Tools of the Future: Chatbots

With a rapidly growing social media presence, e-commerce platforms have emerged and are quickly being adopted. Virtual assistants and chatbots are spreading quickly in consumer markets, as well. The number of virtual assistants grew from 1 million to 3 million in 2017, a 76% growth and the chatbot market is expected to grow to $2 billion USD by the end of 2021, up from $200 million in 2016, according to reports. In an effort to improve the customer experience and drive up conversion rates, chatbots are being integrated into e-commerce platforms to serve as virtual customer service agents. Chatbots are personal assistants that use artificial intelligence to process conversations via message chat interfaces. They are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

Chatbots provide conversational sales and marketing which provides a better customer experience. They help improve the assessment, qualifications, and distribution of potential customers so that customers can find exactly what they need and guide them through the purchase process.

Another advantage of using chatbots and speech marketing is great personalization. Chatbots use machine learning to simulate human conversations using customer data to create a more personal character.

Unlike human vendors, chatbots are not limited to the need to go home, live life outside of work, or even sleep. This means they are available around the clock, allowing customers to contact your brand whenever they want.

Many chatbots use social media and messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Slack, and WhatsApp to maximize availability so that customers can get instant responses from their smartphones.

This helps to increase the user’s convenience for all customers, giving them the opportunity to contact you directly at any time of the day. This is useful because most of us work during work hours from 9: 00 a. m. to 6: 00 p. m. This includes sales team staff, so when sales departments go home customers who just finished work and shop online still get superior service.

Chatbots do this by addressing the time discrepancy.  Customer requests, questions, or information are passed on to employee representatives when they return to work the next day. This way, it will be easier for customers to communicate with your team and you will avoid a shortfall in sales.

Chatbots can also help build leads by turning the first visitor into a qualified presenter without any help from the team member.  By asking the right questions, pushing the new customer in the right direction, and using persuasion, they can reach potential customers first, walk them through the beginning stages of exploration, and even all the way up to the sale.

Bots can also identify and filter unqualified leads based on information they share about their budgets and what they’re looking for.  This saves time and resources and increases conversion rates by avoiding non-shoppers.

With a huge amount of internet traffic, it’s easy to lose potential customers through the cracks and leave your site without interacting with your sales team. Chatbots can help bridge these gaps and make sure no opportunities are missed by increasing your conversion rate.

According to Chatbots Magazine, bots can save 30% on customer service costs.  They do it in various ways, for example:  

• Ease the burden of call center employees and reduce the number of incoming calls by solving simple questions, 
• Save time by talking to sales representatives by collecting important information in advance, helping staff be prepared for the sale
• Reduce labor costs by acting as virtual assistants and reducing the need for human agents

We have already looked at the growing popularity of chatbots and how 80% of organizations want to implement them by the end of 2021.  This means that investing in chatbots will now help your business Think Ahead, be tech-savvy and get ahead of events.

Having a chatbot on your site shows your visitors that your brand cares about technology and is serious about offering new methods to provide the best possible service to its customers.

Now, thanks to the advantages of chatbots and interactive marketing, FAQs can be packaged in a much more dynamic format. They can take the form of a real conversation with the bot, and this provides some serious benefits, users do not need to spend time searching questions, or lists.  They no longer have to guess which category something belongs to.

It’s easy to add personality and fun to chatbots by answering frequently asked questions in a fun and enjoyable tone.  This strengthens your branding. It’s like having a real conversation with a person. You can share the benefits and features of your product in the chatbot FAQ, which combines troubleshooting and marketing.

Chatbots ask a lot of questions. And with the questions they ask, chatbots naturally collect data about consumer behavior and demographic information.

Chatbots are a great way to communicate with your customers. When you sign up with Zany for any website service or landing page we provide you with a free Chatbot.  This chatbot can be completely programmed by your company to sell your service and find the demographics you need to market your business better.