What is a Chatbot and How Can It Improve My Business?

Chatbots have become a key access point for customers, a navigation tool for customer service agents, and a popular method for enhancing customer experience and digital online strategies for businesses of all industries. Developments in AI are making chatbots more flexible than ever before. They can be programmed to communicate with various APIs to respond to a wider range of requests, providing more flexibility, collaboration, and convenience within the digital CX space.

Chatbots enable your customers to communicate with your business with greater ease and offer assistive benefits for your employees too. This article will answer critical questions about chatbots and how implementing one into your omnichannel customer service strategy is beneficial for your business.

What is a Self-Service Chatbot?

Self-service chatbots are automated software applications that engage in live conversations with real-life customers via text or text-to-speech technology.

Chatbots are enabled to assist customers with simple, straightforward requests that can be resolved without human intervention. Chatbots interact with customers as conversational partners, and if the chatbot is unable to resolve the customers' queries, they can quickly connect the customer to a human agent.

According to a study conducted by Opus Research, 48% of customers are happy to engage with a chatbot, and 35% of customers want to see more chatbot AI throughout their customer journey.

Customer experience consumers now expect to engage with businesses that offer fast, convenient, personal, and hassle-free interactions. All of these expectations can easily be facilitated by introducing a well-programmed chatbot into your omnichannel strategy.

Chatbots eliminate unnecessary friction throughout the customer journey and offer a seamless communication experience that your busy customers will appreciate. They make your business more convenient for customers and greatly improve your digital CX results. 

How Do Chatbots Benefit Customers?

Although chatbots have been around for a while now, many businesses owners are unfamiliar with them. Here is a quick breakdown of how a chatbot can enhance the digital customer experience.

Real-time Support

Chatbots provide customers with immediate answers to their questions at any time of the day. Along with the 24/7 support, they even store conversation data, so customers can pick up exactly where they left off during their previous visit.

Minimize Errors

Replacing some customer service functions with chatbots reduces instances of human error and can increase customer satisfaction significantly.

Personalizes The Customer Journey

Chatbots can offer personalized recommendations for customers based on their preferences, ensuring that every customer feels special and that their CX is tailored to fit them uniquely. 

Benefits for Businesses

Building chatbots into existing workflows can launch your business to the next level. Here are some of the key benefits that chatbots can bring to your business and the digital customer experience.

Lower Business Costs

Deploying chatbots saves money on employing human customer service agents. Additionally, chatbots handle simple queries, leaving your live agents to focus on more complex work.

Higher ROI

A sophisticated chatbot has the potential to reduce call volume, increase engagement rate, and convert casual browsers into buyers.

Humanizes Your Brand

A well-programmed chatbot will not pass the Turing test, but customers much prefer to engage in conversation to resolve their issue rather than scrolling through the FAQ - whether with a human or chatbot.

How to Start Using a Chatbot

To start using a chatbot first you must add one to your website. You can do this by coding it into your website from scratch or using a chatbot builder.

Coded chatbot builders are a tempting option for small to medium businesses and larger-scale enterprises that are new to AI, but coding a chatbot yourself has many drawbacks that can end up costing you more later down the line.

Automated code-based chatbot builders are time-consuming, costly if you get it wrong, have limited options, and add less value to the customer journey.

If you only wish to run a simple test then go for it, but if you want to build a meaningful digital customer experience then a personalized no-code chatbot like Clickatells chat self-service is the perfect addition. The chat self-service is easy to install and integrate within your current digital marketing strategies.

A no-code chatbot like Clickatell enables brands to build their own chatbot with no code necessary. Clickatell's Chat Flow feature is a 24-hour self-service solution that can help your customers to:/

• Find their nearest store

• Check opening and operating times

• Confirm travel itineraries

• Track orders

• Confirm and cancel appointments

Clickatell keeps your customers engaged and up-to-date. Integrating Clickatell's simple no-code technology into your existing website is easy, and offers your customers a superior shopping experience.

How Clickatell Can Help

Self-service is the new customer service. Giving your customers the option to solve their own problems increases customer satisfaction and has a significant positive impact on your CX results and digital customer journey.

Clickatell can help you to start using chatbots by helping you to integrate them within your existing digital marketing strategies. Our easy and seamless automated chatbot solutions combined with a specialized Chat Desk feature, that transfers your customers to live agents instantly, can really give you a competitive edge and position your brand right at the heart of your target market.

Creating an omnichannel customer service that adds value to your brand is critical to helping your business stand out and scale-up. If you are looking to enhance your digital customer experience, connect with a Clickatell Expert today to explore how to improve your customer engagement, ROI, and digital CX.