5 Customer Retention Strategies Driven by AI Chatbots

re you focusing on customer acquisition? Well, that’s definitely a good practice. But that’s surely NOT enough. To build long-term relationships with your customers, you need to focus on customer retention strategies.

And you know how customer retention can become easier for you? If you start using an AI chatbot. Let’s refer to a few examples:

“Hey, what would you prefer to have?”

“Sure, we would help you with a solution right away.”

“We’re sorry for the inconvenience caused. Let us make it up to you.”

“Could you please take some time to give us your feedback?”

“We hope you had a nice time. We’ll be waiting for your next visit.”

Wouldn’t you feel good if somebody interacts with you this way? Of course, you will. That’s exactly why you need an AI chatbot for your online store/website.

Customers want appreciation. They need reassurance from time to time that a brand is valuing their presence. If you want to achieve a competitive edge over your rivals in the industry, it’s high time that you start focussing on customer retention.

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If your customer acquisition and retention rates are increasing simultaneously, that’s when you’re growing. In this article, we’ll guide you through the 5 customer retention strategies driven by AI chatbots that could really do wonders for your business.

Let’s begin.

1. Start giving 24/7 customer support to your customers

In the era of globalization, a business should never limit itself within national boundaries. If you have potential customers in different countries, you should always give your best to build that customer base.

However, most businesses take a step back because of one challenge. They’re not sure how to provide support to overseas customers due to different timezones and language barriers.

If you’re feeling the same way, here’s how conversational AI can resolve both your problems:

An AI chatbot offers 24/7 live support. They are not humans and they don’t need any time to eat or sleep. AI chatbots don’t get tired. They don’t have emotions. So, it’s the best possible solution out there to offer top-notch customer support to the overseas customers of an enterprise. Did you know that about 40% of customers across the world prefer round-the-clock support and they prefer interacting with chatbots and virtual agents for that?

To resolve your second problem, you can use a multilingual chatbot. In overseas customer support, language can become a big challenge. While human customer service agents can not be efficient in more than 5-6 languages, AI chatbots can speak in 40+ universal languages alone.

So, by getting a single AI chatbot, you can offer 350-degree customer support to your domestic and international customers, all day, every day, and in any language. How cool does that sound?

Note: To know more about Multilingual Chatbots, also read: How Multilingual AI Chatbots can Scale Overseas Business Operations?

2. Collect customers’ feedback with AI Chatbots

Have you ever been to a pizza store that asks you to pen down your feedback before you leave? Well, that’s one way of collecting feedback from customers. But with frequent technological improvements, things have changed now.

Modern eCommerce stores and other online businesses don’t use a book anymore. They use an AI chatbot that works as an online feedback book for businesses. An AI chatbot is integrable with 100+ app and SMS portals.

So, after a customer completes a purchase, AI chatbots reach out to the customers through WhatsApp for Business, Facebook Messenger, and other similar apps to record their feedback. Marketers can always look out for this feedback to make necessary adjustments to their approaches. That’s how you improve your customer retention rate.

Note: Konverse AI Chatbot can offer integration across 100+ apps and CRM portals. Hence, collecting feedback from customers from their most comfortable space can become easier for businesses.

3. Make Proper use of WhatsApp for Business

Conversational AI can easily be integrated with WhatsApp for Business. Being a marketer or entrepreneur, make sure that you’re making optimum use of this app. WhatsApp holds a 2 billion+ global user base. That’s really massive.

Needless to say that WhatsApp is a trusted messaging platform for your prospects and customers. So, use the WhatsApp for Business API to conduct interactive polls/ surveys for your customers. Trust us, you’ll gain many new insights regarding the behavioral and purchasing behaviors of your customers, from these surveys.

Suppose you run an online book store. Here are the probable questions that you can ask in a survey:

What is your age group?

18 to 24
25 to 32
32 to 40

What is your profession?

Business
Service
Other

Are you a Harry Potter fan?

Yes
No
I have never read Harry Potter in my life

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You can collect a lot of information from these 3 questions from a customer. For example, A customer selects A, C, and A options respectively. Based on these responses, you can assume the following:

This person belongs can be a young adult or in his/her early 20s
The person can be a student
This person is a Harry Potter fan and enjoys the fantasy genres

So, what would be your customer retention strategy now? To project more books from the fantasy genre. There are high chances for this person to purchase those books. These questions are definitely not ultimate. You can format and add more questions based on your business.

4. Enjoy Shorter Sales Cycle with AI Chatbot

As an entrepreneur, you must always plan for ways to stand out. Don’t forget that your rivals are always looking for ways to engage more customers. If you’re unable to come up with innovative customer retention strategies, they’ll outperform you for sure.

An easy trick to engage your customers and persuade them towards buying your products is this. It is always a good idea to include the buying option within the chat interface of your AI chatbot. Make sure that your buyers can browse and purchase products directly from your website chatbot, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp for Business, or Google Business Messages (GBM).

Consider the above example. Say you have already figured out from a survey that a particular customer enjoys fantasy books. So, will you ask them to go back to your online store to browse and purchase those books? Or will you just include a “Buy Now” button within the chat interface itself?

You should always go for the second strategy. Don’t redirect your customers back to the store. Reduce the hassles associated with online shopping. You’ll see how your sales cycle is trimming down.

Note: Wondering how AI chatbots can drive more sales? Read: 5 ways to drive more sales in 2021 with Conversational AI

5. AI Chatbots should be a part of your Loyalty Programs

The whole purpose of introducing loyalty programs is to improve customer retention. In fact, 69% of customers are largely influenced by these loyalty programs.

So why not make it more appealing by including conversational AI?

All you have to do is design your AI chatbot in such a way that it can ask for referrals from customers, notify them of discount coupons, and reward points. So that even though your customer service associates miss out on informing about the latest price cuts to the customers, the AI chatbot will never skip it.

Convey the latest offers and discounts to the customers, faster. This strategy could not only help to retain the existing customers but will also generate some fresh leads.

Retain More Customers with Konverse

Select Konverse AI Chatbot and enjoy painless customer retention. Our conversational AI solutions are tailored to your business requirements. We’ll help you distinguish between engaged and non-engaged users. Our industry-specific solutions are also perfect for customer retention.