When Weizenbaum invented the first chatbot (named Eliza), he wanted to prove that machines could converse intelligently with humans. He never, however, imagined that brands and organizations would eventually be able to provide instant customer service with AI chatbots.
In our high-tech universe, bots have become so sophisticated that they serve as first responders. These human-sounding machines resolve customer complaints, provide self-service guides and perform other complex tasks, sometimes without the help of a human customer service agent.
Business experts suggest that timely customer service matters a great deal. A recent survey from the United States shows that excellent customer service is the lifeblood of every business. According to the survey, 90% of respondents revealed that customer service affected their choice and loyalty to a brand.
But how can you provide excellent instant customer service? To make your job easier, we have listed tips for maximizing your chatbot so that they provide:
- Around the clock assistance
- Instant response to customers
- Affordable customer service
- Higher productivity in your customer service department
- Improved customer satisfaction
- Quick resolution of technical issues
What are the different types of chatbots?
There are several types of chatbots, each designed for specific purposes. Here are the main types:
- Rule-Based Chatbots: Follow predefined scripts and rules to respond to specific inputs. Simple but limited.
- AI-Powered Chatbots: Use machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to understand and respond intelligently to various queries.
- Transactional Chatbots: Handle specific tasks, such as booking, orders, or payments, using guided workflows.
- Conversational Chatbots: Simulate human-like conversations to engage users and answer complex queries.
- Voice-Activated Chatbots: Interact through voice commands, like Alexa or Google Assistant.
- Social Media Chatbots: Engage users on platforms like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.
- Customer Support Chatbots: Focus on assisting with customer service, such as troubleshooting or FAQs.
- Contextual Chatbots: Retain information from past interactions to provide personalized responses.
1. Position your Chatbot Well
Having a good chatbot for your business is one thing, but deploying it to generate leads and conversions is another.
Source: https://www.impactplus.com
The best way to get the most out of your chatbots is to place them in a suitable location on your site. Don’t place your chatbots where it will interfere with the browsing experience of prospects. Although you want your chatbot to be conspicuous, it should not make visitors feel pressured to interact with your business.
And so it is better to place your chatbot on pages where prospects have passed the initial stages of the customer journey and are ready to take some positive actions.
Below are some of the best places to place your chatbots for maximum effect:
- Sign-up pages
- Sales pages
- Event pages
- Product pages
- Landing pages
2. Use Chatbot to Gather Feedback
To provide better customer service, you must know how people feel about your products and services.
Many businesses spend vast resources gathering customer feedback. With chatbots, businesses need not break a bank to get a glimpse into what customers think of them. Unlike most traditional ways of generating data, chatbots make feedback gathering fun for your customers.
When implemented well, chatbots offer a better feedback loop than other means of getting information from customers.
The following are ways to run a successful feedback campaign on your chatbot.
- Offer incentives. Sometimes your customers may be reluctant to join your feedback exercise. That’s when you should get creative and offer incentives to encourage them to take part. Incentives may include free materials, discounts, and vouchers.
Source: https://www.surveycrest.com
- Analyze the feedback. Gathering information through your feedback exercise is good, but it is important to know how to properly analyze them. Feedback analysis involves breaking down the information from your customers into manageable data. Every business must identify key information that will help them improve on services rendered to their customers.
- Take action. A study discovered that 21.53% of shoppers believe businesses do not act on their feedback. Taking action on customers’ feedback increases their trust and loyalty. When you take action, let your customers know that you have done something about their feedback.
If you want to improve the quality of your customer service and increase your lead generation, get feedback from customers. Chatbots offer an easy, cost-effective way to keep your customers happy at all times.
3. Create Customer Service Social Media Accounts
As we know, chatbot interaction comes in different forms. While some people want to make ordinary inquiries, others need help with your products and services. Having separate social media accounts for your customer service means that you attend to issues promptly.
Design your chatbots to filter out customer service issues and send them to a channel dedicated to that. Sometimes customers do not know where to go when they need help. Your chatbot is a good way to channel all customer service queries to where they will get prompt attention.
4. Humanize your Chatbot
An American Express study shows that 40% of customers prefer to talk to a person about their complaints. Because chatbots are artificial intelligence created out of computer programs does not mean they should sound like robots.
The voice of your chatbot is important. The more human your chatbot is, the more engaging and enjoyable it will be to converse with. And, therefore, the better customer service with AI Chatbots your customers will enjoy.
One way to humanize your chatbot is to give it some personality. Below are ways to humanize your chatbots and deliver an excellent customer experience.
- Make your chatbot emotional. People are emotional beings. Emotional conversations stir up intimate experiences and can lead to deep relationships. You can design your chatbots to detect negative or positive emotions in customers. The chatbot can then react accordingly to show empathy with the person in that situation. Showing understanding is a vital aspect of excellent customer service.
- Give your chatbot an authentic voice. Whether you are using audio or text, your chatbot’s voice should sound or read like that of a real person. A real voice goes beyond having a natural human sound. It also includes responding properly and using the right sentences.
5. Personalize the Interaction For Better Customer Service with AI Chatbots
There are many ways to make customer experience personal. And so it’s important not restrict personalization to human interaction. After all, chatbots can personalize the customer’s experience.
Source: https://www.netsolutions.com
Statistics show businesses can increase their online conversion rate to roughly 8% by personalizing consumer experiences.
Below are some ways to personalize your chatbot interactions with your customers:
- Spark interest with personal details. Using a customer’s name during a conversation is the most common and one of the best ways to personalize communication. Your chatbot can employ this effective method by getting a customer’s name and using it throughout the interaction.
- Provide individualized service. Your customers can experience excellent service when your chatbots provide solutions based on their questions.
- Use customers’ history. Chatbots can excite customers by talking about what they like. Customers love it when you remember them and their preferred products and services.
Chatbot personalization saves time for everyone by not repeating questions a customer had provided in the past. Therefore, personalizing chatbot conversation excites customers and provides a better customer experience.
6. Keep Chatbot Messages Brief
One significant feature of chatbot messages is that they are very brief. Brief messages are more engaging than longer ones. Although chatbots can engage your prospects and customers in conversations, they cannot replace humans. There are limits to chatbot conversation.
Therefore, to make customer service with AI chatbots more efficient and engaging make your chatbot interactions conversational. Avoid losing your audience and keep the conversation flowing by keeping the messages brief.
People who contact customer service want immediate attention and answers to their questions. When you use long messages in your chatbots, you are more likely to frustrate your customers and spoil their user engagement.
When building your chatbot for customer service, avoid giving out too much information at once. Too many questions and information can overwhelm and make it hard for your customers to take the next step. Divide the chatbot messages into bits and deliver them separately.
Remember, your chatbot messages should guide your customers to what they are looking for in a few sentences.
7. Provide Opt-Out Options
Chatbots can attend to many of your customers’ queries. Free live chat software sometimes can serve as a good start to bringing customer communications to the next level. Some complaints, however, have to be handled only by a human agent. Your chatbots must recognize when a prospect or customer needs to speak to a real person on a live chat.
Remember that most customers are intelligent and recognize when a conversation with a chatbot is not progressive.
Below are ways to prevent customer frustration and transfer the customer to a real person.
- Identify and automatically transfer long conversations to real persons.
- Provide an option to ask for human help.
- If a real person is not available, promise to get back to the customer as soon as possible. You can improve customer satisfaction if you promise to reply within minimum business hours. Solitaired was able to improve customer satisfaction up to 89% when they started replying within 2 business hours.
Provide Great Instant Customer Service with AI Chatbots
As we know, chatbots are computer programs that perform tasks based on some rules over a chat interface. As artificial intelligence software, chatbots mimic actual conversations between people. They’re large language models trained in several LLM fine-tuning phases. Thus, they can perform different natural language processing tasks like mimicking conversations between people. There are different chatbots in customer service, depending on what you want to achieve. First of all, there are rule-based chatbots that follow strict predetermined rules in interacting with customers.
You also have artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots that use natural language processing to learn, remember, and interact with customers. Finally, there are hybrid chatbots that combine the rule-based and the AI system.
The indispensability of customer service AI has become clear to decision-makers and consumers alike. With so many businesses seeking consumers’ attention, customer service has become a crucial factor in choosing one brand against another.
Chatbots are great communication tools used by successful businesses to engage and deliver excellent customer service to their clientele.
Implementing the tips in this article will improve your customer service strategies and set you apart from the rest of your competition.
