Chatbots: examples of a wide range of applications
Chatbots with artificial intelligence (AI) not only take over direct customer contact and are therefore ideal for use in customer service, complaint departments or sales. When properly planned and implemented, the software is also able to plan and execute complex actions alone. It increases productivity and, through conversations, simultaneously generates valuable information about customer needs and internal processes in the company. There is no industry in which valuable interfaces cannot be found where chatbots can contribute to the success of the business model.
Who uses chatbots?
Chatbots are primarily used by companies for internal communication, but mostly for customer communication used. Chatbots are used in both B2C and B2B communication. They help companies to automatically clarify and answer inquiries made by customers, prospects or end users.
Where are chatbots used?
The use of chatbots is primarily about automating efficiently, but at the same time picking up customers and prospects in their phase of the customer journey in accordance with the context. The areas in the company that benefit from this are usually:
In which industries are chatbots used?
In almost every industry, you can benefit from the use of a chatbot, provided that a digital company presence exists. Industries that are known for using chatbots include:
- E-commerce, e.g. Fressnapf and VELUX
- Financial industry, e.g. SBroker and AdmiralDirekt
- Energy, e.g. TEAG and Octopus Energy
- Universities & colleges, e.g. the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University and IBB
- Tourism & transport, e.g. Regensburg Tourism and BLS
- Publishers, such as SPIEGEL and FAZ
- HR & Recruiting, e.g. Hays and ELA Containers
The top 12 chatbot examples
- Fressnapf: Website chatbot (focus: customer service)
- VELUX OSO: Website chatbot including live chat (focus on customer service)
- TEAG: Website chatbot including live chat (focus: customer service)
- AdmiralDirect: Website chatbot (focus on customer service)
- SBroker: Website chatbot (focus: customer service)
- The mirror: Website chatbot (focus: marketing)
- Chocoversum: Website chatbot (focus: marketing)
- American Express (Amex): Website chatbot (focus: marketing)
- Geberit: Website chatbot (focus on marketing)
- FAZ: Website chatbot (focus: marketing)
- Jaegermeister: Website chatbot (focus: temporary marketing campaign)
- Elements: Website chatbot (focus: sales)
In almost every industry, you can benefit from the use of a chatbot, provided that a digital company presence exists. Industries and companies that are known for using chatbots include:
Chatbot examples in customer service
In almost every industry, you can benefit from the use of a chatbot, provided that a digital company presence exists. Industries and companies that are known for using chatbots include:
1st food bowl
Fressnapf, Europe's largest pet food retailer, is a very good example of how a chatbot can be used successfully in customer service. As a result of the product launch of the new, technically complex GPS tracker for dogs, Fressnapf was confronted with a remarkably high volume of service requests in 2021. Since the product thrives on customer satisfaction, but during the Corona crisis, due to numerous restrictions, there were not enough employees available to absorb the volume of service, another solution was needed. Fressnapf decided to introduce an AI chatbot because it is able to answer any number of inquiries at the same time, even in phases of rapid growth, without sacrificing the quality of the answers. Based on the customer inquiries that the chatbot collects, Fressnapf can now also collect real-time insights about customer feedback and the problem areas that the product poses. With an automation level of 86% and 4250 conversations per month, Fressnapf is one of moinAI's top 5 most successful chatbots. The full story behind Fressnapf's AI success is available below Case Study.
2. VELUX OSO
As an “Online Sales Organization”, OSO for short, Velux OSO is responsible for the entire B2C online sale of blinds (blackout blinds, awnings, roller blinds) and roof windows via websites and marketplaces. As is often the case in e-commerce, the VELUX OSO team had to deal with a high number of recurring questions.
The special thing about this is seasonal dependence. For example, extreme peak phases occur at certain times of the year, in which a large volume of inquiries occurs that is difficult to handle. But even in peak phases, it is important to offer (potential) customers competent advice, particularly because VELUX products often require further explanation. The VELUX OSO chatbot therefore masters topics such as:
Buy a roller blind
The user visits the website with the intention of buying a roller blind that matches their skylight and needs advice.
portfolio
The user is on the website and wants to know more about the portfolio. On request, the chatbot can present the product range to the user.
Product comparisons
The user wants to find out more about the differences between the various products and specifically asks about the comparison of several products.
paints
The user would like to know more about the different color options of roller blinds and blinds. Through the chatbot, the user can find out what color options the portfolio generally has or be pointed out to the configurator, in which the user can choose a color for the selected window.
In addition to these topics, the chatbot also covers customer service-related topics such as replacement, returns or delivery time. The implementation of the chatbot led to improvements and benefits on several levels. Because from both the user, employee and company perspectives, there have been and are positive results achieved by the digital assistant.
In terms of the user perspective, the biggest advantage is that the customer journey has been optimized. Especially with a special and sometimes complex product range, such as VELUX OSO, it is important to navigate website visitors and offer them support and expert advice. The chatbot does this by answering questions around the clock and showing users the various products and their options. The chatbot has also led to improvements for employees and the company. As a result, manual support costs through live chat could be reduced.
3RD TEA
Just like AdmiralDirekt and Geberit, the Thuringian energy services company TEAG also uses the chatbot for customer service. The background at TEAG was the start of the corona crisis. Due to the corona crisis, TEAG had fewer personnel resources on the one hand and an increased volume of inquiries on the other. As a result of short-term home office or sick leave, fewer customer service employees were available, while the number of customer inquiries rose sharply. The increase in inquiries received by fewer employees resulted in bottlenecks, long waiting times and lower availability. One solution was to automate the most frequently asked questions with a chatbot.
The special feature of TEAG: Due to the high pressure of the crisis situation, the chatbot went online within 14 days. For an AI chatbot to be able to go live within 14 days and thus answer customer inquiries around the clock, an agile implementation plan is needed. You can find out how this worked with TEAG x moinAI, among other things, in the TEAG chatbot case study.
4th AdmiralDirect
The car insurer Admiraldirekt.de uses the benefits of a chatbot with artificial intelligence in customer service. The use cases from the company's insurance areas for the chatbot are:
- Acceptance of damage reports
- Registering vehicles for a new insurance
- Reimbursement of overpaid contributions upon cancellation
- Handling documentation on SEPA mandates
- Sending registration documents
- Organization of the referral program and management of the relevant documentation
- Answering questions after the start of contract validity
- Detection of anomalies, for example when there is an increased volume of damage reports due to severe weather
The chatbot also understands complex queries and can answer them independently. In addition, by collecting real-time data, it is possible to check at any time how efficiently the software is currently working and which inquiries are increasingly being received. As a result, trends and insights can also be identified at an early stage.
5th spectrum
In addition to the goal of automating recurring inquiries about subscriptions and spending and relieving customer service, the publishing house Spektrum der Wissenschaft also introduced an AI chatbot for the reason that it could generate valuable customer insights.
After Spektrum had started the chatbot implementation with the most important service questions, there were always user inquiries about new topics for which the chatbot had not yet been trained. These questions were therefore not considered relevant for the chatbot, as their form and frequency did not appear in direct support. These are questions that many users have in the background, but for which the effort of contacting support for the question is too high.
An example of this would be the question “Is this edition available in print?” , which appeared more frequently in some digital publications. Spektrum chatbot owners were able to pass on this information to product management. Based on the inquiries, the question of a print version was integrated into an ongoing survey, in which it was systematically queried whether a print edition of an unprinted edition was required. Thanks to these customer insights, Spektrum was able to tailor customer needs and improve customer communication.
Spektrum's chatbot is not only well received by customers, but is also met with great approval within the publishing house. This is because Spektrum always communicates transparently about what the chatbot can do and where its limits are.
For example, it was clear right from the start that the chatbot was not in the company to cut jobs, but to create work resources for jobs that could not be intercepted by automation. The chatbot was therefore never seen as a competitor, but as the addition that it is.
For more information about generating customer insights using a chatbot, see Spectrum webinar.
6. sBroker
S-Broker, the central online broker of the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe, is successfully using an AI chatbot on the homepage and in the FAQ area. In FAQ section Is the bot available if website visitors cannot find their way around the FAQ questions overview or do not receive an answer to their question. The chatbot is used on the homepage to reduce the complexity of the content and thus make it easier to navigate and search for information. In this way, both SBroker and users benefit: The implementation of the chatbot relieves the call center, as the bot answers a large part of the questions. At the same time, the level of automation of 69% improves the customer journey: 75% of users rate the chatbot as positive.
Are you considering implementing a chatbot in customer service and are wondering whether it's profitable? Try our Ticket calculator , which calculates the return on investment (ROI) when using an AI chatbot based on the number of your service requests.
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Chatbot examples in marketing
7. The mirror
The practical example from DER SPIEGEL shows that implementing an AI chatbot can lead to promising results not only in customer service but also in marketing.
DER SPIEGEL introduced an AI chatbot at the subscription shop for several reasons: On the one hand, the chatbot is now the central point of contact for customer support, which, if required, transfers to other channels, such as the telephone service. This avoids long waiting loops and offers 24/7 availability. On the other hand, the chatbot improves the customer experience in the subscription shop and generates relevant customer insights about the various subscriptions. By providing individual advice and answering questions in the subscription shop, chatbot automation can also ensure optimization in the marketing sector: This increases conversion in the subscription shop and thus increases the number of subscriptions completed.
Get concentrated expert knowledge from practice and find out below webinarHow DER SPIEGEL automated 80% of recurring service requests with an artificially intelligent chatbot.
8. Chocoversum
In addition to Spiegel, Chocoversum is also a very good example of how the use of a chatbot in marketing can be successful. The Chocoversum is a world of experience in Hamburg that brings the production process of cocoa and chocolate closer to its guests in an exciting and interactive way. For reasons of cost and capacity, Chocoversum 2021 was initially faced with the challenge of not being able to relieve and improve guest services for customers using traditional means, such as an increase in staff. The medium-sized company therefore decided to implement an AI chatbot on the website in order to close the service gap and improve the customer experience. This enabled Chocoversum to automatically answer recurring questions from customers cost-effectively and without much effort. This use case, which was originally designed for customer service, quickly developed potential to optimize further areas of Chocoversum's online offering. Chocoversum also integrated the chatbot in the ticket shop to help customers with the booking process, increase conversion in the shop and thus boost the company's sales. The plan worked: Just a few months later, Chocoversum recorded 41% more ticket bookings in the online shop. The complete Chocoversum success story can be found in the accompanying Case Study.
9th American Express (Amex)
Companies are repeatedly confronted with the challenge of holistically accompanying customers on their customer journey and providing them with optimal support at all touchpoints. American Express also identified great potential on two landing pages using business cards (corporate credit cards) to improve the user experience for visitors with the help of an AI chatbot and to close the gaps in the customer journey. On the one hand, the chatbot now supports customers on the landing page, where visitors find out about business cards. Business cards are products that require a lot of explanation and there is a great risk that visitors will leave the site again if their questions about the product are not answered immediately. The chatbot ensures that this does not happen, but that service requests are processed around the clock. On the other hand, the chatbot is used on the landing page, where users can apply for a business card. To ensure that visitors do not cancel the application process due to a lack of information about the fields to be completed or the documents to be uploaded, the chatbot is now available to answer all open questions.The results of the implementation are impressive: Thanks to the introduction of the AI chatbot, American Express has increased the lead-to-new customer conversion to 30% and is now receiving valuable customer feedback and customer insights 24/7. All important information about the chatbo T implementation at American Express can be found in corresponding webinar!
10th Geberit
Another example of successful use of a chatbot is Geberit. Here, too, the chatbot ensures that the company's online customer communication is automated and is therefore significantly more efficient. The digital assistant even acts as a kind of customer advisor and supports the user with the “AquaClean” toilet system from Geberit. The dialog system has many answers to frequently asked questions and functions.
The special feature of Geberit: Asking open questions about using the AquaClean shower toilet is unpleasant for many customers, but at the same time, the shower toilet is a product that still raises many questions. However, after implementing the chatbot, there was an unexpected and very positive side effect: Website visitors were happy to ask the chatbot lively questions about using the shower toilet.
“We found that requestors actually much prefer talking to a machine than to a real person. Of course, it is a taboo topic,” says Thomas Brückle, Head of Marketing at Geberit. The knowledge that not a potentially judgemental person but a neutral AI is “sitting” at the other end of the chat obviously lowered the hurdle to writing about the topic of intimate hygiene. Thomas Brückle: “We are taking a huge hurdle in communication with customers” — a great and unexpected result. You can find further interesting results on Geberit in the Chatbot case study Read up.
11. FAZ
As a supra-regional subscription daily newspaper that is adapting to digital change, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) now has a large number of different print, online and multimedia formats. Since FAZ's (potential) readership cannot always immediately see at first glance how the individual subscriptions differ from each other and which subscription is the best for their individual use case, FAZ has decided to integrate an AI chatbot in the subscription shop. This now supports users around the clock in advising on the various models and thus ensures that customer advice is improved, complexity in the subscription shop is reduced and the number of subscriptions completed is increased. In addition, FAZ was able to achieve further marketing optimization with the help of the AI chatbot. For example, the chatbot was also integrated into the ordering process for free trial subscriptions and now answers recurring questions about the paywall. In this way, the chatbot ensures that fewer users cancel the payment process and thus increases the number of subscriptions completed. All valuable insights about the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) use case can be found in the following Case Study:
12th Jaegermeister
When well-known rappers like Eko Fresh and Ali As start sweating, it may be due to the successful Jäm Bot from Jägermeister — the first Chatbot that can rap. This is where advertising becomes chatvertising: This example shows how creative chatbots can be and how much room for manoeuvre companies can use for themselves. In the chatbot example from Jägermeister, the temporary marketing campaign gave users the opportunity to convert a message typed into the messenger to their Facebook friends into a personal rap video. The musicians were also convinced of this idea and became part of the funny campaign.
And this is how the collaboration between rappers and the chatbot worked in this example: The software queried essential content such as the name and gender of the recipient of the message from users with a lead time of one week. Together with the content of the message, it was then off to the recording studio on an announced live day. The two musicians were already waiting there and, together with artificial intelligence, generated the rap videos.
Within a very short period of time, over 20,000 Jaegermeister fans sent a total of almost 25,000 clips to their friends via Messenger. The entire campaign had a reach of more than four million users and is therefore one of many successful chatbot examples of creative applications.
Would you like to find out whether using an AI chatbot in marketing is worthwhile for your specific use case? To do this, simply calculate the return on investment (ROI) of a chatbot based on the number of your leads with our Conversion calculator.
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Chatbot examples in sales
13th Elements
Elements, a sales platform that uses experiential exhibitions to advise specialists on planning bathroom, heating and energy elements, is a successful example of the use of a chatbot in sales and sales. The use case is characterized by a long-standing Zoho integration , which allows website visitors to book bathroom planning appointments directly in the chatbot. Elements plays various individual teasers on the chatbot on the website, which arouse the interest of users and encourage them to chat with the chatbot. This is achieving promising results at Elements: The stable and high level of automation of 88% indicates that the chatbot works well and is gladly used by visitors. On the one hand, automated appointment bookings therefore make the work of sales employees easier. On the other hand, the user journey of website visitors is also optimized, as they can get in touch with Elements without detours.
Conclusion: Chatbots for more flexibility
Chatbots are real all-round talents — as shown by the chatbot examples presented here. They take on a wide variety of tasks in various departments, areas and processes. At the same time, digital assistants ensure an improved user experience. Users' inquiries are answered quickly and easily. This is particularly important in times of digital sensory overload and an oversupply on the Internet.
If you can't get enough of our chatbot examples, you can always visit our overview pages for webinars and Case studies browse to see more chatbot use cases from well-known and successful brands.
If you want to read or watch less and try more for yourself, you can With moinAI, simply create your own chatbot in four steps - completely free of charge and without obligation:
