The use of chatbots in customer service is on the rise; and its extent will continue to grow exponentially with time. With the digitisation of almost all services, chatbots are the first line of interaction between the organisation and the customer. Therefore, it is imperative for the chatbots to be able to provide acceptable answers and satisfy customer queries with as much efficiency as possible. A majority of customer queries and questions are often related to payments — processes and policies. Consequently, the chatbots responsibility to comprehend the payment queries; and provide fitting and reasonable answers is pivotal. This is an essential step in ensuring that customers are happy with their foremost interaction with the company.
The positive role that AI Chatbots play in providing satisfying customer service is definitive.
Advantage 1: Speed
The biggest advantage of employing chatbots in customer service — specifically to handle payment enquiries — is the speed at which they operate. The speed of a chatbot is much faster than any human can ever have. This becomes important because the consumer today is willing to do anything, but wait to get the information they are seeking. The entire modern generation is accustomed to instant gratification and believe that the click of a button should be enough to provide them with every information they are seeking. In addition, a larger proportion of the populace is taking care of such queries during the long public transport commutes to work and back. In such a situation, they are not likely to tolerate delay in customer service to add to their already hectic schedule. If the delay in response from the company is long enough, it can lead to the customer instantly losing interest in the service and switching to a competitor. Therefore, companies are deliberately putting into place technology that reduces the chances of an employee leaving the website disgruntled.
Since the amount of time that a person would take to fill in a question and hit submit on the customer service page of a website in often less than a minute, even a few seconds in some cases. Therefore, the organisation requires a system that allows them to sieve through information swiftly and present an acceptable answer within fractions of a second. Chatbots are equipped to do just that. Chatbots would allow companies to engage customers effectively and efficiently through the basic series of questions and enquiries. The organisation can contemplate general enquiries and create a bank for the chatbots to depend on to make the process faster. Therefore, chatbots are the obvious solution to the challenge of decreasing the response time; and engaging customers as soon as possible by providing them information relevant to their query in the shortest possible time.
Advantage 2: Multitask
Modern chatbots can work beyond responding to simple questions posed by customers. Chatbots can be designed to collate data from different departments to ensure that they can provide complex answers. For example, if a customer of a retail site is enquiring about an error in the payment that was made during an earlier transaction where a product was not added to the wish list and not the cart, but the price of the product was added to the final bill. A simple chatbot might simply provide them with a gift card of the corresponding amount and end the query. However, a multitasking chatbot would be able to trace their activity from the said date, present them their final cart for them to review, check their wish list items and determine when the said product was added, provide them an option of cancelling the order and requesting a refund if the product was mistakenly added to the cart instead of the wish list, or provide them a gift card of the corresponding amount.
For services where customers physically visit the organisation at their brick-and-mortar outlet, the chatbots can be linked to the appointment booking service of the website. Customers, here, would be able to book appointments and have the cost of that visit deducted from their linked online wallet, without having to switch between different tabs on the website. Additionally the chatbot can send a reminder to their Google calendar, and also offer to book a ride to the outlet for the appointment. Thus, helping the customer in a holistic manner.
Organisations can study the range of questions that are usually put forth to the chatbot, and work out ways in which these processes can be automated.
Advantage 3: Round-the-Clock Service
The cost of a keeping a customer service department that is handled by humans open round the clock is enormous. Most companies often see this as an expense that can be compromised. Consequently, a number of customer service departments are functional during the standard work hours. However, this is beginning to become an issue because since the customers are no more tied to the constraints of the clock. The digital platforms allow them to log in to their retailers’ websites at any given point of time — and they expect a swift response from customer care even in the middle of the night if required. Therefore, organisations across the globe are forced to find ways that can help them provide customer care across the day throughout the year in ways that do not burn a hole in their budgets. This is where the biggest advantage of chatbots lie. Chatbots can keep working continuously without fatigue and deliver same results throughout. Additionally, because they are running on algorithms the possibility of a human errors are minimal.
Conclusion
Chatbots are definitely growing in importance across industries and the trend does not seem to be declining in the near future. Chatbots will make transactions easy even as humans increase their dependency on online transactions. It will be in favour of organisations to design chatbots that can function as the first-line of interaction between the organisation and its customers. There always remains an option of human intervention, when the chatbots are stuck in a loop, and cannot provide the required help.
About Fusion Informatics
Chatbots are evolving with their applications and its extent developing beyond what most of us comprehended in the beginning. The world of technology is a labyrinth that many companies are intimidated with. We, at Fusion Informatics, specialise in making the journey of adopting new, complex technology easy. Our team of experts diligently work towards creating solutions that are tailor-made for our clients, while being easy to integrate with their existing systems and processes. We are committed to ensure that technology remains the advantage as it was promised, and never becomes a hassle for any organisation to adopt.
