What’s the solution? Technology now allows a variety of real-time services for customers, including live chats, direct messages on social media, and texting with representatives. For some easy or repetitive questions, it may not be necessary to have live customer service reps standing by. In fact, in many cases, let’s face it — it just wouldn’t be practical.
Enter chatbots and AI.
How Chatbots Improve Customer Experience
Do chatbots work in customer service? A few years ago, the thought that chatbots could help customers was a nice idea but wasn’t yet practical. Today, as AI and the technology to support it continues to improve, chatbots are becoming increasingly more intelligent and helpful.
But do customers really want to talk to machines?
The answer is, as usual, not black or white. Customers generally want one thing out of customer service interactions: assistance that is efficient, helpful, and fast. If chatbots can provide that, customers are satisfied. These days, customers are not as concerned about where their answers or help comes from, as long as their needs are met — and in many cases, chatbots can answer questions and fill in information very quickly, sometimes more so than a traditional customer service representative. So, the question then is: Can a chatbot interpret questions and answer them accurately?
How it Works
Chatbots are more personal and responsive than ever before, and they’re now able to understand language and provide dynamic solutions.
With the speed at which technology is advancing, chatbots and AI are constantly improving. In every customer interaction, chatbots are gathering information and aggregating data to help them perform better in the next conversation. Every customer touchpoint becomes an opportunity for the business to better understand that individual’s preferences and how their experience might be similar to other customers.
Machine learning is advancing all the time, so as it learns, a chatbot can pick up on language cues and sentiment analytics that indicate if a customer is becoming increasingly frustrated (or very happy ?). But, when the conversation requires more delicate handling, the bot can immediately transfer it to a human representative, which mitigates the potential for further frustration and is a seamless experience for the customer.
The key to implementing chatbots successfully is to understand that they are not meant to function as a replacement for human operators. Human engagement is still a very necessary and important part of complex customer service inquiries. So instead, as chatbots are becoming increasingly more intuitive, the business can augment their company’s existing customer service staff and gain efficiency by streamlining the process of communication without sacrificing quality in their customer engagements.
Even with constant innovation and new technology, there will probably always be some questions that are just too complex for chatbots to answer. While chatbot limitations are less and less, they still make an incredible supplement to your traditional customer service team. Agents love them too as they are able to focus on the more important customer interactions while getting support from their chatbot counterparts to help customers with less complex requests.
Step Up Your Customer Service With Quiq
Want to grow your business in 2020? It can be tricky to keep up with new customer service trends like live chats, chatbots, messaging, and AI. Quiq is here to help.
In addition to enabling conversations between customers and representatives over digital channels, Quiq also enables bot technology that’s more personal than ever before. Browse our site to learn more about what we do — or better yet, see it for yourself. Try a demo today to see how Quiq can help your company use chatbots in customer service and build better connections with customers.
