"Gartner predicts that by 2020 people will have more conversations with chatbots than their spouse," Christi Olson, Chatbot Expert

What Are Chatbots?

Modern chatbots, in their simplest form, are digital assistants that deliver specific results via a chat interface. In the most complex form, they are artificial intelligence tools that will make high-end marketing activities flexible as well as scalable. They are and will change the face of marketing as we know it.

The most conspicuous use of chatbots presently is in the customer support segment where it is helping brands deliver seamlessly with little or no effort through automation of routine queries and mundane information as well as in aiding simple purchase decisions and customer journey.

Multitask with Ease

A chatbot is a multi-tasking solution which saves a user from the hassle of using multiple platforms to perform a set of tasks like selecting a restaurant, booking a reservation and adding an event into the calendar. It thus also saves even the storage space for zillions of apps in the mobile devices. With chatbots- marketers, business users as well as the end customers are finding their task automated and simplified without any hassle seamlessly.

Personalize at Will

Brands need to position chatbots as the starting point to develop a full-scale digital assistant that understands the real need of the customers and their paint points as well as the hiccups in their journey with them. And hence, such bots can deliver delightful experience to customers by providing relaxing and relevant solutions to their queries as well as grievances with a conversational follow-up. Engaging your customers and giving them your ears is the primary goal of these bots deployed by brands.

Brand Loyalty

They provide incredibly customized communication for specific users or your end customers to truly excel you in your customer experience efforts and bring in better business returns with loyal and delighted customers at a time of stiff competition and choices.

THE EASE OF USE & IMPROVISED USER EXPERIENCE WILL BE THE DETERMINANT IN TIMES TO COME!

Cut on the Digital Clutter

We are witnessing the era of digital transformation- which is a good news. However, its has led to massive race of application and product development that both confuses and tortures the customers with complexity, clutter and storage constraints. Proliferation of billions of apps is burdening the already impatient and frustrated customer.

People do not want to search the whole blog database, where your entire newsletter gets lost in the in their email inbox clutter, and they'll straight away unfollow you or dump you into spam if they find your social feeds overwhelming and repetitive. When a person experiences a problem, she or he looks for the path of least resistance to arrive at the answer. A bot can flawlessly offer them the right path towards their grievance redressal with the least amount of investment on their part.

New Age Revolution

Consumer preferences are already favoring chat over email for communication, and more and more businesses need to figure this. With Artificial Intelligence, ML and NLP maturing along with a leveraged cloud based Cognitive services, the future is going to be an era of Conversation as a Servicer (CaaS). Messaging apps have now become a second home screen for the millennials and hence with internet proliferation and maturity brands would have to catch them live. The time is ripe for brands to develop such application-embed with bots, which are so designed from the bottom that it can leverage artificial intelligence and ML to offer services ranging from customer services, to e-commerce solutions and online product and services delivery. Added to that, the development around NLP is revolutionizing the outputs of artificial intelligence to boost the efficacy of modern day chatbots.

"The development around NLP: is revolutionizing the outputs of artificial intelligence to boost the efficacy of modern day chatbots."

Higher Rate of Return

Chatbots should however not be employed- which would be a mistake- to simply drive traffic to your website for a short-term gain but to engage users into fruitful conversations. Rather than using bots to send push notifications for a special offer or land them to your website, you should now leverage these bots as the conversion tool with the messenger app itself by incorporating pre-stored data and API integration. A conversion is a conversion. If chatbots offer you a faster, effective and higher ROI, it is time to think out of the box.

Faster Service Delivery

Your chatbot should help your user reduce the time taken to arrive at purchase decisions and actions they have to make every day. What you should not do is to deploy bot to act as another connection channel where you click on irrelevant and out of context blanket content. Even for the less complex tasks in which the chatbot usually operates, the customer must have the option of engaging in another channel or person if she or he cannot reach a satisfactory solution. It, hence, must be kept in mind that the duties you want your bot to perform must be allocated at the very instance you think of deploying one and the type of platform, environment and department for bot installation

WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT DO IS TO DEPLOY BOT TO ACT AS ANOTHER CONNECTION CHANNEL WHERE YOU CLICK ON IRRELEVANT AND OUT OF CONTEXT BLANKET CONTENT.

Ending Thoughts:

The Chatbot has unlimited potential. At the moment, it is difficult to understand the full scope of what chatbots can do. But, we are certain that bots are the future. But what kind of future they are about to dawn remains yet to be discovered- with tremendous potential and promises. It will all depend on the marketers, the salespeople, the founders, the emerging companies, the front line of artificial intelligence implementers, the customers, the technology evolution and all stake holders.

Also Read:

5 ways live chat can transform your CX strategy

Top 4 metrics to measure your Customer Experience

5 technological breakthroughs that are changing the CX landscape

6 advantages of AI that can supercharge your customer experience