Chatbots are often seen with a negative view. But are they really the enemy? If we explore some of the key features that make a good chatbot they can actually help enhance the customer journey and positively impact internal metrics in the contact centre.
- Natural Language Understanding: A great chatbot should understand and respond to customer queries in natural language, eliminating the need for rigid, predefined responses we need to train the chatbot using actual customer language so access to recordings or transcripts will help.
- Personalisation: Personalisation is key. Chatbots should be able to tailor responses based on customer data, providing a more engaging and relevant experience so integrating well with CRM systems can be a game changer
- Seamless Integration: Integration with other systems and data sources is crucial as outlined above. A chatbot that can access customer information and historical data and can provide more efficient solutions as a result taking into account multiple variables.
- 24/7 Availability:Chatbots never sleep 💤 They can handle enquiries at any time, reducing response times and improving customer satisfaction so having a follow the sun agent for out of hours and more support access to more Global audiences.
- Escalation to Humans: A good chatbot knows when to hand off complex issues to human agents, but you have to train the bit to do this effectively to ensure customers receive the help they need when the automation falls short.
- Continuous Learning: Chatbots should learn from interactions to improve over time. Machine learning and AI enable them to become more accurate and helpful.
So are Chatbots the enemy? Only when configured badly, they should have a positive impact on CX and a positive impact on internal metrics and I think above 
all let’s not fake that it’s a bot, deception doesn’t build trust! There is nothing worse then thinking you are speaking with a human and the “human” trying to build rapport and empathy only to be told we’ll need to escalate to an actual person, it feels disingenuous and immediately breaks any rapport once it goes wrong.
Now, let’s talk about the impact on internal metrics, a good Chatbot Strategy should be clear on the problem that its trying to solve, ultimately we are trying to deflect demand away from agents and give customers the opportunity to self serve and maintain their relationship with us how they choose, whether that’s online via webchat or chat bot or if they want to, email and or contact us those options are available, the benefit obviously with Live chat and Chatbots is the convenience, but Chat bot implementations should have multiple benefits internally as well as benefiting the customer
📈 Improved Efficiency: Chatbots can handle routine enquiries, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex tasks, resulting in higher productivity, this is especially important when customers are showing more vulnerability and we need to spend more time on the interaction, but it’s also more about the complexity of the case, arguably these days customers source the basic on line so voice interactions can be more complex.
📊 Cost Savings: With automation, businesses can reduce labour costs while maintaining or even improving service quality, most business want to generate a profit so reducing the cost to serve is a strategic objective for a lot of business’ so automating and using AI helps streamline costs and drive efficiency.
📉 Reduced Wait Times: Faster responses lead to reduced customer wait times, which can significantly boost customer satisfaction and retention. We’ve all been at the mercy of “your call is important to us” and we’ve all thought all I want to do is check something simple of change something quickly, having real time access to virtual agents using chatbots can be a game change in the service you provide.
🔄 Enhanced Scalability: As customer demand fluctuates, chatbots can scale effortlessly, ensuring consistent service during peak periods. We can’t run a contact centre at peak staffing levels all of the time so using chat bots for busy intervals can alleviate the pressure on the internal team and improve overall service levels and wait times
So I think we have proven the chatbots are not the enemy; they are valuable allies in the quest for exceptional customer service. When designed with these key features in mind, chatbots can transform the customer journey and elevate contact centre performance. Embrace this technology to stay ahead in the customer service game. For help with your digital journeys and chatbot configuration drop us a line and see how we can help
#Chatbots #CustomerService #ContactCenter 🚀
