When thinking of improvements in your business, better connection to your customers and efficient processes are the primary goals. Luckily, there is an extraordinary combination of automation features and growing efficiency. This combination is brought by AI chatbots.
Whenever you want to support your customers with impeccable service, learn about their needs, and improve processes for your team, AI chatbots work for you.
In this post, our experts share their views on how your business will benefit from AI chatbots. Let’s explore them so you can make a fact-driven decision to implement one.
Introduction to AI chatbots in business
Chatbots are not new in business. However, AI chatbots are a phenomenon that has shifted the business landscape in recent years. Chatbots, in general, help with service and operations process automation. Moreover, AI-powered chatbots do it efficiently, reaching multiple channels and improving over time.
As Imarc’s report shows, the chatbot market is estimated to be worth more than $5.7 billion. It is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.5% from 2024 to 2032.
Various industries benefit from chatbots. Marketing, banking, healthcare, and logistics are among the sectors that leverage AI chatbots’ potential to optimize processes and connect with customers.
By providing help with customer needs, AI chatbots take on tasks to relieve humans from repetitive work. Moreover, AI chatbots will provide data on customers’ needs and personalize their experiences.
To get a deeper perspective, let’s discover why adding an AI chatbot can benefit your business in more detail.
Reason 1: 24/7 availability and customer service automation
Chatbots do not sleep. They are always on, and your customers, wherever they are, can get prompt answers to their queries in no time via 24/7 chatbot support. AI chatbots will stand the traffic and deliver swift answers to customers even if your company, product, or team experiences high loads.
On the other hand, chatbots’ work is not limited to answering FAQs. They help track orders, resolve billing issues, and provide recommendations. AI-powered chatbots can analyze information from customers. Automated customer support chatbots track every customer's answer to their responses. So, over time, they learn how to answer and which queries to pass on to human agents.
For example, Kommunicate, a solution for customer service automation, emphasizes the importance of human-like customer support. It ensures that its services not only automate processes but also customize them to provide genuine support for users. Check out the video below on the primary principles that AI automation brings to customer support via chatbots.
Reason 2: Scalability for growing businesses
Another critical advantage of AI chatbots is scalability. As your company or product grows, more customers will need your assistance and guidance. AI chatbots will handle that for you. Taking up and resolving queries, AI chatbots relieve human teams from routine questions. Thus, they help focus on high-priority and complex tasks.
AI chatbot scalability is possible thanks to its being based on cloud platforms. Thus, chatbots can leverage the platform’s flexibility. Whatever amount of queries you get, your chatbot will handle them consistently. So, an AI chatbot for growing businesses maintains the same performance as you scale up.
For example, Erica, Bank of America’s virtual financial assistant, has processed 1.5 billion interactions since its start in 2018. This result is equal to more than 10 million hours of conversations!
Reason 3: Enhanced lead generation
AI chatbots improve lead generation through an engaging conversational process. They can replace traditional forms and get details about customers by asking questions. Chatbots ask what a customer prefers and if they are ready to buy a product. These interactions help businesses focus on promising leads and understand what can be done to engage reluctant ones.
After your chatbot captures leads, it can provide them with tailored information. Based on data received from the leads, the chatbot suggests personalized offers, products, or explanations. Your chatbot allows potential customers to discover the best options and receive the right information. These processes lead to better customer engagement and build trust in your brand.
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Reason 4: Increased sales and conversions
AI chatbots are helpful not only when customers directly type their questions. Chatbots can interact with users asking questions while they are browsing a website or app. The bots do not wait for users to ask questions but offer help based on customers’ interactions with a platform.
For example, when a customer stays on a product page long, a chatbot can offer help or alternative products. Thus, your customers get assistance and helpful suggestions to make their experience enjoyable. By solving customers’ concerns and payment issues, chatbots help you reduce drop-off rates and abandoned carts in your ecommerce marketplace solution.
AI chatbots also provide personalized recommendations. For instance, Zendesk’s Answer Bot highlights product recommendations based on customers’ preferences. Thus, your buyers get an overview of the products they could also like. This type of product discovery helps your leads with purchases.
Reason 5: Multi-channel integration
Adding an AI chatbot to your product or platform helps you reach your customers via different digital channels. Whether your customers prefer WhatsApp Business or Facebook Messenger, you can connect with your audience with the least effort thanks to multi-channel chatbot deployment. As chatbots have predefined commands and data, they will help your customers with the same accuracy level.
AI chatbots also retain the context of messages so your customers can switch between digital touchpoints. As the chatbot preserves the information, users do not have to repeat the inquiry information again. Yet, they will get the best answers they need.
Reason 6: Faster response times
Not only do AI chatbots scale as needed, but they also maintain the same answer speed regardless of loads. Faster response time with chatbots ensures that teams handle high-traffic loads and keep up with demand.
Your customer types in their query and gets a prompt answer, be it an order status, shipping details, product availability, or billing query. Suppose a more complex issue arises. AI chatbots help in that situation, too. They gather the necessary information and provide it to your team. Thus, the inquiry processing is well-managed and addressed.
As multiple inquiries are processed simultaneously, the issues are solved immediately. A high chatbot response speed reduces wait times and improves customer experience, building loyalty to your brand.
Reason 7: Data collection and insights
Chatbots are valuable tools for collecting customer data when answering queries. Every conversation is a rich source of information for customer data collection chatbot. Every step turns out to be a precious tool to discover customer preferences, pain points, and issues with your products or services.
You can also use specific survey chatbots. They are designed to help you ask your customers what they like about your product or service and where improvements are needed. The key advantage of such chatbots is that they automatically validate and secure your customers’ data. Moreover, AI chatbot analytics is more handy as you reach your customers where they already are, on your website or in a messenger. So they are more eager to respond to your survey.
Inca, Conveo, and Tellet are examples of such AI-powered survey chatbots. What’s meaningful is that AI chatbot business insights will help you personalize and optimize your conversational software for better outcomes.
Reason 8: Increased efficiency with automation
Another chatbots’ top-rated advantage is how they automate routine tasks. Simple inquiries are getting in the queue, and your team struggles to handle them? Leave it to a chatbot. It will answer FAQs, schedule appointments, and process orders. So, if your customers need personal support, your human team can step in for that.
For example, in ecommerce services, chatbots automate order processing, tracking, and even returns. If your customers need anything, an AI chatbot will check which products are available so your customers get what they need as they browse your platform. Streamline operations with an AI chatbot, and your team will be able to target tricky and strategic issues.
For example, CapitalOne, an American bank holding company, introduced Eno, an omnichannel chatbot. It helps get account information, pay bills, and track rewards. Powered with AI, it prevents fraud as it has real-time information on the customer’s financial state and is able to detect fraud.
Reason 9: Personalization and enhanced customer engagement
When interacting with users, chatbots can yield insights into customer needs. They understand user preferences and common concerns and save this data for you to consider. Such data points of personalized chatbot interactions include frequently asked questions, product preferences, response times, and how customers navigate inquiries.
Then, you can analyze this data, better understand your customers, and improve customer satisfaction with chatbots. Whether preferences or pain points, you can track customer inquiry patterns to adjust your business and marketing strategy. The chatbot data lets you enhance your product and provide better service based on customers’ needs and preferences.
For example, KLM, a Dutch airline, launched its AI-powered bot BlueBot, which aims to deliver customer-centric experiences. The company states that AI chatbot personalization helps deliver fast and personal responses to the growing number of queries that exceed 16,000 weekly.
Reason 10: Cost efficiency and reduced overhead
With automation and load-handling capabilities, chatbots become a cost-efficient solution. Depending on the functions you select, you can reduce costs for customer service by 15%-90%, as Deloitte’s report tells us.
What contributes to such cost-efficiency? First and foremost, AI chatbots take on repetitive tasks. Those include answering FAQs, handling basic inquiries, and managing simple transactions. So, instead of hiring and training additional staff, you can assign those tasks to your cost-efficient AI chatbot.
The pitfall of chatbots is that they cannot handle complex customer queries that need careful consideration. In these cases, you need your human team’s assistance. So, the best option is to balance human support and processes automated with a chatbot.
Reason 11: Consistency in customer experience
As chatbots operate 24/7, they keep customer service at the same level despite the loads. Whichever digital touchpoint you target to connect and reply to your customers, the answers will preserve the quality and your brand identity at all times.
You can fine-tune predefined guidelines and responses in your chatbot to match your customer expectations. Thus, you will ensure that people who need your help will get accurate and reliable information.
Even when inquiries reach a high point, your chatbot maintains the same level and quality of service. Thus, it processes large volumes of information with the same consistency and reduces possible misunderstandings.
Reason 12: Easy integration with CRM and other systems
Chatbots act as a separate digital solution and integrate with different systems. For example, AI chatbot integration with a CRM (customer relationship management) ensures better answers to queries. CRMs give you an all-in-one overview of customers’ interaction with your product or service. As chatbots access this invaluable data, they will provide targeted and personalized replies.
For instance, if a customer contacts your support about an order, your chatbot knows about past issue interactions, shipping status, and transactions. With this real-time access to essential data, the chatbot will provide the necessary information without the need for the customer to repeat the details.
Moreover, AI chatbot integration features enrich other tools, such as project management, ecommerce platforms, payment gateways, enterprise resource planning, and more. In each case, AI chatbots will automate routine tasks and answer questions based on your data accessed in real time.
How Codica implements AI chatbots to improve workflow
When building custom solutions, we focus on efficiency and process optimization. So, we created a Timebot to optimize our development processes. This is a helpful tool to see where each task is in the fulfillment process.
The Timebot has easy management, autogenerated reports, and a convenient dashboard. It simplified our task tracking and helped us deliver the best results to our customers.
Another case goes a step forward and uses AI to provide better responses. This is Codica AI Assistant, and we developed it to facilitate interactions with our website. The assistant offers comprehensive answers to our services and guides you through common queries to make your experience informative and delightful.
Building AI chatbots is part of our AI development services. They also include artificial intelligence as a service, neural networks, expert systems, security, and more. We build and integrate AI to enhance your customers’ experiences and make your brand stand out.
Check out our portfolio, where we share our experience and more successful cases.
On a closing note
If you consider how you can improve your services and business processes, an AI chatbot is a way to go. Chatbot operational efficiency, combined with artificial intelligence capabilities, will provide you with advanced options. Thus, you will get personalized customer services, answers to common queries, and data to plan your marketing and business strategies.
Read our blog for more helpful tips on AI and its implementation in your solutions and business processes.
If you need help with building a user-friendly and efficient AI chatbot, contact us. We are eager to help you make your services cost-efficient and performant.