We all know chatbots can be intimidating. It makes people wonder if they are the beginning of robots taking over the world. But the truth is, they are here to make life easier, not to overtake the human population.
When owning a small business there are benefits to having a virtual assistant from extra customer service support to gaining more customer revenue. Here are some benefits of how chatbots can better assist your business:
Instant Resolutions
The world is moving fast and hardly anyone has any patience anymore. People are seeking immediate answers in order to get on with their day. In 2019, the average queue waiting time on the phone with customer support was 4min 17 sec. The average waiting time for a chatbot is less than a minute.
Since Chatbots have answers already pre-programmed into them, customers’ questions are answered almost immediately. This helps with waiting time and provides the customer with a quick and easy-to-understand response to their question immediately.
24/7 Support
Having good customer service available round the clock has a positive impact on your customer satisfaction and reduces customer complaints. This helps make initial customer contact, making ongoing dilemmas easier for businesses to handle while developing the experience for customers simultaneously. Providing a quick answer at any time of day helps drive customer engagement. Instead of attempting to search your website or wait until you’re open and accepting calls, they can ask simple questions and receive responses immediately.
A common complaint about small businesses is that they lack timely responses to their customers. By having a Chatbot that can instantly answer most customer questions, you can change a negative review into a positive one before the issue even comes up. In fact, 90% of businesses back in 2018 said their complaint resolution had improved due to customers’ questions being answered almost immediately. This gives customers instant relief and fulfills their expectations, increasing the amount of customer satisfaction with your company.
Advertising
When trying to sell your products and services you want to also advertise certain promotions, sales, and contests your company is having. Chatbots can reach out to your consumers at a precise time, letting all customers who subscribed to your text message reminders when your next sale will be going on, the different types of sweepstakes and giveaways you are having, and what type of items you are promoting specifically during that time period.
Create Customer Context
Customers who see Chatbots may be more likely to ask questions. Psfk reported a few years back that 74% of consumers preferred Chatbots while looking for answers to simple questions. With any interaction, a chatbot can save that information. By having a backlog of each customer interaction, your business can see and understand what needs to be improved and how to answer further customer’s questions more effectively.
Chatbots provide another way to reach out to your customers, new and old. They can increase customer interaction by recommending new products and conducting service surveys. By having a chatbot do more than just answer questions you can gain a deeper understanding of your customers. This can help create a better service for your customers, increasing customer satisfaction and giving a reason for your clientele to come back.
Save Costs
As a small business, you want to invest in customer retention while also not breaking the bank. In 2019, businesses spent nearly $1.3 trillion to answer 265 billion customer requests. With chatbots, 30% of that spending was saved.
Investing in a Chatbot can save extra costs by reducing the amount of time needed to answer customer requests by hand. This can also drive deeper customer understanding, making the investment even more valuable.
Whether you’re a big or small business, Chatbots can give so much more support and value to your company. Being able to answer your customers’ questions with an almost immediate response at any time means chatbots can boost your customer satisfaction, help you gain revenue, and improve your customer support system while saving you money along the way.
