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.

Chatbots are at the forefront of the inevitable digital transformation of business across industries. Many companies are rapidly incorporating chatbots into their customer service policies as artificial intelligence powered automation becomes common place. Chatbots are being actively employed across industries of varying sizes, intent, capability, and physical reach. Their core implementation have been to simplify business processes and reduce the cost of customer service by providing seamless self-service options to the customers. Having said that, chatbots are fairly new and yet to be fail-safe. While chatbots are worth the buzz they have generated, it is essential that organisations invest in researching chatbots that they are planning to incorporate into their customer service policies to ensure that they meet customer expectations.

Security and Privacy

It is important for organisations to emphasise on the factor of security and privacy when developing or choosing a chatbot. It is essential that all chatbots are compliant with the industry standards and all privacy-related cyber laws, legislations, and regulations. Chatbots are directly interacting with customers and are privy to customer information and their issues with the company and their services, therefore it is supremely essential that all cyber security measures are diligently followed. Thus, when choosing a chatbot system the organisation will have to take into account features such as user identity authentication, channel authorisation, end to end encryption, and intent level privacy.

Defining Expectations

The around artificial intelligence has led many companies to believe that incorporating digital transformations in their organisation is a sure-shot of ensuring a streamlined set of business processes. A similar expectation also runs deep among the consumers. It is essential to know the limitations of the chatbots employed and what can be rightfully expected of them. Initially, the company has to set clear goals that they wish to achieve through the employment of chatbots and ensure that a suitable version is developed or chosen. The internal teams that would test the chatbot should be completely aware of these expectations and test the functioning of the chatbot according to these parameters alone. Further, customers should be duly informed about how the chatbots function and in the ways in which it can be helpful to them. Keeping the customers informed would ensure that the number of cases regarding improper customer service is reduced to the minimum. Chatbots are often designed specifically to meet the requirements of an organisation, and identifying the expectations is crucial in ensuring the development of chatbots that fit like a glove.

Personalised Experiences

Customer experiences are monumentally important for the organisation — positive experiences of customers can directly have a proportionate impact on the company’s market image and subsequent bottom line. Additionally, a proven method of improving customer service experiences is to offer a curated service to each customer specifically designed to meet their unique needs. Thus, personalised customer service is a major talking point in organisations across industries. This is where chatbots become a perfect fit since one of the core attractions of chatbots is the promise of a personalised experience for all customers. It, therefore, will be advisable for most organisations to choose a chatbot that is conversational in nature. Conversational chatbots are designed to interact with customers privately and conduct a conversation that mimics human dialogue on a platform resembling messaging platforms. This allows the organisations to offer a customer service with a higher degree of personalisation, leading to happier customers and subsequently to success for the business. Therefore, a chatbot requires to be adept that identifying and understanding the context of the issue the customer wishes to address, recognise the customer and address them by their names, and engaging the customers by offering them tailored solutions to their individuals demands and needs.

Future Proofing

Like all forms of technology, chatbots are also improving and advancing at break-neck speed. It is essential for an organisation to choose a chatbot that does not age with the passing days. An ideal chatbot would be able to employ the information and data analytics generated by artificial intelligence to improve upon itself. This means that organisations will have to choose chatbot platforms that have layers of cognitive abstraction. The cognitive abstraction layer would ensure that the organisation could change their chatbot functions according to the changing needs of the customer base. The data collected and collated by the chatbot itself can provide user insights allowing the system to improve itself and enhance customer service capabilities.

Expecting the Fallacies

Companies will have to realise that chatbots are machines and they are bound to make mistakes. At some point in time, the chatbot would misunderstand a customer’s inquiry. The organisation will have to be prepared for this eventuality and find ways to mitigate the issues to ensure that customer does not leave the business unsatisfied and disgruntled. Another issue with chatbots is the possibility that they would enter a loop and become unable to meet customer expectations.

Companies will have to understand that chatbots will have problems and there will have to design their chatbots in a manner that they can learn from these fallacies and improve upon itself over time.

Conclusion:

Chatbots powered by artificial intelligence is here to stay and will become a powerful tool in customer service in the near future. It is essential that companies understand the viability of chatbots, but also ensure that they are able to develop technology that are fail-safe in the longer run. An expected way of ensuring this is to hire experts. While home-built systems also do the work, it is essential for companies to understand that this technology is complicated and requires multiple layers of programming. It will also be helpful for the company and improve their customer service immensely if they program their chatbots to interact with customers in multiple languages. This would also require the company to hire experts to ensure minimum bugs across the entire system. Chatbots are among the fastest growing digital tools across the world for any organization and choosing systems that fulfil all requirements is beyond important.

About Fusion Informatics

We understand the importance of chatbots and the dynamic factor that it lends to an organisation’s customer service. Fusion Informatics holds a team of experts that are also extremely adept that helping our clients walk through the entire process and comprehend the contribution that chatbots can make. Our experts specialise in developing chatbots that are dynamic and vibrant, besides being highly curated to the specific needs of the company. We are leading destination for varied industries in their quest of developing chatbots that will serve the company in the long run. We are dedicated to providing customised innovative solutions and nothing less.