How to Find the Right Chatbots for Customer Support Chatbots

Customer support is critical to the success of any business. This is why business owners must pay special attention to it. Customers prefer doing business with companies that provide exceptional customer service.

You must have had the bitter experience of speaking to an inattentive customer service representative. Worse yet, they offer you poor services because they don’t know what they’re doing.

One way to avoid such situations is by using chatbots. This article assesses the benefits of using chatbots for customer support purposes. In addition, it explains the different types available.

What Are Chatbots?

Before diving deeper into the benefits of using chatbots for customer support, it is important to understand what they are. Chatbots are automated programs that interact with customers like human agents.

They can have regular conversations that don’t sound robotic while helping you resolve issues. Thanks to advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, these programs can quickly deliver useful information while simultaneously resolving queries.

Benefits of Using Chatbots for Customer Support

Adopting chatbots for your business’s customer support needs is a no-brainer because there are many benefits attached. In this section of the article, we explore some of these benefits.

Faster Query Response

More than ever, customers want quick answers to their queries. This is why using a chatbot for your customer support needs is important.

These bots offer a sub-one-second response that is sure to make customers feel important and heard. Compare this to filling out a form and waiting for 24 hours or more before getting a response. 

Ability to Serve More Customers

In traditional customer support desk settings, customers must wait to be transferred to the next available agent. If the agent is busy with another customer, other customers must wait. With the efficiency of chatbots, you can serve more customers in half the time.

Reduce Support Costs

You can considerably reduce your business’ support costs with AI-powered customer support chatbots.

When customer supports bots handle most of your customer inquiries, it is easy to scale up without incurring too much additional cost. In fact, when done right, you won’t even sacrifice customer experience.

24/7 Support

If you want your customer support center to work 24/7, you’d likely need a retinue of agents to share shifts. This means you’ll pay more. With customer chatbots, this becomes easy. Chatbots are a great way to provide 24/7 customer support.

With chatbot technology, you can create an automated system that is always available to answer questions and help customers with their needs. This lets your team focus on more important tasks while providing the best possible user experience. 

Helps With Branding

Your automated chatbot could be a notable part of your brand. How do you do this? It doesn’t mean the chatbot will no longer be a platform for answering customer questions.

Rather, it will transcend that. By giving the chatbot a name and even a face, customers associate it with your brand.

Improves Customer Experience

By responding promptly to queries and helping customers complete simple processes, chatbots can improve the overall customer experience. With improved customer interaction, you can build trust and have several repeat customers visiting your website.

Types of Chatbots

One important thing to note is that chatbots come in different types. The ideal one for your business will depend on your needs and the nature of your business.

Voice Bots

With the rise of smart voice assistants like Siri and Google Assistant, why say no to a voice bot for your business? They offer a new level of convenience because most customers find it easier to talk than to type.

These bots use AI to identify important speech signals and determine the appropriate response. The message is subsequently converted to audio by a TTS engine.

Menu-Based Chatbots

With menu-based chatbots, you have one of the most basic chatbots. Chatting with this type of chatbot is like working with a decision tree.

Menu-based chatbots provide customers with a menu of options to choose from. This allows customers to quickly and easily find the information they need without waiting for a live response or searching through FAQs. Menu-based chatbots can be used in many industries, including retail, hospitality, healthcare, finance, and more.

A menu-based chatbot is designed to lead customers down a path toward their desired outcome. For example, if a customer wants to purchase a product, the chatbot will ask them questions about what they want. Subsequently, it will present them with a selection of products that match their criteria.

Keyword-Based Chatbot

A keyword-based chatbot uses customizable keywords to determine the appropriate response to queries using an AI process called natural language processing. It is important to note that these bots may not perform optimally if there are similar inquiries.

Rule-Based Chatbots

If you can predict what consumers would ask, you should start using a rule-based chatbot. With this type of customer service automation, you can create chat flows using if/then logic. This type of chatbot is also called a linguistic chatbot. It’s crucial to be specific when creating a rule-based chatbot.

Hybrid Chatbot

Hybrid chatbots are gaining in popularity as they offer businesses the best of both worlds — rule-based and natural language processing. These hybrid bots combine AI technology with human elements to provide customers with more personalized service that can also lead to increased customer loyalty. This enables businesses to save time when resolving customer issues while never sacrificing quality.

With their cost-effectiveness, scalability, and improving accuracy, hybrid chatbots are quickly becoming the go-to choice for many businesses looking to optimize the customer experience.

They not only help businesses keep up with the growing demand but also allow them to better manage customer growth and loyalty efficiently.

Final Thoughts

The best businesses take advantage of technology to improve their workflow. It is no surprise that businesses are now massively adopting chatbots. This article offers a glimpse of the benefits that come with these bots and the different types available.