The last few months and the global pandemic have changed communication strategies across organizations big or small. Businesses need to be online and be ready to handle customers at anytime. Gone are the days when Chatbots were only meant to deflect the customer like handling the initial welcome greetings and hand holding till the time that a human agent was available. The Chatbots of today are way more intelligent and have a larger role to play. Let’s look at various characteristics that make their role important.
Conversations
Who doesn’t like to have a good conversation, same is with your customer. It’s important that the customer doesn’t feel that the interaction is with a machine. It needs to be conversational. This is best possible with the capabilities of Natural Language Understanding which means the Chatbot interacts with the customer similar to a human interaction and not fixed to specific keywords.
Understanding the context
As mentioned above, Chatbots are no more about handling the pleasantries alone. It should be capable of handling customer queries or requests. It’s imperative that the bot understands the user intent and doesn’t irritate the user with silly questions. For example – If the user states that I need a cake delivered for my birthday tomorrow, the bot shouldn’t go back and ask the date of delivery.
Recommendations
There are times when the customer is unable to articulate the issue or the exact requirements. A bot can help in keeping the conversation to the point by recommending or providing the right options to choose from. A guided flow would also help the customer to make the right choice and save on time.
Ease the load
The day to day queries can be managed by the chatbot and only the complex queries or escalations need to be managed by the team members. This will ensure reducing the workload on the team and also improving the quality of interaction with the customers.
Closing the loop
Every conversation has to come to its logical conclusion. So an intelligent chatbot and the necessary integrations can help close the loop. For example – in case of a customer issue the bot can suggest creating a ticket and providing the same on the chat itself. This brings accountability and builds customer confidence.
To sum up
Chatbots can act as a boon in these challenging times when the business is faced with a resource crunch. These bots can help contain the anxiety of the customers who probably aren’t able to reach out to the telephone agent or walk into your office for getting their queries addressed. The important part is to have the right product or partner who can design and implement the right type of bot capabilities which meets the most important business objectives.