There are many ways chatbots can benefit a business, startup or established companies alike. While they are fairly new, businesses left and right are adopting chatbots. It's safe to say that chatbots are here to stay, and will only become more and more used over time.
If you're interested in making use of chatbots for your business, we've got some tips on how to integrate chatbots into your business, whether it's in:
- Customer support
- Order processing
- Marketing and lead generation
While the above aren't the only ways a chatbot can be used for business, they are the most common ones. Let's go through them one by one.
Integrating Chatbots Into Customer Support
It's important to remember that chatbots don't replace human support staff. They give the best results when both work together to make sure your customers are happy before and after buying from you.
- Start small. Your chatbot can't answer every question. Hand off to a human agent when your chatbot can't answer.
- Find out the most common questions asked by your customers, and let your chatbot handle those questions.
- Make sure it is easy for your customer to tell the chatbot they want to speak to a human being. That option needs to always be there.
- Revisit your chatbot's conversations regularly to see if you need to update their "knowledge". Your customers and market is changing daily. Your chatbot needs to do the same.
- Make sure your human staff are well trained in taking over and handing back the conversation to the chatbot.
Integrating Chatbots Into Order Processing
If you can save valuable time by having an automatic order-taker, you should take the chance to do so. Chatbots can increase your sales and even recover abandoned carts. Especially nowadays when everyone is buying online, having a chatbot can help your sales surge.
- Don't flood the user with choices. Help your customer narrow down their needs by having the chatbot ask them questions. Do they need recommendations? Are they interested in product features? Can you narrow down what they are looking for?
- Make sure the orders are going somewhere that you can easily integrate into your own processes, whether it's through an order spreadsheet or fed directly into an internal system.
- Even though you're taking their order, it's no excuse to revert to robotic transactional wording. Think about what you would like a person selling your products would say to a walk-in customer, and use those words.
- Don't forget to always let the customer switch to a conversation with a human being anytime during the chat.
- A little VIP treatment can go a long way, so don't be afraid to use timed messages and follow up after a completed transaction to ask how they liked their purchase, or even offer them a returning promotion.
Integrating Chatbots Into Marketing and Lead Generation
Even if your products or services are not easily sold with a click of a button, chatbots can still help your business. Chatbots are a great way to make sure your human sales staff are talking to people who are serious about your product.
- Personality is still key. Remember that your chatbot can help you solidify your brand and values. Your chatbot would be potential customers' first touchpoint to talking to you, so make sure it counts.
- To cut the time it takes for your salespeople to best approach potential clients, make sure your chatbot asks enough questions before handing over to a sales agent. A little pre-sales survey in the right tone will help shorten the time the sales cycle can take.
- Make it easy for the customer to find out about your company and brand by making sure they can ask the chatbot about your company. This helps customers in deciding whether your business is a match for what they need.
- When you hand off to a sales agent, make sure proper notifications are in place so that your staff can get to customers quickly and efficiently. While your human agents won't be as fast as chatbots can be, make sure the customer isn't left hanging for very long.
Top Tip on Integrating Chatbots
It's important to plan ahead and focus on what you would like to get out of your new chatbot. You know that saying, "jack of all trades, master of none"? If you immediately try to do everything with your chatbot, you might get lukewarm results.
Slowly upgrading your chatbot over time to take more tasks will help you plan and target exactly which parts of your business gets the proper attention it deserves. The result is a quicker path to returning your investment on a great chatbot.
If you take the time to properly "train" both your chatbot and your market, you can get the most out of your chatbot and reap the benefits for your business.