AI Chatbots: All You Need to Know

By next year, almost 25% of all customer service related operations are expected to be handled by chatbots. The growth of chatbots has been phenomenal due to a variety of reasons, including quick problem resolution and 24x7 availability.

Nevertheless, chatbots remain a relatively new concept for a lot of companies with integrated customer support departments. However, about 70% of respondents to a survey said that they‘ve used chatbots.

On the other hand, those who are already using AI-based chatbots claim that they have become critical for customer support. They also state that they’ve been able to improve the overall customer experience significantly by using them.

Let’s then take a look at what chatbots can do for you so that your organization can benefit from them.

Chatbot benefits

Here are some of the many benefits of using AI-powered chatbots.

1. Available 24/7

Chatbots are codes, and thus, they can be available 24x7. This way, you can engage with your customers throughout the day, something which would only be possible with customer support staff if you have multiple shifts, which can lead to an increase in recurring expenses.

2. Fully autonomous

Another huge advantage of chatbots is that once installed, they can work completely autonomously, without the need for any manual intervention. You just need to set them up and leave them to handle your customer support needs, directing a query to a customer support executive only when it’s too complex for it to understand.

3. Gets better with time

One of the concepts at the core of artificial intelligence is machine learning. A chatbot becomes better after each interaction with a customer; it learns patterns and habits - in this case, answers to the most popular requests - and uses its knowledge to provide the best solutions.

There are loads of AI chatbot platforms out there that you can use to create your chatbot. Using these, you can not only build your chatbot but can also train it. 

Chatbot challenges

Here are some biggest challenges for chatbots:

Security

Data security remains a major concern for chatbots as the data that you collect from the customer needs to be transmitted and stored securely.

Tone and language

Your chatbot needs to have a friendly tone and should be able to engage your customers well. Its goal should be to create a better user experience, and this can be challenging to achieve. You might also need to give your chatbot an element of humor to make it even more engaging.

Companies that want to remain one step above their competition are already integrating interactive chatbots into their strategy. Nearly 90% of respondents to a survey claimed they had experienced significant improvement in the speed of complaint resolution.

To know more about chatbots and how they can help you, check out this infographic from my blog.