Suddenly last year, we saw the emergence of "CHATBOTS - and "CONVERSATIONAL INTERFACES" on offer from companies small and big. Many claim to be breaking the new frontier, and that's certainly true in the majority of cases. Mobile technology is constantly evolving and this innovation is introducing immaculate changes in the basic day-to-day activities. The inclusion of automation in the task has made our lifestyle quite easy. With markets growing and open-handedly accepting technologies, things like smart text and Artificial Intelligence- based Chatbots are set to take a giant leap in the upcoming years, or they already have one might say!
On average, as per various stats, more than 170 companies and a total funding of US$4B have been funded into the landscape of Chatbots. That's huge! What used to seem a concept of some science fiction has slowly transformed into a reality. AI and robotics have moved to the mainstream. The recent developments from the tech giants namely Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, have taken the game of Chatbot to a whole another level. They've started using the Chatbots as a rich data source to aid brands better understand demands and habits of the user to personalize and enhance the customer experience. No wonder why marketers have found a new heaven in Chatbots and AI.
Let's dig down further to understand the blossoming relationship of Customers, Marketers, and Chatbots.
Marketer's Haven - " A Means of Enhancing the Customer Experience
There are two different ways to interact with the web. Passive and Proactive Interaction. While Passive Interaction entirely depends upon the visitor to start the communication with a brand, Proactive Interaction, on the other hand, is the first to start the communication with the visitor. This is one approach to engaging and assisting the visitor, which helps marketers achieve multiple goals.
Let's take a look how Chatbots help marketers make tons of money!
Visitor Engagement
Keeping resources to take a feedback from each and every visitor about the services offered is an almost impossible task. However, a Chatbot can be used to scale, respond, and interact with as many visitors as required, when needed.
Site Feedback
Chatbots help you collect critical data of your page to enhance your website. For instance, if visitors are landing on a specific product page but are confused about pricing, Chatbots can help marketing team by enhancing the product page with precise pricing details in order to accomplish enhanced conversations.
Lead Qualification
A significant amount of visitors might not be qualified to coordinate with you as they may not have a budget, timeline, or other necessary resources. However, a Chatbot can help determine the qualified leads and help drive those to the sales team or directly to the conversion.
Nurturing Lead
Chatbots help your business by collecting the data about potential and existing prospect in order to help you customize and engage with them when they return to the website or throughout their customer journey.
Negotiation
Marketers are well aware of how retargeting and remarketing works once a visitor leaves a specific site. In such case, Chatbots could play a vital role in negotiating before the potential customers leave or plan to leave by offering something like a payment plan.
Have question? Why don't you drop us a line?
Chatbot Integration with Service Industry - Moving Towards a Better Experience
While there are certain imperatives when it comes to implementing an AI-based assistant in a business, the entry barrier is far much lower than one might want to believe. The market, especially, the service industry and Chatbots synchronize well with each other. In fact, they can go long enough to solve client queries saving human cost efficiently and offering a personalized and pleasant experience to the customers.
Let's talk about some of the major sectors where Chatbots have extravagantly entered to transform the customer experience.
Media and Publishing
Famous Media and News behemoths like Fox news, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal have launched their own Chatbots on Facebook messenger in order to help you receive the latest news.
Retail and Restaurant Sector
Famous fast food giants like Taco Bell and Burger King introduced their own Chatbots to have an edge against their competitors in the market, and understand their customer demands. They are using Chatbots to greet customers, offer menu options, etc. Moreover, these Chatbots allow the buyers to choose their pickup location, payment, and notify the time when their orders are ready. These Chatbots have not only proven to be of a great help in reducing pain and work of restaurant staff, but they also offer a better and more enhanced user experience for the customers.
Finance Industry
Chatbots have entered the finance industry. They are being programmed to assist the customers as Tax Bots, Financial Advisor, Banking Bots, and Expense Saving Bot. Fintech and banking sectors have ample opportunities with Chatbots as they help them by reducing the cost and possibilities of human errors.
Health Industry
Chatbots are evolving in the health industry. HealthTap, Alexa, and icliniq are few of the most evolved and high-tech examples of Chatbots in this sector. They're a better fit than Standalone apps for patient engagement. Users can use these bots to ask health related queries and receive immediate responses or the same. However, these responses could be either original or fetched from previous similar responses stored in the database. Chatbots can offer personalized responses to the patients. These are few of the best examples of the success in the service industry and Chatbots combo.
Travel and Hospitality
Well known travel companies like Skyscanner, Expedia.com, and Kayak have launched their own bots on platforms like Slack and Facebook Messenger. These bots help travelers to book their preferred hotels. Even the company dealing with Travel and Hospitality like Uber, Hyatt Hotels, and Booking.com have integrated with Facebook Messenger for the same. Automation in this sector has offered a solution for issues related to productivity, labor costs, and have provided a seamless approach to ensure a consistent and streamlined production process throughout the system.
Fashion Industry
Iconic fashion brands like Sephora, H&M, Tommy Hilfiger, and Burberry have launched their Chatbots for the New York and London Fashion Week. It has been done to offer personal treatment to customers by the approach of exchanging messages, offering information, feedback and required suggestions. Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Chatbots have paved a new horizon of possibilities in this industry, right from Personal Chatbot Stylists to Data Analytics.
Food for thought
Like we mentioned before, Chatbots are the next biggest frontiers. Now, you know why we've been calling Chatbots as the biggest money spinners, don't you? Ignoring Chatbot revolution will not only push you back in the tech evolution going around, but will also cost you time and sales.
