Wayne Lockwood: 4 Reasons Chatbots Will Improve UX in 2018 & Beyond

Creating a superior customer experience is critical for companies today. Customers are savvier than ever and enjoy the ability to choose based on the more attractive offer. Customer experience involves practices of planning and responding to interactions to satisfy or outdo expectations, thereby, snowballing consumer fulfillment, devotion, and support.

Here are a few stats to highlight the importance of improving customer experience:

A survey conducted by Econsultancy revealed the majority of companies consider capitalizing on the customer experience as the most exciting opportunity in 2018.
Deloitte claims that more than 60 percent of businesses consider customer experience provided by the contact centers as a competitive distinguishing factor.
By the year 2020, the consumer experience is expected to surpass cost and product as the primary differentiator among different brands.
A Walker study also revealed that around 80 percent of customers would be willing to pay more to ensure a better experience.

Gartner predicted that by the year 2020, around 85 percent of all customer interactions would be accomplished without human interference. The rapid upswing of chatbots today indicates the accuracy of this forecast. Consider how many bots you have encountered in the last six months as a customer.

In this blog, I’ll cover the benefits of implementing chatbots into your customer experience.

1. Chatbots Are Cost Effective

Chatbots are capable of considerably cutting down labor costs. In fact, companies can shrink their customer service expenses by up to 30 percent by merely implementing them. It can be cheaper to invest in a chatbot than hire customer care reps.

Employing and training employees requires an investment of both time and resources. It can cost thousands of dollars to hire a call center representative. Moreover, training and onboarding can add additional costs. These expenses can rapidly increase with an upsurge in workforce attrition which is a classic problem at various call-centers today. Chatbots can provide enormous time and cost savings in this domain.

2. Faster Response Rate

Customers often get exasperated when they ask questions, need to file a complaint, or provide any other feedback for your company and don’t receive a prompt response.

Also, consider generational expectations. Millennials are typically more smartphone-friendly and demand more responsive services, whereas older generations tend to prefer voice or direct support. Chatbots can provide a higher level of responsiveness that surpasses human output.

Of course, you still need to have a human monitoring chatbot interactions, but with human supervision, the output is significantly increased while customer experience improves.

3. Uninterrupted Customer Service

Did you know that approximately 91 percent of discontented consumers never purchase again?

Whether a chatbot is acknowledging your customers, sorting out their problems, or providing an estimated timeframe of when they should anticipate a response, acknowledging your customers’ questions can go a long way. This can help companies in attaining their customer’s goodwill.

Chatbots provide uninterrupted customer service that is not restricted to different time zones or public holidays. In contrast with live customer care agents, chatbots can work tirelessly without breaks. They never require a sick day or vacation time, and will never get stuck in traffic or delayed by the weather.

With chatbots, companies can provide non-stop customer service to nip any issues in the bud. Consequently, this ensures that your clients can have their queries answered at any time without a wait. This shows that your brand is dedicated to supporting their customers—which is crucial to the organization’s status and perception among prospects and current clients.

4. Chatbots Ensure a Closed-Loop Circle of Learning

The more interaction with your customers, the more a chatbot learns about them.

Moreover, involvement in hybrid chats with customer care reps allows your bot to learn from the human agents, while also adding to their knowledge. This way live agents and chatbots can help each other in delivering improved customer service that nurtures throughout the customer lifecycle.

With a hybrid set up, the learned information can be applied to other areas of customer care. From cross-sell and upsell to product release information, the additional knowledge your chatbot can learn from customer service chat is immeasurable.

Companies today are using chatbots to facilitate customer interactions just as they would with their care representatives. Chatbots are progressively revolutionizing the traditional customer service practices, and it seems as if they are here to stay.

Have you implemented chatbots into your marketing strategy yet? Why or why not? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments.

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