ow are your customer communications going?
If you’re still stuck with calls and emails only, then it’s time to evolve. You need to diversify the communication channels to cope with the changing times.
Live chats and chatbots have been gaining popularity in customer support service. According to research, 73% of consumers prefer live chats over other communication channels. Further, the satisfaction rate of live chats had been a whopping 92%.
Coming to AI Chatbots, let us inform you that they aren’t behind at all. Reports suggest that 69% of consumers prefer using chatbots for the speed at which the responses are received. Further, 64% consumers prefer chatbot because of their 24*7 availability.
So, live chats or chatbots or both?
Let’s discuss comprehensively about using live chats, AI Chatbots and achieving a balance between both for a perfect customer support experience.
Benefits of Live Chats
Live Chats help visitors and potential customers to get support in real time. The most preferred communication channel, online chat for websites do ensure better customer engagement.
Further, you can also improve response time as well as average resolution time. Besides, here’s the list of benefits you can derive from live chats.
- Live chats are better for handling complex issues
- Allows multitasking
- Enables human conversations
- Allows escalation of conversations to other communication channels seamlessly
It also needs to be mentioned that a good online chat software comes with different features like,
- Proactive chat invitations
- Ability to animate the chat button for improved visibility
- Ability to see what customers are typing before they send it
When it comes to enhancing your customer support service, live chats cannot be beaten. Implement it properly and it can help you convert more visitors to customers.
Using live chat rooms on brand websites, companies can quickly answer to customer queries avoiding the long process of communication via emails or calls.
Overall, live chats are simply the most apt tools when it comes to improving customer support. It offers instant support service and also allows live agents to ensure high customer satisfaction rate.
Benefits of AI Chatbots
‘I think chatbots are the future of engagement between a fan and a brand or a celebrity’ - Christina Milian (Forbes)
Conversational AI allows chatbots to interact with people in a way like humans do. Examples of conversational AI includes voice bots like Alexa, Google Home, Siri as well as WhatsApp for Business, live chats etc.
Now coming to the benefits of AI Chatbots, there’s definitely a lot of them. Here’s a list of few:
- 24*7 customer support
- Bots are easily scalable
- Less prone to errors
- Ability to engage customers across multiple channels
Though live chatbots are fast, responsive and efficient, their functions are still limited to the information they are provided with.
Most of the live chatbots can resolve standard queries as per their programming. For complex issues, live agents are required.
But does that mean live chats have won over chatbots?
To answer this question, we need to explore the areas where live chats will be appropriate and the ones where chatbots can score better than live chats. So, let’s dig in.
Live Chats or AI Chatbots: Find the Success Areas of Each
As we have seen, live chats and AI Chatbots are beneficial to business. So, it’s good to have them both.
There’s an interesting aspect to be mentioned here, that is, there are certain areas where either one of the two is more successful. Let’s discuss it in detail.
1. Response Time
AI Chatbots responds to a query in no time. Whereas, responses from live agents may get delayed. For example, if a live agent is on a call, the response to a query may end up getting delayed.
According to research, around 37% customers use chatbots to get instant answers in cases of emergency.
So, since customers hate waiting, chatbots can help them get a positive experience with your brand by giving instant answers.
2. Handling Complex Queries
Since chatbots have access to limited data, they can only answer what they have been programmed for. Chatbots generally respond to the FAQs.
When a complex issue comes in like refund issues or failed transactions, the matter needs to be escalated to live representatives.
In this case a live agent can step up and resolve the issue at hand as quickly as possible.
3. Cost Effectiveness
When it comes to cost efficiency, AI chatbots score over live chats. It is an expensive affair for a business to hire and manage a team of 20-25 live agents. Whereas, chatbots are a one-time investment.
You can invest in a chatbot and rest assured that whatever it does, there will be minimum risks of error. Moreover, customer management across several platforms will become super-easy.
So, integrating a live chatbot will be supremely cost-effective for the business.
4. Understanding Customers
By understanding customers, we mean that live agents can better interpret the customer’s needs.
Customer support agents are able to understand the level of complexity in a problem. For example, at times, the query may be vaguely communicated. In such situations, chatbots are not very helpful. It requires an agent to interpret the issue.
Furthermore, in case of disputes, live agents can better understand the customer’s state of mind. They can take cues from the conversation to understand if the customer is going through a negative experience. Hence, they can take necessary actions to improve the situation.
5. Multilingual Conversations
If you’re planning to expand globally, multilingual AI Chatbots is a must for your business. Integrate multilingual chatbots into your business strategy to ensure interacting with your customers in their regional languages.
Now, it’s very obvious that you cannot hire human agents for every language or train them to speak multiple languages. So, multilingual AI Chatbots are your best friend here.
Bots can be programmed to speak in several languages and hence, they can personalize interactions, making customers feel more comfortable.
6. Prioritizing Actions
Chatbots cannot really understand the urgency of situations. So, live chat is definitely winning here.
Live agents can prioritize the customer issues and resolve them accordingly, unlike chatbots. For example, on one hand there are several general queries lining up and on the other hand, there’s another ticket raised for refund issues. Here, live agents can compare the matters at hand and decide which ones to prioritize.
If there are customers who have been waiting to resolve a problem, that needs to be worked out first to prevent negative reviews.
So, live chats are always better in understanding and prioritizing customer queries.
7. Personalisation
In case of personalisation, we would say it’s a tie between live agents and chatbots.
Where, live chats or live agents can interact with customers at a personal level, live chatbots can also personalise interactions with the help of the recorded customer data.
A smart AI chatbot can retrieve the recorded customer data and start a personalised conversation each time the customer raises a query.
For example, did you notice the personalised recommendations by Netflix? Or Myntra? Both of these brands use personalisation and they offer you recommendations based on your history. Netflix recommends shows based on your previous watch and Myntra recommends products of your choice and even size.
So, both live chats and chatbots are experts at personalisation.
Live Chats vs. AI Chatbots: Strike a Balance
Live chats and chatbots are both great tools for a business to prosper. So, finding the right balance between the two is the optimal solution.
Neither one wins the game, but if both live chats and chatbots are used strategically, it can bring great benefits to the business.
Both live chatbots and agents can contribute to increasing conversions, generating leads, reducing costs and offering instant responses to customers.
So, implementing the two tools, will give you the best of both worlds. You can benefit from the advantages of each and mitigate the cons, assuring the best possible results for your business.
Build Your Success Strategy with Konverse
Now that you know about live chats, chatbots and their benefits you must be planning to integrate both to your business strategy.
If you’re looking for a chatbot website that can understand your requirements and deliver you with the most appropriate solution, then we recommend you Konverse.
Schedule a demo with us to know more about AI Chatbot solutions tailored for your business requirements.
Additional Readings
Know the AI driven Customer Retention Strategies
Tips to combine AI chatbots and email marketing
Use WhatsApp as a Marketing Channel for Business
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