How Chatbots Cut Customer Service Cost—and Lead to Better Business
More and more communication platforms are developing each day. So, consumers have higher expectations when it comes to cut customer service cost issues with a business. Because brands are so accessible via social media, chat and email, customers expect a quick response at all hours of the day. For brands, having to manage so many communication channels can be costly and stressful, which leads to wait times that cause customers frustration.
Brands must do everything in their power to cut customer service cost efforts. Customer care is one of the biggest ways a brand competes against rivals, outside of price and product. This means better service translates to better brand sentiment, which in turn leads to better business.
So, how can one improve customer relations without breaking the bank? The answer lies in chatbots. Like social media, email, and telephones before them, chatbots and AI are positioned to be the next big technological platform to push customer service forward. The biggest cost-saving benefits of chatbots for customer care are:
- Improving service/customer experience
- Making your team more productive and engaged
- Providing data to improve help documentation
- Expand your customer relation efforts while keeping them in-house. No need to outsource to meet consumer need
Essentially, bots let you do more using fewer resources. They manage many customers’ needs at once while reserving your argents for only the most complicated of issues. Here’s how you can provide better service and cut customer service cost with chatbots.
Improve Productivity and Cut Customer Service Cost with Chatbots
One of the biggest cost-saving benefits of chatbots is that they free up time for human agents dealing with simple, repetitive tasks. When chatbots handle these tasks, human agents can work to solve more complex and difficult problems a customer has. While customers are happy to work with bots to solve simple issues, they still want a human to help with the messy stuff.
Artificial intelligence can help your agents solve issues more swiftly, too. For example, natural language processing can identify the department or individual best suited to serve the customer’s need. They help your system perform faster and more efficiently. AI could also identify users more likely to churn, escalating and prioritizing their cases over others.
Helping your customer relation team work more efficiently and get more done keeps consumers happier and lowers the need for repeat and escalation calls. This is because the customer can receive the info they need instantly, or quickly be connected to the right person to help. Many companies waste operational costs when frustrated customers are directed to the wrong agent. This requires them to repeat their issue to many people. But this isn’t the case when using chatbots and natural language processing, which helps your business cut customer service cost thanks to their efficiency.
Cut Customer Service Cost (and Increase Business) with Better Service
It can be expensive to add more people to your already-existing team to provide 24/7 customer relation service. Outsourcing can also be costly, but chatbots empower customers to find and receive help instantly—at any time of day.
Further, you can use data gleaned from chatbot conversations to help you improve customer relations and the product itself. Looking at conversational data, you can discover:
- Common issues that FAQs and documentation can better explain to the user
- Feedback from users to improve the product itself
- Insights on how you can improve your customer relations bot with chatbot analytics
Together, these insights help you provide an even smoother operation by anticipating your customers’ needs and dealing with common problem areas and pain points. Again, this reduces first-time and repeat calls or emails to your agents, because chatbots and other documentation will help with most customer issues.
Insights that help to improve the bot include:
- Finding moments where the bot becomes confused
- Assessing conversation step number (how long it takes to solve a problem)
- Whether the bot seamlessly transfers the customer to a live agent or not
- Customers’ histories in contacting the bot or brand (are they reaching out repeatedly about the same issue?)
A better chatbot ensures your agents don’t have to stay focused on trivial matters to provide engaging, first-rate customer service. In this case, you not only reduce customer relation cost, but may increase revenue by bettering your products and services as well.
It’s easy to get started building a bot to cut customer service cost. Start with our guide to building a customer service bot that increases brand loyalty, then connect your bot to Botanalytics to begin iterating it with sophisticated chatbot analytics data. By helping your customers and your team, you’ll add significant value to your brand and business. Get started today!