How Chatbots Can Help Your Business

How to integrate Chatbots into your organisation

Chatbots are gaining traction in the online marketplace – and it is little wonder they are, as they offer great benefits and potential savings to website owners and managers. As technological advances continue to drive web commerce development those who do not employ and harness the power of the various applications and systems that emerge will, inevitably find themselves disadvantaged in the long term.

So, once you have accepted that an innovation such as chatbots can help your business how do you go about identifying how and in which areas they are best deployed?

There are certain conditions in a business that absolutely lend themselves to chatbot intervention. For example, if you are the type of business that gets a lot of repeat business that is very similar in nature or identical to previous orders it would be relatively simple to construct a bot to deal with these. This type of chatbot could be linked to customers’ records and previous purchases to identify their preferences and provide them with straightforward options and information on alternatives, if necessary.

A similar situation exists where you tend to get lots of simple, repetitive enquiries about your business such as location, opening times, basic product range, delivery times and so on. It would be a fairly easy operation to load a bot up with this sort of information and provide it with recognition of keywords and phrases and the appropriate responses.

Many people are wary of phoning businesses with sales and price queries because they are worried that they will be subjected to pressure sales techniques to get them to make a purchase before they are ready. Having a chatbot prepare and carry this type of information to them can prevent this and encourage them to interact more deeply with your business and, possibly, increase their likelihood of purchase or at least obtaining further information.

It will be immediately apparent from these few examples how your business could directly benefit from the use of a chatbot.

• It enables your staff to concentrate on more productive tasks while not being diverted to provide basic, simple information to clients;
• It can help you get accurate information to customers quickly and efficiently;
• It can aid and improve your user experience by guiding them quickly and smoothly to where they want to be without confusion or time-wasting interactions;
• It can connect a user with a store of information relating to either their account or your business and products without staff having to access cumbersome or difficult to find files or data;
• A bot provides greater efficiency – they don’t make mistakes and they are quicker than humans. If a user asks for a particular piece of information or product delivery that is what the bot will provide (assuming it is properly set up and equipped with the right information, of course!).

Enhancing the user experience and improving the accuracy and speed of outcomes are essential elements of a successful online business. Anyone who can deliver these dual objectives will find themselves preferred over sites that are less efficient and user-friendly.

If you would like to learn more about how chatbots can help augment your online business, ring us on +44(0)800 0246247 or email us at hello@ux247.com.