Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I assume you’ve heard about chatbots.
The question is: do they really work?
Yes.
And I have proof.
In 2015, Microsoft found that users had a span of just 8 seconds, which is a smaller amount than the typical span of a goldfish.
An even more surprising (and recent) study suggests that the amount is narrowing.
We sleep in the age of universal information and customers are growing uninterested in it. Each day, they’re overloaded with new courses, new ads, new product launches, and new everything.
What does this mean for you?
In an age where every brand is competing for attention, albeit you've got a solid marketing strategy for your website, the sole thanks to stand out is to shift your focus from getting attention to earning the trust of your customers.
Here’s where chatbots are available .
Why chatbots are key to customer retention
Chatbots are programs powered by AI (AI) software, and simulate digital conversations, using tongue processing (NLP), with users through websites and messaging applications. NLP helps chatbots understand customer questions and requests and reply back to messages with the acceptable response (think Siri and Alexa).
If you’ve ever reached out to a corporation for help, there’s an honest chance you’ve interacted with a chatbot developer. The utilization of bots is accelerating at a rapid pace. Global revenue from the chatbot market is predicted to succeed in an estimated $454.8 million dollars by 2027 (up from $40.9 million in 2018)
The drive behind this growth is sort of simple — chatbots help companies provide better and faster customer service at scale.
Let’s take a better check out the main reasons why chatbots are the longer term of customer retention.
Faster response times
We sleep in a hyper-connected world: Social media platforms like Facebook provide updates in real-time, and eCommerce platforms like Amazon allow you to choose same- or next-day delivery
The results of this connectivity? Consumers today are increasingly impatient, and even the slightest shipping delay can create unpleasant shopping experiences.
The same also holds true for customer service. An estimated 90% of consumers rate immediate responses as important once they have a customer service question.
But what counts as “immediate”? Consistent with Hubspot’s research, it’s 10 minutes or less.
Faster response times are ideal as two-thirds of consumers say that expecting customer service is the most frustrating aspect of online shopping.
Customers today want quick answers and that they want them now. Fail to satisfy those expectations and your customers likely won’t come .
That’s where chatbots are available. Visitors on your site can interact with a chatbot and quickly get help with any customer service inquiries they could have.
Chatbots even help companies get more online bookings. A Facebook chatbot is a perfect example of such a case.
24/7 availability
Customers might not be ready to get help if your customer service team only operates during local business hours, and it’s impractical for your customer service team to schedule virtual meetings with every single customer. And if they can’t get help, they’ll likely search for an alternative , causing you to lose a purchase . Plus, they're ready to operate globally and respond in various languages, considering it as a self-service translation service.
Many companies already offer 24/7 customer support—even provide FAQ pages and make explainer videos, but handling queries round the clock isn’t exactly cheap and requires substantial resources.
Chatbots are a less expensive solution and permit you to reply to customers 24 hours each day , 7 days every week . So whether it’s early within the morning or well beyond midnight, customers can always get the knowledge they have . In fact, 64% of online users say that 24-hour service is the biggest advantage of chatbots customer service reps. For instance , this trial attorney’s office offers a 24/7 chatbot with a true person responding on the opposite side of the screen.
Enhanced AI
Understanding customer needs is vital for growing a successful business, and allows you to deliver even better customer experiences. (Customers are willing to pay up to a 16% premium on products and services just by meeting and understanding their needs.)
Chatbots today are ready to understand more complex queries, which allows them to detect intent and have interaction with customers.
Personalized shopping experiences
Yet another reason why chatbots are the longer term of customer retention is their ability to deliver more personalized shopping experiences. An honest example of this is often the advice engine Amazon uses to display products supported by customers' order history.
Luckily, chatbots aren’t limited to providing just customer support. they will want to welcome back returning customers and help them make purchasing decisions. And counting on users’ responses, bots can direct customers to the acceptable product page to form a sale . And if customers have an interest in learning more about a few topics, your bot can provide links to relevant guides and tutorials on your site.
For example, Breadcrumbs features a chatbot that asks different questions counting on what pages you're visiting on their site. for his or her email verifier feature, the bot is for instance asking if you're “looking for your best leads”.
More customer insights
Soliciting customer feedback is usually valuable. Not only does it show you value customers’ opinions, but it also allows you to know where you'll improve.
In addition to customer retention, chatbots are great for garnering user feedback. By understanding your customers, you'll anticipate and take away any obstacles which may substitute the way of them completing another purchase.
Roughly 73% of consumers expect companies to know their needs, so use chatbots to urge feedback from your customers.
Here’s an example of how IKEA uses its chatbot to realize customer insights.
IKEA can identify areas of improvement with these insights. During this case, it's just like the furniture brand must make it easier for its customers to finish a sale .
Lower operational costs
Being aware of your customers is vital to increasing retention, but if you’re a growing business, you would possibly not have the resources to cause and train a team of customer support representatives. And even then, support teams can only handle numerous requests at a time.
Chatbots reduce operational costs by speeding up response times, allowing support teams to specialise in more complex issues.
A study from Juniper Research predicted that chatbots will save businesses $8 billion by 2022. That figure is merely expected to grow as more industries use chatbots to streamline customer service. Using one in your own business means lower overhead costs and increased profits.
So far we’ve checked out the what of chatbots and therefore the value they supply . Now let’s check out the how — how you'll use them to extend customer retention.
How to use chatbots to extend customer retention
Customers have more choices than ever before, so if they’re not satisfied with your product or service, they will simply look for other alternatives. an equivalent is equally true if the customer service you provide fails to satisfy their expectations.
To increase customer loyalty, you would like to specialise in their needs. Whether you’re an eCommerce business or a service provider, here’s how you'll use chatbots to extend customer retention and shut more sales.
1. Automate customer support
Chatbots are essentials for customer service and supply relief to your teams because they will be automated.
Most of the questions browsing chatbots are product questions. Answering inquiries like “What is your refund policy?” or “What is the status of my order?” over and once again just isn’t the simplest use of your support team’s time once they might be focused on other tasks instead.
Instead of having someone from your customer service team answer these questions, program a bot to automatically respond with optimized content. This provides your team longer to handle more complex projects than trying to retain customers who are expecting a solution .
2. Provide helpful resources
Visitors to your site may need additional questions or they'll need help with a purchasing decision; this will especially be the case if you offer similar products with different features.
Chatbots are often programmed to supply visitors with helpful resources, including redirect links to tutorials or relevant educational articles on your site.
You can also program them to supply helpful resources to your visitors as Joy Organics does.
Users can click on Joy Organics’ provided resources to urge more information on certain topics; and if they need additional questions, they will always start a conversation with the support team. The content shared by the chatbot must be free from grammatical errors. Run down the content through a tool like Grammarly.
3. Include a photograph
Chatbots are often scary once you don’t know who’s answering on the opposite side. If visitors have questions but think a robot will answer the chat, they could leave.
Adding photos of your customer support team will reduce the apprehension of employing a chatbot and receiving automated answers.
Check out how Goaura adds photo to their chatbot
Adding a photograph gives a more personal touch to your chatbot, which makes customers more likely to use them because they will “see” who’s on the opposite end.
4. Provide fast responses
As mentioned before, a standard customer complaint has to attend for customer support. Customers today simply don’t want to attend to urge help, especially if they’re experiencing issues together with your products or services.
Therefore, your customer chat function should feature an expected wait time for a response. This lets customers know long they will expect to attend and if they ought to return later within the day.
In this example from Reply, the sales platform displays when subsequent members of the customer support team are going to be online.
Another idea to integrate together with your chatbot is to supply a texting option for missions via phone, but the operation starts on your website. This treatment center in NY may be a great example of that strategy.
This strategy is usually utilized in the health industry. Indeed, it's easier to speak via phone to a patient than on a live chat. But starting the conversation on your website will always be the fastest thanks to get more patients. Here’s another example with BetterAddictionCare which is additionally using the text approach to urge in-tuned with potential patients.
5. Have a backup plan
While chatbots can streamline customer support and increase retention, it’s important to possess a backup plan just in case visitors are unable to urge the assistance they have . A survey of quite 1,000 U.S. consumers found that 86% still prefer interacting with a true person. Don’t hesitate to send a welcome email or call them, just to call a couple of ideas.
It’s perfectly acceptable to have chatbots provide helpful resources and answer frequently asked questions, but you should also give customers the option to reach a customer service representative.
If a bot doesn’t understand a query, program it to redirect users to a live person, allowing your support team to assist customers with more complex issues or make use of any email management and marketing tools they have in place.
Conclusion
Customer retention is completely essential for each business. Loyal customers are ultimately more profitable as they have a tendency to spend extra money on a trusted brand, and are more likely to spread the word about your business, which, in turn, means free marketing.
But retaining customers isn’t exactly easy. If you fail to satisfy their expectations or deliver customer service during a timely manner, your customers are likely to seek other alternatives.
One way to extend customer retention is with chatbots. These AI-powered programs allow you to supply fast response times and may even be programmed to assist your customers make purchases or schedule appointments.
if you're trying to find a chatbot to grow your business and have interaction with your customers, then start today with Cipher's lab.
Cipher’s lab is an US based design and development agency since 2014 with the aim of delivering business explications to customers worldwide. Cipher’s lab promotes ownership, professional fulfillment and customer satisfaction. We deliver profitability and business success to our global clients through precise execution and technical excellence.
We bring communication to a new level by designing smart custom bots for popular platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, messenger, Telegram,websites etc. We have implemented NLP, Wit.ai, Dialog flow into these. Our experienced team of Chatbot developers can help you in developing custom chatbot according to your business flow. These Chatbots can save your time with automation, lead generation and can make your business easier and faster.And if you've got any questions, don’t hesitate to connect with our team and get a Free Consultation today at Ciphers lab
No comments:
Post a Comment