Why You Need Chatbots for Your Call Centre?

Welcome back! Last week we talked about Customer trust and we gave you tips to turn your waiting lines into a positive customer experience. This week, we are going to explore something different and somewhat futuristic: customer service Chatbots.

What are Chatbots and how are they used?

“A bot is a computer program with the ability to perform tasks autonomously, interacting with humans via a communication channel. Bots can search for data, bookings or launch automatic processes at the request of a user, and usually communicate in natural language.” (Translated from decidesoluciones.es) 

Customer services are starting to turn to Chatbots (intelligent virtual agents) to enhance their Customer Experience. Let’s try to understand what challenges call centres currently face, how Chatbots can help companies face up to them in a modern way with Chatbots, and try to guess what the future of call centres might look like. 
 

Call centers.

What are the main challenges that call centres currently face, and what do they need to meet these challenges?

1. Enhance user experience

• Provide personalised attention to customers
• Have empathetic, customer-oriented operators
• Available 24/7/365

2. Rapidly adapt to business needs

• Follow the growth and decline of business
• Manage specific and punctual marketing campaigns (e.g., Black Friday, Christmas, etc.)
• Adapt to unforeseen circumstances

3. Reduce costs

• Reduce average call duration
• Reduce wage costs

These three concerns are critical, and traditional tools will soon be obsolete in the face of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning and cognitive systems. It’s all a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?

What is the future of call centres? Technological transformation.

Until relatively recently, implementing Chatbots for your call centre would have been considered futuristic, but its has rapidly become very actual. Projections indicate that the future lies in changing your traditional call centre for a customer contact platform with highly-specialized operators plus these virtual agents. These intelligent platforms can, for example, analyse all your unstructured incoming data (audio or video), understand complex questions, received via social networks or WhatsApp, give near-human responses and solutions (or at least suggest to your operators the most relevant answer from a library of available answers), advise, monitor (anticipate problems), and much more. There’s no denying that Chatbots are an excellent tool for boosting sales and making savings. 

If you still need convincing, here are some statistics that show just how important this technological transformation is:

• it is estimated over the next four years that Chatbots will be responsible for savings of up to $8,000 billion per year, up from $20 million today.
• by 2020, 85% of customer care support centres will be operated by Chatbot. In such a context, the added value brought by human operators will be the empathy and the emotion they can bring to the relationship.
• Success story: Autodesk cut down its resolution time from 38 hours to 5.4 minutes for most inquiries.

Talking of boosting sales … New forms of customer service.

One of the main benefits of Chatbots is that they enable you to offer support 24/7, all year-round. They offer real-time support and enable you to enhance customer engagement. Being able to buy “anywhere, anytime”, can have a positive impact on customer satisfaction. Users get their answers in real time, and a solution to their inquiry. Because Chatbots take on most of the repetitive tasks, (human) operators have more time to focus on tasks that drive revenue for the company. It’s a win-win situation: customers get a personalized offer, which enhances their engagement with your company, and your staff get the opportunity to increase their skills. 

You increase your chances of customers reaching the top of the sales funnel, because Chatbots, over and above answering queries, also support the sales team to enhance your company’s reputation, boost sales and guide customers on their journey. 

Now’s the time! 

It’s nearly the end of the year, and after the pre-holiday peak selling time, your customers will probably be having a rest. This “downtime” is the perfect opportunity for you to implement Chatbots in your CRM and be ready to jump back into action at the beginning of the year. 

Implementing Chatbots with your CRM solution will help you:

• collect and store data from your customers and prospects
• leverage your CRM data to identify callers and get relevant information (Screen push)
• get call suggestions (because chatbots are intelligent, they can predict potential problems)
• gather sales and market intelligence as well as competitive intelligence
• collect critical information on your customers, including new needs and concerns that can compromise a sale.

All that and much more …

Chatbots in a nutshell.

Sooner or later, all companies will need to implement Chatbot-powered customer service. By doing this, companies will be able to guarantee their customers get the support they need 24/7/365, reduce human error and costs. By using Chatbots in your Customer Relationship strategy, you can be sure that your customers get the best possible support in the most efficient manner. 

So, are you ready? 
 

Learn more about: 

Perfect Competition: What it is and what are its characteristics 
Level Up Your Customer Service Skills