Chatbots are now becoming a necessity for websites and businesses. As the technology behind modern chatbots continues to advance, these virtual assistants or agents are now becoming a solution for a number of issues – and not just for answering questions.
They’re also viable for a number of use cases as customer behavior continues to change. Consumers see themselves using chatbots for getting quick answers, resolving a complaint or a problem, getting detailed explanations all the way through booking a consultation or paying a bill. With the proper programming, they can be sales representatives that can close deals for your business 24/7.
In the era of voice technology and instant messaging apps, it’s not surprising that people are open to communicating with AI in order to achieve quick results (as we’ve seen happen with Alexa and Siri). So much so that 42 percent of buyers are already using digital assistants, while 72 percent of business executives and 53 percent of millennials are already using AI programs to perform tasks and services for them.
Chatbots will become widely adopted as they develop more use cases and solve real problems. Find out why this growing tech has become so crucial for many businesses and why it’s important to optimize them.
1) CHATBOTS IMPROVE BUSINESS
Chatbots allow routine work to be automated even when the task involves handling and engaging clients. If your current customer support is made up of purely human support, then you are limiting your business to handling only a couple of customers. Customer service agents can only attend to a handful of clients at the same time. However, with chatbots, you can scale this process without spending more on manpower.
Chatbots can answer more common queries and filter out more complicated ones for the customer service agents to handle. In addition, chatbots can also streamline internal workflows. In a more administrative function, they can answer questions, communicate with employees and work on transactional functions.
Not only are they helpful for e-commerce businesses but for industries like legal and accounting as well. They’re like little helpers that can help you acquire clients using your website as well as do routine work that would usually take time to finish.
2) CHATBOTS ARE GREAT FOR SEO
When you have a website, search engine optimization (SEO) is a must in order for it to rank high and appear on top of search engine results.
That’s how you can get more traffic and more potential clients to your pages.
For example, if you run a legal firm, you’ll most likely get SEO for lawyers to make sure that your website is primed to be crawled and indexed by Google, then presented to the right clients. The more optimized your site is, the more it’s prioritized over competitors.
So, how do chatbots help in SEO?
Search engines evaluate how valuable a website is using a set of ranking factors. Two of these factors are the time a user spends on your site and the bounce rate (this represents the number of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page).
Chatbots enhance the relevance of your site by providing value to your visitors. For example, when a visitor can’t find what they’re looking for, the immediate reaction is to exit the page and look elsewhere. Chatbots prevent this from happening by giving users the assistance, answers, and guidance they need.
3) YOUR BUSINESS CAN ALWAYS BE OPEN
One of the advantages of having a website is that it’s open 24/7 and bots can engage with the customers round the clock as well, immediately responding to their queries. Having great customer service has a positive impact on your brand and customer satisfaction.
Make sure that your chatbot is optimized and that it’s hosted on a high-quality server. Bot downtimes shouldn’t be frequent since they’re not much use if that were to happen. One way you can optimize your bots for customer chat by frequently updating general FAQs and answers.
4) GIVE YOUR CUSTOMERS THE QUICK SERVICE THEY EXPECT
When a visitor lands on your website, it means that you succeeded in your internet marketing efforts. However, keeping them is another challenge because if they don’t like an experience, they can easily close the window and then look elsewhere.
We live in a world where speed is important and human agents will have a difficult time keeping up with the number of visitors if they were to handle everything alone. Not to mention, not every business can offer 24/7 customer service.
However, chatbots are here to help. They’re always ready to answer customer questions and they’re always ready to listen.
Then, if a query becomes too complicated to handle, then the customer will be directed to the best customer service agent. Even if the bot doesn’t have the answer, your customers will always feel guided and taken care of. People today are very open to using AI for customer service, so it’s very easy to integrate into your process.
5) ENHANCE LEAD NURTURING & CONVERSION RATES
As a business owner or an establishment with a website, you know the effort it took to get users to your page. However, it doesn’t end there. Visitors to your site need to be either converted or nurtured (if they couldn’t be converted on the spot).
A chatbot can help you with both.
It can help you increase the conversion rate by strategically placing it on the page where your leads can benefit the most.
You can also create bots on different platforms aside from your website like emails, instant messengers (like Facebook or Telegram). This way you don’t miss any opportunities. However, do some research to know where your target audience spends the most time, and then put your efforts on that channel.
You can increase conversion on your website by placing chatbots on high-performing pages. Product or service pages are also ideal places for chatbots since they are pages where interested customers will visit. Another way to increase conversion is by having a chatbot pop-up whenever a customer abandons a cart.
On another hand, a chatbot can help you nurture a lead. View it as your little helper you can use to assist you to understand your visitors. Have the bots ask questions or conduct surveys whenever a visitor interacts with it.
If you have an e-commerce store, you can use the bots to inquire about the user’s interest and then recommend products that you have in store. It doesn’t end there, industries that make consumer goods for other companies can use a b2b SEO strategy to gain leads and then use chatbots to sell and promote their packages or offerings.
Then there are professional firms that offer accounting and legal services, site visitors for these industries are not always looking for the service first but they’re mostly looking for a solution to the problem they have. A chatbot can help sort out the confusion and direct the prospect exactly where to go on the website.
CONCLUSION
In the business world, disruption has become the norm and there will always be trends that will come and go, however, chatbots and AI aren’t one of them. They’re part of the future of business and it’s in your best interest to know how to make them work for you.
Always have a goal in mind and define the business reasons for incorporating chatbots into your everyday processes. This way, you’ll be able to grow and scale your business efficiently, saving time, effort, and resources.
