Most people do not enjoy making a phone call to customer service, which is why social media has made customer service much easier.

Gone are the days of sitting on hold listening to elevator music while you wait for someone to pick up your call. Now, you can go straight to social media and send the business a message, and you typically get help quickly, especially if the brand uses chatbots.

Even online, with customer service being digital, there are only so many messages a human can handle. You probably do not have a customer service team that is available 24/7 to answer questions online. This is why the chatbot is a revolutionary concept that is changing the way we conduct customer service.

In 2020, chatbots saved brands 2.2 billion hours of customer service; with numbers like that, it is not hard to see why the chatbot is so revolutionary for customer service.

What are chatbots?

Chatbots are programs that are designed to automatically respond to messages and help customers digitally. They can be set up for a lot of different mediums, including social media platforms. Two types of chatbots exist for customer service, and you can customize them to sound more human so customers do not feel like they are talking to a robot.

AI chatbots

An artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot uses machine learning to talk to your customers. As they are introduced to new questions, words, dialogue, and information, they are supposed to learn from their experiences. They use context clues and conversation history to help improve a person’s experience.

Rule-based chatbots

The rule-based chatbot is less complex than the AI since it essentially follows a flowchart through the conversation. This gives you a little more control over how the chatbot operates, and they are easy to set up. You can build a streamlined conversation chart for rule-based chatbots pretty quickly. You can also set up rules that if the chatbot is unable to assist the customer, you can have it give customers the option of speaking with a human.

Pros and cons of chatbots

These are a great tool and can save you time and money. Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of chatbots.

Pro: Respond instantly

Speed is a vital part of customer service, and with a chatbot, a customer can get help instantly. Unless the issue they are having is too complex for your chatbots, they can get help in minutes without waiting to reach someone.

Pro: After-hours service

You probably do not have someone available for customer service 24/7, but you can have a chatbot do that. Even if you tend to have humans answering customer service questions during the day, you can still have the chatbot set to work after hours so that customers might get their problem solved, even if it is 3 a.m.

Pro: Gives your customer service team a break

Every business has a handful of questions that get asked repeatedly, which can get monotonous for your customer service team. Those questions can get answered automatically by using a chatbot, so your team can focus on more complex issues. If you are receiving a high volume of inquiries, it also helps take some of the heat off of your team by creating something else to help them yield questions. It also gives the team a break from answering those questions, which is always a good thing.

Con: They have to follow the script

One issue you may encounter with the rule-based chatbot is they cannot accurately answer questions that are not part of their flow chart; while you may encounter this with either bot, it is more prevalent with rule-based chatbots. This is why it is important to make sure that someone on your team is available to step in and take over so that the customer gets the assistance they need. If this is after hours, give the bot a prompt to let the customer know the office is closed, but their case is being forwarded so that your human representatives can contact them in the morning. Most customers do not want to come back and go through the conversation tree again tomorrow, and they may get frustrated. This will streamline the process for the customer and enhance their experience.

Con: Script fatigue

While chatbots save you time, if a customer is met with the same script every time they contact you for customer service, they might eventually get tired of the experience. You can refresh your script every few months to keep the wording newer to help you avoid this.

Connecting with customers

When using chatbots, you want to give your customers a better experience. You can write scripts that help with that, and you do not have to pretend your chatbot is really a human; customers can usually tell, and transparency is vital to your customers.

You can give the chatbot an introduction that says it is a chatbot, so the customers who just do not want to talk to a chatbot can be redirected to a human right away. In this introduction, you can also include instructions on how to use the chatbot.

Giving it a personality will also help your engagement. You can give it a certain way it speaks that matches your brand voice. You can also give it a name and even a photo. All of this makes the chatbot feel a little more personable to the customer.

No matter how you customize the chatbot, try to keep it simple. A customer does not want flowery language and large words unless this is something that your brand does. Try to make answers straightforward and write the script speaking as a human would.

Final thoughts

The chatbot is a great help to your customer service, and they are easy to customize. You can better help your customers with chatbots, which will help with your brand reputation. People care about the customer service they receive, so if your chatbot streamlines everything for them, they are more likely to keep coming back.

Remember Seattle Digital Marketing if you need help implementing a customer service chatbot, and for all your digital marketing needs!