How Chatbots Save Time and Change How Business Gets Done Investing the effort into building chatbots for routine, repetitive tasks opens hours a day for focusing on what drives revenue.
By Murray Newlands Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You've probably heard of the chatbot. In fact, you've probably used one, even if you didn't necessarily know it. Chatbots have taken over from mobile applications. They're the new hype in the tech world, and judging by the attention they've received, they're not likely to go anywhere anytime soon, as they're proving to be quite profitable tools.
In addition to increasing sales, cutting costs, and acting as integral members of your customer care, sales, marketing, HR, IT, and other teams, these chatbots can save you time while also changing the world. As a business owner, you know how hard it can be to stay on top of time management. Further, the thought of hiring someone else to help you can be just as daunting because of the extra costs incurred. To help you, here are some ways chatbots can act as time-saving tools:
As a personal assistant.
Chatbots can act as a personal assistant without you having to hire someone new or find additional office space. These personal assistants can help with a huge variety of tasks that will give you back time to focus on other, more profitable activities within your organization. A chatbot can:
- Schedule, edit, and cancel meetings and events
- Receive and send emails on your behalf
- Alert you when you have an appointment, both personal and professional
Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business
Gathering feedback
Sometimes you need feedback from team members, yet you can't find the time or the space to meet. A chatbot can help you create and send out a feedback form or poll without having to take time out of your day. In addition to saving time by avoiding another meeting, you'll also gather the data you need to continue doing the work you're in the process of completing. Chatbots that gather feedback are also great at helping gauge the overall morale within your company and they can help you manage projects.
Related: 10 Facebook Messenger Chatbot Marketing Expert Tips
Offering news feeds and reminders
As a business owner or startup, it's essential that you and your employees stay up-to-date with what's going on in your industry. Unfortunately, trawling the internet for news can be a time-consuming task. You can program your chatbot to send you news alerts from specific websites or you could create a separate chatbot that's news-specific. This type of chatbot can also send you reminders of meetings and other events in your calendar so you're always on time.
Automating business processes
Chatbots can help automate a huge variety of business processes from a multitude of departments within your company. For example, your chatbot could alert relevant team members when someone has marked a task as complete. On the other hand, your chatbot could be programmed to answer frequently asked questions from both employees and customers. In addition, your chatbot can upsell and cross-sell based on a customer's shopping history. The opportunities for automation are truly endless.
Related: Pretty Soon, Chatbots Will Be Able to Understand How You're Feeling
Chatbot are changing the world: While chatbots are great at saving you time, they're also well on their way to changing the way we do business as a whole. Aside from acting as internal part of your organization, a chatbot can help redesign the way your company operates. Here's how:
Finding out what consumers truly think
Chatbots are able to find out what your customers truly think about your brand by gathering data from each conversation they have. Aside from helping with customer care, cross-selling, upselling, and pushing promotions on demand, these chatbots offer your customers the opportunity to give you feedback and share their feelings; this is one of the most valuable tools when it comes to creating a long-lasting relationship with your audience.
Increasing environmental awareness
With the right newsbot, you can stay up-to-date with all things sustainability. The commercial and industrial worlds are taking great strides towards creating a greener way of doing business and with an eco-chatbot, you could as well. You may be able to train it to offer tips on how to create a more environmentally-friendly workspace, too.
Encouraging healthy living
Chatbots can become part of your internal business processes in a way that you may not have thought of yet. Aside from gauging employee morale, your chatbot could send reminders to your team members when they need to take a break from their screens and go for a walk. You could also create a chatbot that reminds them to drink water, for example.
These types of reminders and pointers could be extremely valuable to the overall productivity of your teams. As long as your employees are happy and healthy, they'll be able to perform to the best of their abilities, which will allow your company to thrive.
Creating a chatbot
The reason chatbots have become such powerful time-saving and life-changing tools is due to the artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning that powers them. This enables them to learn from every conversation without requiring someone to program each conversation they have.
With this in mind, chatbot-building platforms like my company, ChattyPeople , allow you to create an AI-powered chatbot in a matter of minutes with no coding knowledge whatsoever. The platform is completely free to get started with and has a purely visual interface, making it extremely easy to navigate.
Chatbots allow you to:
- Monetize your social media platforms
- Push promotions and offers, on demand
- Keep an eye on the internal processes of your company
- Stay available to customers and team members all day, every day
Finally…
If you don't have enough time to get everything done by the end of each workday, a chatbot could save you anywhere between one and three on various mundane tasks. With this, you'll be able to focus your efforts on revenue generating activities that will catapult your business to success.
But that's not all. You need to remember to stay up-to-date with all the latest news regarding your industry and global matters that could impact your company. By doing so, you'll be able to adapt your business in a way that will keep your employees satisfied while increasing your bottom line.
