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Customer Service Chatbot – Overcoming Customer Service Challenges with The Help of a Chatbot

This article outlines the major challenges that modern businesses can expect to overcome by building customer service chatbots for their customer service departments.

The demand for stellar customer service has skyrocketed in recent years. An increasingly competitive marketplace, coupled with a highly informed and technologically empowered consumer base, has made customer service one of the primary areas within which businesses can distinguish themselves from their peers. Streamlining customer service is foremost on the agenda for most modern businesses. A variety of tools have been developed to this end, with customer service chatbot development emerging as the most effective of them all.

Challenge 1: The declining relevance of mobile apps

Multiple studies indicate that 2016 was a turning point in the worldwide use of smartphone apps. App download rates have since declined, leading to shorter mobile sessions and a growing preference for mobile websites. Owing to the plethora of ecommerce stores and online services that are available to smartphone users today, downloading a dedicated app for every e-store or service would leave phones strapped for space. Further, millennial users are typically not in a position to spend time on multiple apps in order to arrive at the information they need.

In the light of these conditions, it was only natural for app usage to decline and website usage to take its place. Leaving users free to access multiple sources of information through a single browser, websites can significantly reduce the time and effort it takes to acquire a piece of information. This scenario holds immense potential for businesses that prioritize the user experience of their websites, in particular, by building customer service chatbots. Online services that create a customer service chatbot for their websites position themselves to assist their visitors with research, purchase decisions, and post-sales service – an arrangement that soon equates to high-quality customer support.

Challenge 2: Competitive environments

Modern businesses engage with a highly informed audience that has round-the-clock access to information about any product or service that interests them. Moreover, this is an audience that has no dearth of options when they are ready to make their purchase. It is not entirely realistic for a business – especially one operating with limited resources – to surpass the competition by reducing prices or offering more products. The only area that they can realistically prioritize is customer service, which is why offering high-quality customer service has become a matter of survival in today’s commercial and professional environments.

Modern clients and customers expect instant and on-demand assistance with their queries and complaints. To meet this requirement, it has become imperative for businesses to implement customer service chatbots on their websites. Capable of interacting with customers round the clock without incurring mammoth operating costs, customer service chatbot chatbots allow new or small-scale businesses to stay abreast of the competition while also adhering to their budget.

Challenge 3: The need for constant improvement

Building a pool of customers is a solid start for a new business, but the road ahead is rife with challenges. Customer retention is a complex process that hinges on the user experience that the business is able to offer and maintain. Customers expect their individual requirements, preferences and concerns to be addressed effectively, every time they interact with a store or service. Building customer service chatbot allows businesses to fulfil this expectation even while operating on a meagre budget.

Customer service chatbot development serves as an affordable and infinitely scalable customer support package for a business. Chatbots can work without a break, interacting with any number of users at any hour of the day. Artificial intelligence powered chatbots can even learn to identify gaps in their existing scripts, and hone their problem-solving abilities over time. The arrangement is akin to hiring a large fleet of regularly trained and highly efficient customer support agents, but at a fraction of what it would cost to keep them on the payroll.

Challenge 4: Keeping customers engaged

Lead generation and conversion are important processes that contribute to a company’s revenue, but the route to sustained profits lies in keeping existing customers engaged. In a bid to increase customer satisfaction, organizations around the world implement loyalty and advocacy programs. When crafted and executed well, these programs allow these organizations access to customer opinions on various aspects of their business, which they can then utilize to improve their user experience and strengthen their brand. Building customer service chatbots serves as a simple and effective means of educating customers about ongoing loyalty and advocacy programs. Acting as self-help resources, online chatbots can encourage the use of these programs by offering advice and solutions to issues encountered along the way.

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