Don't Wait. Here's Why You Should Get in the Chatbot War Now. Chatbots are the new face of 24/7 customer service, and many of your competitors are already using them.
By Andrew Medal Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
While there is no way of knowing what the future will bring, one thing is for sure: the use of chatbots is on the rise. With the chatbot war heating up, it's your job to learn as much as possible about this AI technology. This means many things, including how you can use chatbots to better serve your audience with the idea of boosting revenue and profit.
Before we discuss the ways to win the chatbot war, there's something that must be said: There's a good chance your competitors are already using chatbots to boost their business. Unless you want to get passed by, it would be in your best interest to position yourself for success.
Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business
Now, let's examine why you should adopt chatbots in your business:
1. Better customer service
Did you know that the use of chatbots could help to greatly reduce customer service expenses?
If that's not enough for you to give this technology a second look, consider this: Chatbots can improve the customer service experience, ensuring that your audience always receives the assistance they require.
Most businesses, especially those with a handful of employees, are unable to provide personalized customer service 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
You can protect against downtime by using chatbots. This way, if somebody visits your website and has a question, you can still provide personalized assistance.
It may be ideal to have a real person on the other side of the conversation, but a chatbot is often the second best option.
Related: Instead of Staffing Up For Your Marketing Campaign, Build A Chatbot.
2. To improve speed
In today's day and age, speed is the name of the game. The faster you help customers the better off you will be. Therefore, you need to take full advantage of technology, including chatbots.
Get this: Four minutes is the average time savings per chatbot enquiry when compared to the use of a traditional call center. As a consumer yourself, you know that four minutes is a long time when waiting on hold or trying to solve a problem.
When you combine increased speed with cost savings, it's easy to see why so many companies, big and small, are looking for ways to implement chatbots in their day-to-day business.
Related: How to Create a Facebook Messenger Chatbot For Free Without Coding
3. Improving success rate
Companies continue to avoid chatbots for many reasons. Some of them don't understand the technology. Others believe that it will cause more harm than good. And then there are those who are concerned about the success rate.
It is understood that the use of chatbots is only a good thing if the outcome is positive. An infographic published by Juniper Research touches on this, noting that 20 percent of messaging bank bot interactions in 2017 will be successful.
Yes, this is a low number, but check out the other statistic shared in the infographic: 93 percent of messaging bank bot interactions will be successful by 2022. This should tell you one thing: chatbot technology is growing rapidly with each passing year.
While there may still be some kinks to work out, you don't want to wait five years to get involved. At that time, your competition will have already figured things out, thus leaving you in the dust.
And of course, just because some companies are experiencing a less than ideal success rate doesn't mean yours will follow suit.
Experiment, track and change
Do you remember the early days of social media when brands were turning their head, ignoring Facebook and Twitter in hopes that it was nothing more than a fad? Many companies are going down the same path in regard to chatbots. They're watching other brands take advantage, but have yet to dive in.
Related: This Robot Therapist Talks to Patients Via Facebook
To win the chatbot war, you need to do three things:
- Experiment with the technology
- track what is and is not working and
- make changes based on your findings.
When you do this, you'll always be confident in the approach you're taking.
The chatbot war has begun. You can throw your hat into the ring, or run and hide. The choice is yours, but those who get involved today are in better position to benefit tomorrow.
What are your thoughts on chatbots? Do you have plans to use this technology to improve your business?
