The success of any business lies in its Customer relationship management strategies. With the advancement of cognitive technologies such as artificial intelligence, chatbot, natural language processing (NLP), intelligent automation of customer care services has become priority for businesses. AI has been integrated within the platforms that aid in the smooth running of businesses. According to a Pew Research report published in 2015, 36% of smartphone owners use mobile messengers. This number grows to 49% in the 18–29 age group. In order to keep up with this trend, a powerful technology is required.
The History of Chatbot
A survey commissioned in 2014 by One Reach, a market research firm, explored the attitudes of US consumers to the use of texting in customer service applications. According to the survey, 64% of consumers with texting capabilities would prefer to use texting over voice as a customer service channel, and 77% of consumers with texting capabilities aged 18–34 are likely to have a positive perception of a company that offers text capability.
While chatbots have existed for years without going mainstream, Several global trends have made 2017 the year of chatbots:
- Mobile messenger domination
- App fatigue
- Support for chatbots by Facebook, Microsoft and other leaders
- Dramatic reduction in chatbot development costs
The Current Situation Of The Industry:
There are certain issues with the conventional customer care system that is followed which can be resolved with the help of AI. Take a look at the current situation.
- Sometimes the human representatives answering a customer call doesn’t know the answer to the query and has to put customer on hold. Even though they find out the solution to the problem and notify the customer, it takes up extra time resulting in more cost.
- The customer’s call is transferred several times before the query is resolved. Even though it is necessary for some situations, it impacts the company in a negative way.
- Due to limited number of customer service executives in B2C companies like telecommunication, most of the time calls are on long wait for customers.
Chatbots in the Customer Care Industry:
In order to improvise on their CRM, most organizations are attempting to automate their customer care system using Artificial Intelligence. One such brilliant example is the AI Chatbot. Chatbots haven’t been an unknown concept since ELIZA released in 1966. An SMS chatbot was launched by Salesforce in 2014 that has expanded to Facebook Messenger. The organization also offers Live Agent Chat, a product that carries out human interactions. Let us take a look at how this Artificial Intelligence Chatbot is revolutionizing the customer care industry.
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- Enhanced Accessibility of Big Data
In order to maximize the profits of an organization, it is essential for any business owner to collect useful information about customers and analyze it in a way such that it proves beneficial for the company.Artificial intelligence aids in analyzing a large amount of data efficiently and generate reports that can easily be comprehended. This way, business owners can gain a detailed insight into their target audience and utilize their time in coming up with new strategies based on the data collected.
- Revolutionization in Resolving Customer Queries
When a query arises in the mind of the customer, they don’t care whether it is resolved by a human or a bot. Most of the queries don’t require human interaction and can be resolved by the chatbot itself.
Infact a survey says that 48% of people says that they don’t care as long as it solves their issue. (Source: BI Intelligence)
However, if a query turns out to be too complex for the bot, it selects an appropriate representative of the organization based on the information collected by the customer. Then the representative can directly speak to the concerned customer to solve a problem. - Enhanced Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Gone are those days when people had to wait for their call to be forwarded through a chain of customer care employees before the resolution of their queries! There are many ways in which robotic process automation within organizations has positively changed the way customer relationships are managed.With the help of AI chatbots, personalized services can be delivered anywhere in a hassle-free manner on the basis of CRM data. Businesses are solving customer queries on a website with the help of AI Chatbot saving a call to customer care executive.
- Enhanced Accessibility of Big Data
One such brilliant example is the Eva – HDFC Bank Artificial Intelligence chatbot. HDFC Bank has claimed that it has successfully addressed 2.7 million customer queries on a website in six months.
It saves a lot of time by optimizing wait times and the availability of agents. The advanced chatbots can mimic human actions and understand human languages using Natural Language Processing.
Mobile messengers such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat and others have become the preferred means of messaging communication on mobile devices. WhatsApp has reached more than a billion of monthly active users, Facebook Messenger — 900 million, WeChat — almost 700 million (source: statista.com).
About a year ago the top four mobile messengers surpassed social networks in global popularity (source: BI Intelligence).
Website Chatbot
Chatbots are not limited to messaging channels. If we take the conversational interfaces to a website or a mobile application it will give rise to Native Chatbot Development.
Use of a website chatbot
- It results in more reliable data due to an interactive polling experience.
- Unlike common messaging channels, the interactions between users are anonymized on a website by default. This helps in reducing friction from the end of the user about the revelation of his identity. A website chatbot also reduces friction by solving the request made by the user instantly without changing the communication channel.
- For organizations with a marketplace site or a SaaS platform, a web bot usually gathers all the user data and thereby provides a personalized customer experience and offers a better context.
“We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in technology and bots are the drivers in this. This shift radically changes the user experience and improves business growth.” says Uday Birajdar, RPA expert and CEO of AutomationEdge.
Conclusion:
The best thing about using a chatbot is that it never goes to sleep and is available 24 x 7! This robotic process automation is indeed a huge step forward in the field of technology and building better customer relationships. Chatbot significantly reduces resolution time resulting in the reduction in cost and enhanced customer experience.
As the acceptance of RPA technology increases, customer service will render to be flawless in every way.