Chatbots - Part 2: Advantages, challenges and possible applications in customer service

More benefits at lower costs

No more waiting for minutes in call centre queues, no more fixed office hours - due to the investment in bots, this has become possible. Support costs can even be reduced in the process. The process also becomes much simpler for online orders - it is not necessary for a customer to create a separate account with each online retailer or search for products via various filters. Instead, a short dialogue in the chat is enough, in which the virtual salesperson offers the customer suitable products.

There is also no need to shy away from setting up a Facebook bot, it is uncomplicated and transparent. The only requirements are a Facebook App and Page and a web server with the bot logistics. The Getting Started Guide shows in a few steps how this works technically.

Challenges

Despite everything, there are some challenges that should be on your radar. For example, misunderstandings can arise that can lead to dissatisfaction. The user then does not get an answer to the questions he is actually interested in. This can be avoided by using artificial intelligence, which helps to understand the intention of the query. An example is Facebook's Deep Text, which can understand and interpret about 1,000 text contents in over 20 languages in a single second.

The customer can also be annoyed by the information and the content soon ends up in spam. Therefore, the content should be as relevant and personalised as possible. Due to the risk of data misuse, data security must be given the highest priority.

Chatbots in customer service

Chatbots can improve customer service many times over, especially. As customers log in via a personalised account, chatbots have access to master data, order history, etc. This way, the customer can be clearly identified and problems can be solved quickly. This way you can offer your customers individualised user experiences.

In addition, chatbots can evaluate user queries within milliseconds and respond quickly accordingly. This leads to a significantly faster response time. In order to give customers the feeling that they are communicating with a real person, some chatbots even simulate deliberation through delayed sending.

Furthermore, large amounts of information can be evaluated quickly. Bots can search internal databases and the web in a very short time to find the best solution for each request. This saves time and reduces the duration of the entire procedure.

Bots can increase capacity in customer service. Everyday problems can be solved by bots and thus more customers can be served per day - a so-called horizontal integration takes place. Enquiries outside of business hours and from other time zones can also be processed, thus offering round-the-clock service.

At the same time, customer service costs can be minimised. In this way, the customer service team can be reduced to a minimum. But don't worry - the employees are still not in danger of losing their jobs, because machines cannot replace the emotional intelligence of humans. That's why a combination of customer advisors and chatbots is recommended. Chatbots can answer standard questions, while machines take care of the complicated cases.

Customer service requests can also be reduced by proactive messaging, which we enable with our solution.