Whether via social communication platforms such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram or on websites or WordPress pages, chatbots are automated chat bots that can metamorphose a business on many levels. This is one of the innovations resulting from artificial intelligence. Today, the use of a chatbot in a company is particularly beneficial in customer relations. Find out in this article why and how to use a chatbot.
What is a chatbot?
Chatbot is composed of “chat”, an English word meaning conversation or discussion, and “bot”, meaning robot. Given this composition, the definition of a chatbot could simply be “a robot that chats”. Indeed, technological and digital advances have enabled the creation of robotic software capable of chatting online like humans.
A chatbot is therefore a computer program (programmed bot) that imitates or reproduces a spoken or written human conversation in order to interact automatically with web users via a digital channel. It’s one of the innovations that companies can use to enhance their quality of service.
Moreover, chatbots offer many advantages to the companies that use them. For example, this programmed bot can facilitate customer relations and communication. When a customer is looking for information on a company’s products or services, the chatbot can provide answers tailored to their query.
The use of this programmed bot in a company can also be beneficial in the execution of certain tasks. With its ability to mimic a human being, the chatbot improves the user experience.
What are the different types of chatbot?
Now that you know the answer to the question “What is a chatbot?”, note that there are two categories. The first is conversational bots based on pre-programmed rules. These are chatbots with scenarios developed from common problems that the consumer or user can submit to the chatbot.
For example, they could be questions about your company’s opening hours, the price of your products or services, payment terms and so on. As a result, this type of chatbot is prepared to instantly resolve such concerns. In this way, the customer can get automatic answers to a given business-related question.
Intelligent or artificial intelligence (AI)-driven conversational robots represent the second type of chatbot. They rely on AI, more specifically automatic natural language processing, to decipher the context and purpose of the conversation in order to provide satisfactory answers.
Artificial intelligence-enabled chatbots such as Botnation can also analyze sentiment to identify user emotions and behavior for more personalized conversations. The exchange experience with an intelligent chatbot will be similar to that with a human person.
What’s the point of a chatbot, and why use it?
The popularity of chatbots is no coincidence. According to statistics on the use of this programmed bot, conversational agents count almost 3 billion users per month on instant messaging applications. This represents a real opportunity for companies and the deployment of their digital strategy.
This year, the exchange rate between companies and customers via a virtual robot with artificial intelligence should reach 85%. No matter what business sector your company operates in, chatbots give it a new lease of life, especially when it comes to marketing or customer management.
So, implementing this programmed bot in a company is beneficial for improving service quality. Just as the quality of the customer experience is essential for customers, so it is for companies. But customer service can often fail when it’s swamped by phone calls and messages of all kinds.
The chatbot solves this problem. Even in the absence of your customer service experts or Community Manager, it responds to all user expectations 24/7. It also impacts your after-sales service, which becomes more responsive and dynamic. The answers are immediate and, above all, precise.
Having a chatbot in your company is an investment that will pay for itself fairly quickly, as it reduces the cost of customer service. What’s more, this programmed bot enables customer relations agents to deploy their skills in other high value-added activities.
Tourism is one of the industries where conversational agents are widely used. Whether you’re a travel agency, hotel or airline, integrating a chatbot into your social media or website will help boost your efficiency. From the conversational robot, the web user can make or cancel a reservation, ask what time dinner is served, how long a flight will take, and so on.
The chatbot is also useful for real-time data analysis. Depending on the conversations it conducts with users, the tool can store and process large quantities of information. This enables your sales and marketing teams to categorize your database, a necessary step in setting up effective marketing campaigns.
The chatbot is a conversational marketing tool that brings customers closer to the company, respectively. Like chatbots, callbots and voicebots are works of technology that can be used by customers or prospects.
