With 79% of businesses saying that live chat has had a positive effect on sales, revenue, and customer loyalty, it's no wonder that it's becoming an increasingly crucial staple in the world of customer service and delight. Similarly, chatbots can also be a useful tool to help businesses save up to 30% on customer support costs.
Both live chat and chatbots are worthwhile investments for businesses across industries. But which one should you use?
Here are the top four times where using chatbots is the ideal option for your company:
One of the best ways to use chatbots is to streamline your incoming chats. The chatbot can provide a friendly introduction and ask some simple questions to help connect the user with someone who can best assist them.
To use a chatbot to greet and route users, you’ll have to determine the different routing options that are available within your company. For example, you may want to segment inquiries by the department, such as billing, customer support, or sales. Another option would be to route incoming chats for new vs. existing customers.
A marketing chatbot can be set up to ask for their name and contact information, then to inquire about the basis of their issue. From there, they can connect the user to the appropriate live person for further help.
Chatbots are great for collecting information. They can be set up to ask specific questions and follow different branch paths based on the user’s answers.
To use a chatbot to qualify leads, you’ll have to determine your qualifications as well as the desired outcomes for both qualified and unqualified users. For example, you may want to use a chatbot to book meetings with decision-makers, but you don’t want to book meetings with people who are in a less authoritative role. Your chatbot could ask the user for their title or position, then continue the conversation accordingly based on their answer.
In this case, your qualification is job title or position, your desired outcome for qualified users is a booked meeting, and your desired outcome for unqualified leads could be to provide content that they could share with the decision-makers.
Most SMBs don’t have the resources to be available for live chat 24-7. Chatbots can help fill the gap, especially since 64% of users say that 24-hour service is the best chatbot feature.
One simple practice that many businesses have adopted is to use live chat during business hours and employ a chatbot during off-hours. This can be a better option than having your chat functionality be unavailable and thus losing out on potential inquiries simply due to timing.
When you’ve been in business for a while, you’ll likely start to notice patterns in the questions that you get asked. A marketing chatbot can be used to answer the most commonly asked questions, saving both you and the user valuable time. In fact, 55% of respondents say they would most enjoy getting an instant response and answers to simple questions from a chatbot.
Think of this type of chatbot as a sort of modernized automated telephone service. It can provide business hours, contact information, product options, and support documents to quickly help the user find what they’re looking for.
Just as with the automated phone systems, however, beware of frustrating your users with overly complicated or redundant options. Keep it simple and, whenever possible, always provide the option to transfer to a live human instead.