptance among your customers.

Interested in using a chatbot for web-based customer support for your business? Contact us to discuss.