You’ve built your company from the ground up, and it’s continuing to grow day after day. It may be time to begin scaling your software and employee pool to match your company’s growth. When creating your game plan for new technology, don’t overlook one small but mighty tool—chatbots.
What are Chatbots?
Have you ever visited a website or application and were instantly greeted by a chat box? Perhaps it was asking if you needed customer assistance or was offering the ability to book an appointment. Either way, you were experiencing one form of chatbots.
Generally speaking, chatbots are a software platform designed to converse with users and eliminate the need to have a second person as part of the discussion. However, those conversations can take many different forms, and chatbot platforms are used for a variety of reasons.
Types of Chatbots
Just as every employee and customer is unique, so are the chatbots that imitate or interact with them. Whether you’re looking for a quick, inexpensive solution or a powerful, dynamic tool, you can invest in and create the chatbot that fits your company and your goals the best.
Rule-Based Chatbot
Rule-based chatbots, also called “click bots,” are commonly used and are often a more time- and cost-effective option for businesses. These types of chatbots are based on pre-defined paths, whether with buttons or questions and answers.
Rule-based chatbots are limited to the options included in their development, so they must be designed with creativity and versatility in mind.
Menu or Button Chatbots
One of the most basic types of rule-based chatbots is the menu or button chatbot. This type of chatbot is essentially a decision tree in the form of buttons, allowing customers to answer multiple questions with pre-determined answers.
Depending on which answers the user chooses, the next pre-determined question will be asked and the cycle continues until the user gets the answer they are ultimately looking for.
This type of chatbot is one of the slowest ways to satisfy a customer, but it’s a great option for frequently asked questions and simple support queries.
Linguistic Chatbots
Linguistic chatbots use if/then statements to simulate a conversational flow with a user. This type of chatbot is especially useful if you can predict the type of questions your customers may ask.
Conditions can be created to identify and assess the users’ messages, including the words, order of the words, synonyms, and more. As long as the users’ messages match the conditions set by your chatbot, they can be easily helped.
However, since this type of chatbot requires you to predict and outline your users’ questions, it can take the most time to develop.
Artificial Intelligence Chatbots
Chatbots that utilize artificial intelligence (AI) are more complex and therefore require more time and resources to develop. However, chatbots that use conversational AI offer more power and freedom to businesses and their customers.
AI chatbots primarily use two methods: Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML).
Natural Language Processing Chatbots
NLP gives machines or applications the power to translate and understand human speech. Chatbots that use NLP can assign meaning to words or phrases and make decisions or perform actions based on those meanings.
For example, keyword recognition chatbots are conversational AI that use NLP and pre-determined keywords to “listen to” or “read” what the user is saying and formulate a response for users.
Machine Learning Chatbots
While NLP technology can assess and utilize human speech, machine learning technology, specifically deep learning, allows a system to learn and evolve on its own using neural networks.
Think of online games where you play against the computer, such as chess. When you play an AI chess opponent, it is continually learning how to play against you and can improve its own skills with each game you complete.
In conversational AI, machine learning allows your software to learn more about your customers and their questions, helping companies provide their customers with faster, more accurate answers to their questions.
How Can Chatbots Help Your Startup?
Regardless of which type of chatbot you choose for your company, there are many ways chatbots can improve your customer engagement.
3 Ways They Can Help
Think of chatbots as an extra set of hands. What simple tasks or interactions take the most of your employees time with the smallest amount of reward? Many of these scenarios can be handled by chatbots.
Customer Service and Support Chatbots
Exceptional customer service may be just what you need to set your company apart from other startups. In fact, businesses that prioritize and invest in customer service drive revenue 4-8% higher than the rest of the industry.
With a customer service and support chatbot, you can quickly answer your customers’ most frequently asked questions without ever having to transfer the call to an employee. Plus, these chatbots can log information to share with your business teams, so you can gain analytical insights from customer queries.
Customer service chatbots are fantastic as a first level of support for your customers. They can either answer your customers’ questions or, if they don’t have a simple answer, direct them to the correct employee for additional help.
Ultimately, customer service chatbots cut back on the number of phone calls and messages your teams will receive, freeing time to work on other tasks and shortening customer wait times. For startups that often have smaller teams, these benefits can have a huge impact.
Unlike major companies, your startup may not have the manpower to hire and maintain a full-time customer service team, so your customers will appreciate the benefits that chatbots can provide: 24/7 availability, instant replies, easy solutions, quick connection to a live chat with one of your employees, and more.
Appointment Scheduling Chatbots
If your startup is in the business of booking customers on a regular basis, an appointment scheduling chatbot may be a fantastic tool that can act as your team of virtual assistants.
Typically, this type of chatbot is connected to a calendar. When a customer makes an appointment, it is added to the calendar, an event is created, and both the customer and company representative are sent reminders via automated messaging for the appointment.
These chatbots are especially helpful for anyone in the healthcare, hospitality, or personal care industries. Patients can easily book appointments with their healthcare providers, clients can reserve a spot for services at a hair or nail salon, or customers can quickly find and reserve hotel rooms for their upcoming vacations without ever speaking with a representative.
Again, this type of scheduling increases customer satisfaction and frees your employees to focus on other tasks.
Sales and Marketing Chatbots
Chatbots can also guide your customers through the sales process and help them choose the best product for them based on their goals, likes, past purchase history, and more. The possibilities for a sales and marketing chatbot are nearly limitless—making it a stellar AI assistant for startups.
Here are some possibilities:
- An ecommerce site provides product recommendations based on customers’ answers to pre-defined questions.
- A car dealership can provide information about pricing, features, availability, and more.
- An education institution allows students to browse course offerings and provides information on fees, tuition, duration, etc.
- A company sets up Facebook Messenger to automatically pop up and display FAQs for users when they enter their Facebook page.
- A financial institution or budgeting application asks users if they completed recent large banking transactions.
Not only can sales and marketing chatbots improve your startup’s customer experience, but it can also gather and store data based on customer interactions, allowing you to better market to your target audience in the future.
Benefits of Chatbots
Regardless of how you choose to incorporate chatbots into your company’s processes, there are many benefits that you can take advantage of from the start:
Uninterrupted Customer Service
Don’t underestimate the need for great customer service. Did you know US-based companies lose $1.6 trillion yearly because of poor customer service? With chatbots, you can strengthen your company and avoid becoming part of the statistic.
Chatbots allow your startup to provide 24/7, uninterrupted support for your customers. Whether they need to check shipping on a product, book an appointment, or ask a general question about a service, your chatbot can always be available to offer feedback or direct the customer to the correct team or department to help them further.
Improved Employee Productivity
While your chatbot is taking care of repetitive tasks and questions, your employees can focus on their other, higher priority items throughout the day. Your employees no longer have to be glued to the phone or messaging apps during their entire workday. You can use their expertise and manpower in other areas of your company and allow them to have longer periods of uninterrupted work time.
Increased Sales
Businesses that focus on improving their customer experience and provide excellent support see an 80% increase in revenue. Not only will you be increasing your sales with chatbots, but you’ll be doing it with little to no effort. Once the initial investment is made, chatbots take care of the heavy lifting for you, allowing you and your team to focus on making sales and increasing revenues in other areas of your startup.
Reinforced Brand Recognition
With a custom chatbot, you can make your startup’s personality and culture the first thing customers interact with. Whether that means using industry-specific lingo and straightforward responses or taking advantage of emojis and trendy language, your chatbot can reflect who you are as a company and resonate with your target audience.
When done well, your customers can leave a chatbot interaction feeling like they understand your brand better.
Ready to Get Started?
If you think your startup is ready to jump in and invest in a chatbot, get in touch with Geneca today. We’ll provide a commitment-free consultation where we can discuss how a chatbot can help your business level up.