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Nearly 9 in 10 consumers appreciate customer service chatbots for their quick responses. This comes as no surprise since chatbots can promptly answer basic questions and provide fast service. 

Chatbots are unique computer programs designed to mimic human conversations. They interact with consumers via instant messaging applications by displaying a series of preset messages in response to specific keywords. While their popularity among consumers has led to the widespread adoption, this technology has limitations. 

To help your organization better understand when and how to deploy chatbots, today, we’ll examine five reasons chatbots work and three reasons they may not.

What Chatbots Do Well

Companies often use chatbots to answer simple questions, solve basic problems, and perform straightforward customer support tasks. More advanced chatbots utilize artificial intelligence to “understand” the context of a conversation. Regardless, chatbots provide numerous benefits to consumers and businesses alike.

24/7 Coverage: Today’s consumer expects round-the-clock support. However, it’s impractical for most companies to staff their customer support centers 24/7, as call volume drops off during non-peak hours. Chatbots offer an ideal solution for this problem. By deploying chatbots, businesses can maintain continuous client support without placing undue strain on staff teams. Chatbots answer simple account queries and may even be programmed to schedule a follow-up service call when they are unable to resolve a customer’s problem. 

Faster Resolution: Chatbots can also solve common issues much faster than customer support agents. Instead of calling a support line and waiting on hold for an undetermined amount of time, consumers can simply interact with a chatbot on the company’s website. In this manner, common concerns can be addressed and resolved in seconds, not minutes or hours. The sooner a company can solve its customers’ problems, the more satisfied they will be with the support experience. 

Simpler Journeys: Calling a company for support and being placed on hold can be frustrating for customers who need help. Many businesses have added callback features to their phone-based support models to address this issue. While this approach can improve the support journey, chatbots offer even more efficient service. Providing a simple and efficient support experience is integral to preserving brand reputation. By offering prompt support, businesses can salvage potentially damaged consumer relationships and increase the likelihood that these customers will make a repeat purchase.

Quicker Updates: Chatbots are excellent at performing simple tasks, such as updating consumer information on a customer relationship management (CRM) database. These bots can immediately transfer the information gathered during a conversation to the CRM, ensuring that the business has current contact data for all clients. This attribute makes chatbots especially useful for sales purposes as well. By deploying chatbots for simpler tasks, businesses can free up existing staff members to resolve more complex customer issues and tend to other time-sensitive situations.

Lower Workloads: Chatbots significantly reduce the workload on in-house support staff. Lighter loads allow support agents to provide a higher quality of service to consumers that have more complicated problems. In addition, reducing the workload on often overburdened support agents boosts employee morale and ultimately increases retention. This benefit of using chatbots is especially significant, given that the customer support field has historically exhibited unusually high attrition rates. Over time, businesses will not need to employ as many support agents, as redundant tasks can be relegated to chatbots. This automation will decrease total operating expenses and give businesses more capital for expansion, product development, or other investments.

Where Chatbots Struggle

When exploring ways to deploy chatbots within your organization, you mustn’t lose sight of the limitations of this technology. While chatbot technology may one day become advanced enough to replace the more nuanced aspects of human interaction, it’s not there yet. As a result, chatbots have some distinct shortcomings.

Gauging Voice Tone: Chatbots communicate with consumers exclusively via text by analyzing context and keywords. Therefore, chatbot software is unable to gauge a customer’s tone of voice during a conversation. Chatbots cannot determine whether consumers are angry, frustrated, dissatisfied, or otherwise emotional based only on their messages. 

Getting at Root Cause: As any good customer support agent knows, there are times when consumers need a question-and-answer series to get at the underlying root cause. And oftentimes currently available information isn't quite sufficient. That's where generative AI comes in. Generative AI uses machine learning technology to analyze existing data, then creates new content in a similar style to the original data. This conversational style of AI-driven communication is expected to grow 5x in the coming years and is proven highly effective in driving improved customer experience.

De-Escalating Issues: Finally, chatbots are not capable of de-escalation. If an irate consumer encounters a chatbot and has difficulty connecting with a human support agent, they will likely become even more upset with the situation — and the business. Conversely, support agents can actively listen to a customer’s concerns. They can then discuss what solution would remedy the issue and resolve the support request without forwarding the call to a supervisor.  

IntouchCX Disrupt: Where Technology Meets the Human Touch

Chatbot technology can be a valuable component of your overall customer support strategy. However, it is just that — a single component. In order to offer your customers the quality service they deserve, you must have the ability to connect them with talented support agents when necessary.

If you want to implement a support strategy that strikes the perfect balance between chatbot technology and human interaction, IntouchCX Disrupt can help. Contact us today to learn more about our outsourced support solutions.