More and more companies recognize the value of digital assistants in marketing, sales and customer service. According to current forecasts, around 50% of medium-sized and larger companies will in future chatbots for use in customer communication¹. Full networking makes sense, in particular, through integration into operational processes.
What is a chatbot?
The software of a chatbot conducts a conversation with the customer in text form in natural language. The dialog systems automatically and independently query the information required for this, without the need for a human customer advisor to be available for this purpose.
This chatbot leads to more efficiency in the company
Tests have shown that when talking with a chatbot, customers quickly feel annoyed or overwhelmed when they have too many open answer options to choose from. This is the case with a rule-based chatbot. A chatbot with artificial intelligence (AI), on the other hand, when properly programmed and used, can better understand the content of the dialog and, with a view to increasing efficiency in the company, transform extensive processes and lengthy conversations into precise conversation with satisfactory results.
However, the artificial intelligence of digital assistants must also be trained and learned over time. When customer inquiries come in, AI chatbots recognize predictive behavior patterns in a large amount of data. Using defined routes, the software then automatically collects the necessary customer data and processes in the right place. This enables the trained software to respond to inquiries with relevant answers.
Chatbots are not the solution for all customer problems in customer communication, but for many customer problems. They meet the request for “always on” or “across all channels” with high-quality information and rapid processing of incoming inquiries.
How can chatbots contribute to increasing efficiency in companies?
Today, customers are online around the clock and want to find precise and competent solutions quickly and easily the first time around. On the other hand, it is not so important to them which communication channel this is done. Chatbots are predestined to satisfy these needs and help the user at any time.
You can achieve a sustainable increase in company efficiency primarily through chatbots with artificial intelligence. A dialogue system that does not simply answer according to rules gives the feeling of genuine participation in the customer's concerns and can learn from examples in conversations. For companies, chatbots in customer communication are not only effective customer loyalty measures, but above all a means of reducing costs. This is shown by the following five reasons why chatbots lead to an increase in efficiency in companies:
1. Reducing employee workload and saving time
Especially when it comes to sales, technical or contractual services, recurring questions and concerns arise on the customer side. Customer support or call center agents often perform the same tasks over several hours a day. This quickly leads to demotivation and frustration, mistakes also creep in more frequently and the well-known “operational blindness” cannot always be avoided either.
Chatbots in customer communication take care of these tiring and standardized tasks. This relieves employees and not only improves the working environment, but also sales efficiency. When planning personnel management, you now benefit from free capacity for other topics and challenges. Your company can use the time gained, for example, to train its personnel. This leads to an increase in efficiency in the company in the medium and long term.
2. Pre-qualification of potential leads
One of the particularly lengthy yet fairly simple tasks is sorting out incoming leads and prioritizing the upcoming completion. Potential leads can be potential buyers, but also customers with an urgent complaint. Thanks to artificial intelligence, chatbots can implement this task faster in customer communication based on predefined criteria. In doing so, they work particularly reliably and, thanks to optimized process management, are extremely effective in increasing efficiency in the company.
3. Increasing efficiency in companies through an optimal user experience
In addition to the potential savings within the company structure, you should also consider the aspect of user experience. Customers have almost everything — except time. Time has become a valuable asset and no one wants to search long until they reach their destination. The user on a company website should quickly and easily achieve the desired result, for example the product, the contact form or the required address.
A chatbot accompanies the user in customer communication virtually and yet personally. Based on the behavior patterns, the system recognizes the wishes and needs of the customer. The bot then delivers the relevant content within a very short period of time and thus increases customer satisfaction. A chatbot with artificial intelligence guarantees increased efficiency in a company not only because of its speed. It also improves customer contact, has the potential to identify users' needs and at the same time improve existing processes for the future.
4. Learn, train, and optimize chatbots
Chatbots learn automatically with every new case and process and expand their knowledge with the data collected in the big data cloud. Through analysis, chatbots can uncover and save typical behavior patterns. They then adapt their future categorized processes and contribute to increasing efficiency in the company with every effort.
This includes, for example, templates such as:
- The most common cause of a complaint
- The time with the most requests
- Solutions that customers are most likely to rate with top marks
- Selling-strong arguments for a specific product
Your way of learning is therefore particularly efficient and economical. Chatbots generate the data from existing inquiries and customer dialogs and store them permanently. Your knowledge database is constantly growing and is available for various departments or areas.
5. Generating important insights to increase efficiency in the company
Despite progressive digitization, the structure of most knowledge databases in companies is based on human and manual input. Thanks to artificial intelligence and targeted programming, a chatbot can absorb much more data in a much shorter period of time and thus increase efficiency in the company.
In addition, it stores this information permanently and you can access it at any time. The data is processed in such a way that behavioral patterns are identified and can be followed by data analyses. The AI chatbot creates in-depth, comprehensive data collections and makes them available to every participant in a network for business-valuable analyses. Relevant user topics and insights can be quickly identified based on the high data density. In the additional time, employees can now effectively classify the information and derive recommendations for action.
Initiate change processes to increase efficiency in the company
According to a LivePerson survey, 52% of consumers don't want to wait more than two minutes before they can talk to a customer service representative. In the worst case scenario, customers drop out. So don't wait any longer to implement chatbots in customer service. The dialog systems make many areas of the company easier and faster. Optimization measures, change processes and management decisions thus lead directly to a reduction in costs and an increase in efficiency in the company. If you have any questions about how to optimally launch future-oriented chatbot systems for your company, please feel free to contact us. For a practical insight, you can also use a Request a free chatbot demo.
Checklist: How chatbots contribute to increasing efficiency in companies
Quick and easy here the Chatbot checklist in PDF form download.
¹Van Baker, Vice President of Gartner
