6 Reasons Why Chat Bots Will Improve Customer Experience In 2018 And Beyond

Consumer experience involves careful planning and prompt responses to consumer interactions in order to satisfy or stay on top of consumer anticipations, thereby, snowballing consumer fulfillment, devotion, and support.

Why is Consumer Experience Important?

Ensuring a superior consumer experience is critical for companies today because consumers are savvier than ever and enjoy the supremacy to choose between rival businesses.  

Here are a few stats to highlight the importance of improving customer experience:

• A survey conducted by Econsultancy for identifying Digital Marketing Trends in 2017 revealed that majority of the companies considered capitalizing on the customer experience as the most stimulating opportunity as shown in the figure below.
• Deloitte claims that more than 60 percent of businesses consider consumer experience provided by the contact centers as a competitive distinguishing factor.
• By the year 2020, consumer experience is expected to surpass cost and product as the main differentiator among different brands. Furthermore, 80 percent of consumers would be willing to pay more to ensure a better customer experience.
• According to a new Customer Service Benchmark Report issued by SuperOffice, 80 percent of companies are certain that they offer exceptional consumer service, however, only 8 percent of consumers agree.
• 78 percent of customers have ditched a transaction or did not complete a purchase due to a poor consumer service experience.
• 45 percent of individuals share bad customer experiences on their social networks, with 35 percent of individuals probable to post destructive online feedbacks after a bad experience.
• A company normally hears from 4 percent of its displeased consumers while a whopping 91 percent of discontented consumers never reappear for a repeat purchase, as shown below. This means companies end up losing potential long term clients due to a poor customer experience.

Chatbots: The Future of Consumer Experience in 2018 and Beyond

In the fast-paced online world today, consumers want rapid, frictionless solutions to their glitches and immediate responses to their queries. However, there are still acceptance problems for Artificial Intelligence and chatbots as some consumers are more inclined to seek phone support and find it difficult to accept any other option. At some point or another, we all know too well the experience of sitting in silence on hold or listening to the same songs on loop while waiting for a representative.   

Nonetheless, there is an increasing contingent of consumers who are progressively open to the idea of embracing new technology, particularly if it can boost their consumer experience. Along with the advancement of technology and gradual increment in acceptance ratio, chatbots are anticipated to have a resilient role in consumer service and support. Gartner predicted that by the year 2020, around 85 percent of all consumer interactions would be accomplished without human interference. The rapid upswing of chatbots today indicates the accuracy of this forecast. 

Here are some of the noticeable benefits of using chatbots in order to ensure superior customer experience:

1. Chatbots are less expensive and save money

Chatbots are capable of serving companies by considerably cutting down labor costs. In fact, companies can shrink their consumer service expenses by up to 30 percent by simply using chatbots. Therefore, it is comparatively cheaper to invest in a chatbot than hiring customer care reps.

Employing and training the workforce requires time as well as funds. Typically, it costs a minimum of $4000 to employ a call-center service representative. Moreover, thousands of dollars are further needed to train him/her. These expenses can rapidly increase with an upsurge in workforce attrition, which is a classic problem at various call-centers today. Therefore, chatbots can provide enormous time and cost savings in this domain as they need to be trained just once.

Computerizing a momentous extent of your consumer service role via chatbots means you can decrease the total number of workers carrying out manual jobs and concentrate them on intricate tasks that your chatbot cannot manage. This way, your workers become the escalation point instead of initial contact, thereby, increasing your ROI as labor expenditures reduce. Moreover, chatbots can also aid you in reorganizing your transactions and engagement procedures.

2. Chatbots offer faster responses

Consumers often get exasperated when they repeatedly inquire about the same issue, file a complaint or provide a recommendation, without receiving any response for weeks. Moreover, company owners also experience frustration in trying to be responsive and systematic but being disparaged irrespective of their exertion.

Did you know that around 41 percent of businesses reportedly do not respond to the emails on time?  If you are guilty of the same at times, then this is what you need to realize: if your consumer reaches out to you for the first time about an issue, and you do not respond on time, then his or her next step could be a public outburst about your company on a social network. Or, perhaps he or she would simply abandon your company and opt to do business elsewhere.

According to a generational marketing guide, Millenials are more smartphone-friendly and demand more responsive services, owing to their shorter attention spans. Chatbots can provide a higher level of responsiveness to them that is impressive, even by their standards. Therefore, the possibility of losing a buyer is promptly decreased by responding through a programmed chatbot.

3. Chatbots offer uninterrupted customer service

Did you know it takes 12 positive experiences to compensate for one unsettled negative experience? This is a serious matter for all companies trying to keep their consumers happy!

Whether it is just a chatbot acknowledging the consumers, sorting out their problems, or providing an estimated timeframe of when they should anticipate a response, merely notifying the consumers through a chatbot ensures them that their objection or query has been acknowledged. This can help companies in attaining their consumers’ goodwill.

Moreover, chatbots provide uninterrupted customer service that is not restricted to different time zones or public holidays. In contrast with the live customer care agents, chatbots do not require tea breaks or meal times. They are not absent due to sickness, breaks or even natural catastrophes which can be risky for any human.

Thus, companies can provide non-stop consumer service to nip any issues in the bud. Consequently, this ensures that consumers can have their queries answered all through the day, without waiting for days or even hours for any response. All this can significantly influence consumer fulfillment, thereby, showing that a brand is dedicated to supporting consumers – which is crucial for the organization’s status and perception among customers.

4. Chatbots ensure a closed-loop circle of learning

The more chatbots interact with consumers, the more they learn from every chat. Moreover, their involvement in ‘hybrid’ chats with customer care reps allows them to learn from the human agents, while also adding to their knowledge. This way, live agents, and chatbots can help each other in delivering improved consumer service that nurtures amplified consumer conviction. Therefore, it converts into a cyclic process of learning for the human reps as well as the chatbots.

5. Chatbots personalize the consumer experience

Chatbots are great for collecting consumer information from support interactions. Nevertheless, it is basically the computer that is doing all the effort. This greatly facilitates live customer care reps in using this data to personalize their dealings with consumers.

According to Adam Devine, CMO of WorkFusion, chatbots assist as virtual supporters that can provide consumer information to the representative in real time, so that the representative can offer the consumer accurate information and explanations on the basis of existing requirements in addition to previous dealings with the business.

Moreover, chatbots also gather a substantial amount of consumer data that can be used to update your overall corporate policy, along with particular tasks such as consumer service and promotion.

6. Chatbots can build strong relations

Majority of the businesses today desire that their representatives could dedicate more time for outbound, positive interaction with their customers. Chatbots can serve this purpose, and by certain means, they are transforming the way companies interact with their consumers.

Whether it is an email or a text message on a consumer’s birthday, or simply inquiring if they are liking the company’s products or services, chatbots are serving to nurture brand allegiance. While it may seem counterintuitive, the most refined chatbots are capable of delivering a more human experience than a real human. Chatbots do not have bad days or mood swings and they do not get irritated by usual consumers.

Final Thoughts

Majority of the companies today are using chatbots to facilitate consumers in interacting with them just as they would with their consumer care representatives. The benefits discussed in this article clearly indicate the integration of chatbots to improve the consumer's experience. These chatbots are progressively revolutionizing traditional customer service practices and so far, they are here to stay.