The arrival of Chatbots is considered to be an incredible breakthrough in the realm of business or any kind of entrepreneurships. It is one of the smartest innovations by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) that businesses can count on. The Chatbot is a software that can be programmed to carry out a certain set of actions all by itself, like a wind-up toy, in text or spoken formats. The capability of the bots to learn from the past interactions and grow in itself, makes it more attractive and interesting. Chatbots work in two different ways. Firstly, predefined responses are given from an existing database, based on the keywords searched by customers. The smart machine based bots attract their knowledge from Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing and adapt their behavior based on the customer interactions.
Applicability of Chatbots in Business:
The applicability of these chatting bots is quite relevant in this era of digital glory. As the new tech-savvy generation of customers is always connected to the social platforms, they definitely expect a seamless and less time consuming customer experience with the brands they love. Econsultancy found in a research that 57% of customers prefer live chat to email or a phone call. There’s no surprise that consumers today are appreciating chatting or texting more than any other forms of communication. To address this priority of the customers and outgrow in this competitive business world, many business giants are adopting these virtual agents.
It’s a Smart Trend for Entrepreneurial Venture:
With the widespread adoption of the artificial intelligence, the human interaction and connectivity has taken a fascinating turn. This extremely sophisticated and versatile tool can be helpful in crafting any small or big business plan. Apart from being awesome in resolving customer care queries, Chatbots can be a part of an entrepreneurial strategy in many ways. That’s where the appeal of Chatbots lies. There are many different approaches to navigate this connectivity tool throughout the business venture. Let’s have a look at some of these approaches:
- As every organization has a unique set of customers, the Chatbots must be programmed in accordance with customer journey. Knowing the finer details of the customer journey from A-Z, might be proved as the foundation for success. As AI is enacting a larger role in business reforms, having accurate foresight and experience is the most needed prerequisite to program the bot.
- After programming the bot, it should be designed in a way that would enhance customer success by advancing them down the sales funnel. A microscopic view of the customer service and sales data always helps in this regard. One should have a good grasp on:
- Which patterns and questions are asked the most?
- How the responses can be programmed to answer all of them?
- And most importantly, in what way all the necessary information can be provided to bring people from awareness stage to a decision?
In order to guide the customer seamlessly through the sales funnel with the help of the intelligent bot, an entrepreneur needs to put himself/herself in the shoes of the average customer and develop the bot around their path to success.
- To build strong relationships with customers, another smarter way is to “humanize” the Chatbot. People generally want to buy something from other people, not from a robot. Therefore, programming responses needs to be done in a way that reflects the character and personality of the brand. The Chatbot need to be designed with a tinge of human empathy with the authentic brand voice.
- Lastly, with the changing digital landscape, customer mindsets are also always in the verge of change. To stay on the top of the game, one must have to consistently analyze the data and evolve the bot accordingly.
Future of Chatbots:
Chatbots are currently being utilized as easy and fun ways on websites, social platforms and smartphones to assist customers in their interactions with a brand. Even if the Chatbots are still in rudimentary stage, we can expect a lot more progressions in this trend. With the gradual evolution of Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning, the Chatbots will become more empowered to edify the conversational interface of businesses. Chatbots are going to get a lot smarter, more intelligent and indistinguishable from a human being with the advancement of AI. However, it will definitely take some trials and errors before the chatting robots master and adopt the delicacies of polite conversation.
Also, it’s quite predictable that the cost of Chatbots will eventually get cheaper as the adoption of it increases across multiple domains. An example is Facebook’s decision to let third-party applications build Chatbots in their platform has drastically lowered the price.
Conclusion:
It really amazes us how far technology has come up in the last several years in the digital marketing arena. However, some things will always remain the same. Even if everything gets automated in the future, nothing will minimize the appeal of optimal user experience. The bots can be used to automate a huge chunk of the marketing process, but without making the process dull and impersonal. Only then these marvels of technology will be able to make wonders.