Businesses are always looking for ways to create the best customer experience. By taking a customer-centric approach, companies build deeper relationships with their customers and establish brand loyalty. As a result, companies invest in tools like chatbots to help improve their services and ensure they meet customers’ demands.
According to Statista, global demands for chatbots reached $83.4 million in 2021. These figures are predicted to rise up to $454.8 million by 2027.
Nowadays, many business websites have a chatbot that pops up at the bottom of your screen to greet and assist you. Unlike live agents, they can work tirelessly around the clock to entertain inquiries and offer solutions to customers. And these are just some ways in which chatbots can transform your business.
Chatbots and personalization
A common question when it comes to implementing chatbots is whether they can affect the personalization of your customer experience. After all, a chatbot is only as intelligent as its programming. That means that there is a risk that a low-quality chatbot might reuse the same lines to your customers, or offer an unnatural response. Unlike live agents, a chatbot cannot just stray away from its script without programming.
Fortunately, chatbots nowadays are more sophisticated than ever. The advancements in technology make it possible for some people to not even notice the difference between a live chat and a chatbot. But for that to happen, you must make sure that you choose the right software and strategy when implementing your chatbots.
How to implement chatbots without losing personalization?
1. Use AI-powered chatbots
Nowadays, artificial intelligence (AI) technology is more accessible for businesses of any size. In fact, 57% of businesses adopt AI-powered and machine learning software solutions to improve customer experience. One of which is chatbots.
Compared to rule-based chatbots, AI-based ones are more flexible and adaptable. They have the capacity to learn from past customer interactions by noting their preferences, behaviors, and demographics. From there, the bot can build comprehensive customer profiles for each one they encounter. This allows them to meet your customers’ demands more accurately and avoid using the same responses for each one. In case you’re wondering, yes, Instabot is an AI-powered chatbot!
By leveraging machine learning (ML), you can also develop more comprehensive and complex responses for your chatbots. This creates smoother and more natural conversations between your bots and customers.
2. Give your bot personality
Your customer chatbot serves as the face of your company. Hence, it needs to carry the same distinctive identity as your brand. It needs a personality that captures the spirit of your business.
The simplest way to do this is to give your chatbot a face. You could use an avatar or a photo of one of your customer service agents, as long as it allows your customers to visualize who they are interacting with. This way, they will feel more comfortable when talking to your bot.
You should also consider the tone and language that your chatbot uses. First, determine who your target audience is. From there, you can program your bot to adopt the tone and language that fits best with each customer based on their profiles. For example, your chatbot can speak casually to younger customers, while it can be more formal or professional to others. You may even program your chatbot to use emoji during conversations.
3. Include extensive protocols
While personality can draw customers in, your chatbot must also be versatile enough to meet each of your customer’s demands. It’s important to supply it with sufficient information about your customers and business. This includes answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) such as product specifications, prices, common issues, and their corresponding resolutions.
More than that, you should also create comprehensive conversation pathways that would serve as a guide on how your chatbots would respond to specific situations. Put in as many responses as you can so that your chatbots won’t repeat the same words. This also helps personalize interactions with customers, since your bot’s reply will be more responsive to your customer’s question.
Through AI, your chatbot has a vast potential to learn and develop its own appropriate responses. Nonetheless, it is good practice to keep updating its protocols and responses routinely by using your chatbot insights.
4. Leverage data and analytics
Your chatbot is a perfect tool for gathering and recording customer data based on their communications with your customers. You can also use chatbots to track customer engagement and measure your website’s traffic, helping you to identify common issues, feedback, and behaviors from your customers.
Gathering all of this information means that your chatbots are always learning, and can understand your customers better and better as time goes on. This is especially true for AI-powered bots, which have robust data analytics features that can turn raw data into actionable insights. As a result, this type of bot can help you create personalized interactions per customer.
5. Integrate with other software
Integrations can help enhance your chatbot’s capability to personalize the customer experience. By connecting it with other software solutions, your bot has access to more tools and functions to provide satisfying interactions with your customers.
For example, restaurant owners can use a chatbot to assist them in taking and managing customers’ reservations, feedback, and inquiries. You can then sync the data between your bot and your restaurant management software solution, which your bot can use to tailor-fit its responses to your customers.
Benefits of chatbots
Chatbots are changing the way businesses provide customer service. They don't just benefit organizations, but also benefit the customers too. Thanks to chatbots, customers don’t have to wait too long for someone to assist them and can get fast responses 24 hours a day. Meanwhile, businesses can reduce operation costs by automating their customer service and reducing the number of staff required.
But the most important advantage of such technology is how are chatbots changing the way that consumers connect with brands. Through conversational bots, you can get to know your customers even more. Gathering and recording customers’ preferences and demographics helps you to nurture customers throughout their sales journey. Chatbots are also the perfect tools to increase conversions, since they send proactive notifications, assistance, and promotions of your products or services.
Finally, chatbots can give your company a face. Since your website may often be the first touchpoint where customers encounter your brand, your chatbot serves as your key representative. Its name, profile picture, personality, and language define your brand. And with today’s technology, chatbots leave a lot of room for your creativity.
The right chatbot for you
When choosing the right chatbot for your business, the most important thing you need to consider is your business needs. Take into account the type of industry you are in, your business size, and your customers’ demographics. Likewise, determine the gaps you wish to bridge when it comes to your business's customer experience. This will help you identify which practice is most likely to benefit from the use of chatbots.
If you’re looking for a chatbot that can learn as it works, deliver detailed customer analytics, and which is completely customizable to your brand and its voice, why not try a free trial of Instabot today?