A decade ago, while standing in long lines to pay electricity, water, or telephone bills, no one would have ever thought that they would be able to pay their bills from a smartphone within a few seconds. But surprisingly, today, most of us are making such payments through digital wallets like eSewa, Khalti, and mobile banking apps.
With the evolution of technologies and new innovations, our way of living has changed a lot in the last few years. Our lifestyle has become much more comfortable.
A new technology is gaining rapid momentum in recent times: Chatbot. In this article, we will discuss this new technology, and how various kinds of Nepali businesses can benefit from the use of a chatbot.
What is a chatbot?
A chatbot is a computer program that is designed to communicate with people via text or voice message to solve customer’s questions and queries. It can process human language (written or spoken) and provide responses of varying complexity. It makes customer communication easy and instant for sales, marketing, or support teams. Chatbots have already shown themselves to be valuable tools for customer service. Numerous brands have been implementing chatbots in their websites and social media platforms (Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp, and Instagram) to improve their customer’s experience.
Why use chatbots in your business?
The rapidly evolving digital world is altering and increasing customer’s expectations. Many customers expect organizations to be available round the clock. But it’s not possible to have human staff available all the time to solve customer queries. This is where chatbots can serve to deliver a better experience to customers, by automating customer communication.
In a business setting, chatbots are widely used to help customers find answers quickly without requiring human intervention. Typically, businesses deploy chatbots to answer common questions and provide real-time support service 24/7.
Also, answering the same question multiple times can be boring for your customer service staff. In contrast, machines never get bored. Like robots are being used in factories to perform repetitive tasks, chatbots can also be used in organizations to solve common repetitive queries from customers. Chatbots have no problem answering the same question asked by thousands of customers. This is one reason why more and more businesses have started using chatbots.
By using AI-enabled chatbots, your business can deliver real-time support, promptly answer queries, and boost customer satisfaction.
Similarly, organizations can integrate chatbots with their existing software to add extra value to their customers. For example, In the case of an insurance company, the chatbot can be integrated with the core system and customers can see their due payment, check claim status, change mobile number, and avail many more such services from chatbot itself. Furthermore, by using the data generated by chatbots, companies can prepare their business strategy to improve revenue and boost overall customer satisfaction.
According to MIT Technology Review Insights published in 2018, among the 600 executives surveyed across 18 countries, 90% said their firms now use AI solutions to improve customer experience. And on average, 25% – 50% of all customer inquiries are now completely resolved through automated channels, freeing up customer service agents to handle more complex tasks.
7 benefits of using chatbots in your business:
- Answer frequently asked questions: It is frustrating for customer service staff to answer the same question repeatedly. You can use AI-powered chatbot to answer repetitive queries & FAQs from customers. If the conversation gets too complex, the customer can choose to talk with a human service agent. As the chatbot handles FAQs and common questions, the customer service team can focus on complex and high-value queries.
- Instant Response: Chatbots can reduce customer wait time and provide immediate answers. Implementing a chatbot allows companies to manage a massive amount of customer queries in a relatively short period of time.
- Offer customer support 24/7: In this digital age, customers expect an immediate response to their queries. They have more choices than ever before, and they won’t wait around for you to answer their questions. Chatbots are always ‘on’ and can deal with your customers whether it’s morning or midnight, or holiday. Customers don’t need to wait for office-time to get their issues resolved. Chatbots can help customers in real-time with automated replies that address the majority of customer’s needs.
- Talk with multiple customers simultaneously: A single chatbot can talk with hundreds and thousands of customers at once and handle their requests. By providing instant responses, the chatbot eliminates wait time and increases business productivity.
- Cost savings: Implementation of a chatbot will cost a certain amount of initial investment. However, in the long run, this cost will be drastically lower when compared to a customer service representative’s salary, training costs, etc. A chatbot is a faster and cheaper solution than hiring additional staff to solve customer’s queries. By investing in chatbots, you can save extra costs that go into hiring more support staff. You can reduce costs on salaries, training, infrastructure, etc. with chatbots.
- Save time: Chatbots are helpful to answer simple, and common questions from customers. After chatbots handle repetitive queries from customers, employees can focus on more important tasks and handle complex queries and prevent customers from waiting to get responses. Chatbots can be an ally to your support team.
- Increase customer loyalty: Chatbots will help manage your customer’s queries with instant responses and boost their satisfaction level. Proactive support and better customer experiences lead to an increase in sales and customer loyalty. You can improve customer experience and nurture brand loyalty with the use of a chatbot.
How do chatbots work?
A chatbot is like a normal application. Generally, chatbots are scripted to respond to frequently asked questions or perform simple, repetitive tasks.
Once you feed a knowledge database, it will make it easier for the chatbot to recognize your customer’s queries, and solve it accordingly. The more your customers interact with the chatbot, the more efficient it becomes and it can predict more appropriate responses.
If the conversation introduces a concept, it is not programmed to understand, it will either deflect the conversation or pass the communication to a human agent. Either way, it will also learn from that interaction as well as from future interactions. Thus, the chatbot will gradually grow in scope and gain relevance.
With the evolution and improvements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies, chatbots are getting more capable and efficient. Voice Bots like Siri and Alexa have also emerged in the market, and have already started handling voice queries. However, the voice of every individual is different, so it’s comparatively difficult to get accuracy through voice bots. Whereas, since everyone writes the same text/spelling, chatbots are more accurate and intelligent.
Chatbots getting popular in Nepal
In Nepal also, numerous organizations, including banks, insurance companies, auto dealers, schools, colleges, hospitals, e-commerce companies, travel and tourism companies, restaurants, etc. have already started adopting chatbots to handle customer service.
In India, even government bodies have adopted chatbots for various activities ranging from citizen engagement to railway ticket booking and customer service.
In Nepal also, Kathmandu Metropolitan City has already deployed a chatbot service. We might start seeing many more government bodies adopting chatbots in the near future for citizen engagement, to offer guidance, and provide helpline services.
Even the biggest companies like Microsoft are using virtual assistants as primary support options for various Microsoft products and services.
If you are looking to increase sales or service productivity, implementing a chatbot might be of great help. It can save time you’re spending on customer support. Chatbots are quite useful to answer recurring questions. You can use a chatbot-based virtual assistant to handle simple tasks, allowing your customer service staff to handle other responsibilities.
How to use a chatbot for your business?
To develop a chatbot, first, our team will meet you to hear your vision. Then, relying on our expertise and outside perspective, we will architect a plan to execute your chatbot vision within the capabilities of current technology. Our team will offer input on how to achieve your vision effectively without sacrificing functionality or a beautiful design and user experience.
Then, we will make a knowledge base and train the chatbot system and get your feedback if any changes are needed. Once we get the feedback, we will again train the system. We will take the chatbot LIVE only after you are fully satisfied.
Chatbots developed by Palm Mind use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Furthermore, our chatbots are based on Natural Language Understanding (NLU), and Natural Language Processing (NLP) and can provide human-like responses to customer’s queries. You can genuinely add real value by integrating a chatbot with your core system.