What is a Chatbot and How Does It Benefit Your Business?

Introduction.

So, you have been told that all you need to take your business online is a website; now that you have done all of that, you discovered that you need to make your website more interactive as possible to convert clients as required.

You go on to add a contact page, but that does not convert as expected, what should be the next strategy in mind? All I would say is to add a Chatbot and watch all your problems go far away.

We live in a time when there is information overload; this has caused attention span to reduce by over 70%, and a beautiful and informative website is not enough to convert visitors. Users need to interact with something to feel alive, and this is where Chatbots come to the rescue.

What is a chatbot?

A chatbot is an AI-based computer program that simulates human conversations.
They are digital assistants that understand human capabilities, and user intent, process their requests and give prompt, relevant answers to the user.

Bots can communicate through voice as well as text and can be deployed across websites, applications, and messaging channels such as Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Whatsapp and on websites.

Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Chatbot.

Chatbots work by analyzing and identifying the intent of the user’s request to extract relevant entities, which is the most important task of a chatbot.

Once the analysis is done appropriate response is delivered to the user. Chatbot functions based on a set of instructions or use machine learning. A chatbot that works based on rules is usually quite limited.

So, if a person asks it the wrong thing, the bot will be able to provide a relevant answer to such a request.

Here are some of the reasons why your online business needs a chatbot.

1. Chatbots are always available.

The first benefit of chatbots is that they can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, making it one of the most reliable customer services your business can have.

A study carried out by the CMO council also found that the ability to give quick answers to clients was the most important attribute of a good customer experience.

In a globalised world where customers expect to receive fast, or even instantaneous answers, from companies located on the other side of the globe, chatbots tend to solve this problem without stress.

2. Chatbots help aid website conversions.

Conversions are essentially goal completions. The word “conversion” can be applied to any action that a user takes on your website to achieve the common goal set by yourself.

The ideal conversion is the conversion into a customer, which occurs someone makes a purchase.
Conversions matter because they make your business profitable. The ultimate conversion is a sale, but other conversions are valuable as well if they help you find leads and nurture them into paying customers.

Implementing a chatbot into your business will generate more conversations with customers.

3. Chatbots are designed for multiple conversations at one single time.

A human employee can manage between 3 to 4 simple customer queries at a time, which is expensive because you have to pay for their work time.

‍Chatbots can, however, handle as many requests as you like at the same time. By automating answers to most queries, chatbots significantly free up employees’ time, allowing them to focus on necessary tasks.

You should know that employees can sometimes be sick, which means they won’t be able to answer customers’ queries for quite a few days, then resulting in more work for other staff members, or more work for them when they return to work after a sickness absence.

Implementing a chatbot into your business means your employees won’t be drowning in customers’ requests as the chatbot will help to answer each of them.

4. Chatbots can collect and analyze data.

Once a chatbot is implemented into your business, you can generate a global report which tells you how your chatbot is being used by customers, and what requests are more frequent, and this would help you analyze this data, modify your chatbot accordingly, and therefore improve your chatbot even once it is deployed.

5. Chatbots can help personalise your message.

The internet has become a one-stop display for all kinds of bots making natural human interaction difficult to spot, hence irritating prospective customers.

As explained in the previous point, chatbots can collect data by analysing customers’ inputs.

Thanks to this data, they can then adapt conversations to users, depending on multiple factors like their requests, the way they speak, etc. Classic chatbots can for example use the customer’s name in the conversation.

6. Chatbots can speak all kinds of Language.

If your business is developed or is developing, internationally, then you should use a chatbot as they can be programmed to speak a wide variety of languages all thanks to machine learning. Chatbots can be trained to answer queries in multiple languages.

7. Chatbots can be deployed anywhere.

Chatbots can be developed and deployed anywhere, anyone can easily create a chatbot and then deploy it on as many channels as you like: Facebook, Messenger, text messages, Slack, WhatsApp and websites.

8. Chatbots can be used to automate many processes.

Chatbots are far more equipped than what they are known for, they can be connected to various APIs which will for example enable them to deal with a wider range of customers’ requests.

They can also automate repetitive and tedious tasks like emailing prospects and customers, answering FAQs and many more.

When embedded on an eCommerce website, chatbots can also directly handle payments.