A business can exist without anything — without employees, sales and production space, advertising and marketing, and even without goods. It cannot exist, however, without clients. A company that understands that attracting and retaining customers is the main task of its activities already benefits from it. Those who also understand how to do it correctly become leaders with high efficiency and minimal costs. One of the most effective ways to attract and retain clients is using a chatbot.
Why Are Chatbots Needed?
They are customer service automation tools. They are virtual robots that operate according to certain communication algorithms. A significant part of business processes consists of formalized, repetitive procedures that any person performs with varying degrees of success, depending on the mood, health, weather, time of day, and day of the week. Communication on these issues can be transferred to the chatbot. It will do this no worse than a person and much faster, not paying attention to time and fatigue.
Customers Are Ready to Communicate with Robots
The key point for business is that messenger and social media platforms are the environments in which chatbots live and operate. Almost all clients of any company have instant messengers and social networks on their mobile devices. There is no need to download and install anything additionally, and this is the fundamental advantage and difference between a chatbot and a mobile application. All communications and related business processes, network services, and resources can be integrated into a chatbot and thereby improve and simplify the customer experience.
Areas of Application of Chatbots
Such robots are virtual personalities representing enterprises in communication channels, capable of serving a client constantly and on all issues:
- Marketing:
- answer questions about goods and services;
- send content; and
- collect information and classify clients during the dialogue.
- Sales:
- accept order;
- checkout the service; and
- remind about uncompleted orders.
- Support:
- answer routine questions;
- send forms and documents; and
- call a person for help.
- Loyalty:
- earn loyalty points;
- conduct quizzes and draws; and
- send personal offers.
For business, a chatbot strategically is a way to gain a competitive advantage: to get as close to clients as possible, bypass competitors, get on a mobile device, and remain present in the lives of customers at every stage of the customer journey.
Tactically, a chatbot allows you to automate any stage of the customer journey — from marketing and sales to support and loyalty. The robot saves costs and conducts dialogues simultaneously with hundreds or thousands of customers, which allows you to scale your business.
Thus, the advantages of chatbots are that they work 24/7 and respond to customer requests within seconds, which improves the customer experience and service of the company. This is the main alternative to a mobile application and can be used to automate communication with customers as much as possible.
