Chatbots were once seen as a bit of a gimmick and not a necessity. But nowadays with greater advances in technology, chatbots are becoming an essential tool for pretty much any type of business. In this post we’ll take a look at the benefits of chatbots and why you need one for your website.
What Is A Chatbot?
So firstly, what is a chatbot? A chatbot is a computer program that is designed to simulate a conversation with a human user. They can use AI and natural language processing to learn and understand from humans interacting with them.
What Is A Chatbot Used For?
Chatbots are often used in online customer service to help customers resolve their issues without the need to speak to a human agent. Chatbots are also used in marketing and sales to qualify leads and help customers through the purchase process.
Chatbots are growing in popularity and are increasingly replacing human operators across websites, apps and social media. This is because there are many uses for and benefits of chatbots for business which we’ll look at below.
What Are The Benefits Of Chatbots?
There are a multitude of reasons to use a chatbot as set out in the following infographic. We will discuss each of these points further below.
Can Run 24/7
Unlike a human operator, a chatbot can be run continuously around the clock. Working 24/7 without any need for breaks. This means they can operate outside of normal business hours. So customers can interact at whatever time is convenient for them. It can lead to greater customer satisfaction.
Can Communicate Immediately
Have you ever contacted customer services and been stuck in a queue waiting to speak to a customer service agent? Or the only option of contacting them was by completing a contact form and waiting days for an email response?
Well a chatbot can put a stop to this and allow your customers to get an instant response. This is because chatbots can attend to multiple people at the same time unlike a human. No more frustration for your customers waiting in line or awaiting an email reply. This leads to quicker resolutions and greater customer satisfaction.
Cost savings
An investment in chatbots can result in greater ongoing cost savings through reduced staff expenditure. There are no wages or employee benefits to pay. In addition to cost savings, it can also save time hiring staff. Time that you can better dedicate to other areas of your business.
Automate Simple And Repetitive Tasks
Chatbots can be programmed to carry out those tedious, simple and repetitive tasks. Freeing up your staff from those mundane tasks and keeping them more engaged.
Chatbots aren’t exclusively for external customer use, they can also be used internally. E.g. they could integrate into an Intranet to help onboard new staff. The bot would answer and direct to relevant areas such as HR queries.
Gain Insights Into Customer Behaviour
Chatbots allow you to gain real insights into your customers behaviour. You can see what are common queries and issues people have. Or what the most popular products are. This data can be used to adapt and customize your products, services, processes and marketing to better meet customer needs.
Can Help Increase Sales
One of the single greatest benefits of chatbots is their ability to help make significant increases in sales. A study by Forbes showed that chatbot use led to an increase in sales of 67% on average.
There are several reasons for this. If a customer shows interest in a product they may inquire for further information. They can get an instant response from a chatbot whenever they require. They don’t have to go through time consuming contact channels where they lose interest or speak to pushy sales people.
And by learning from previous customer behaviour, chatbots can personalize the experience to that customer. They can offer recommendations or up-sells based on similar experiences and responses.
Multilingual
A huge benefit of chatbots is the ability to program in multiple languages. This may be done by presenting an option to the user at the start of the chat to select their language. Or by automatically switching to another language based on the user’s location. Having multilingual capabilities is beneficial to companies and websites with a global reach.
Wide Variety Of Uses
You would ordinarily hire staff for one particular specialism such as customer service. This means you require many staff across all the different business functions. Whereas a chatbot has a wide variety of uses. They can be used externally to assist customers or internally to help your employees.
Whether your aim is to provide more efficient customer service, generate more leads, provide better automation or increase sales, a chatbot can help with all of these and more.
Useful On Any Type Of Website
It is not just large businesses that can use the benefits of chatbots. Pretty much any type of website can utilise a chatbot for the multitude of benefits described above. They can integrate into all types of site including blogs, affiliate pages, e-commerce stores, social media and more.
How To Get A Chatbot
Now we’ve seen there are a lot of benefits of chatbots for business you might be keen to get a chatbot for your website. But you’re probably wondering how do I get a chatbot? And can I afford it?
Well there are many options to choose from. You could hire a developer to create one for your business. But this could be very expensive. Or a more affordable alternative is to create your own.
How do you create your own chatbot if you aren’t a software developer? Well, there’s a pretty simple solution. There are no-code chatbot builders available that allow anybody to easily create a professional chatbot with absolutely no coding knowledge.
ConversioBot for instance uses a simple drag and drop user interface to create a chatbot from scratch in minutes. There is nothing to install as it’s a cloud-based app. It is designed for small business owners that want to increase engagement, grow email lists and explode sales.
They even have a range of done-for-you chatbots. These cover a variety of popular niches that you can use right away on your website.
With full integration to almost any website and marketing software including WordPress, Mail Chimp, Shopify, Click Funnels etc. There’s even a WordPress Plugin. In under 60 seconds you can get true automation on your website.
Test it here to see how ConversioBot works
Benefits Of Chatbots Conclusion
Chatbots are an important tool for businesses to use across their websites and social media for the advantages they offer.
There are lots of benefits of chatbots for businesses. These include; automation of repetitive tasks, increased engagement and user satisfaction, cost savings and increased sales.
Any type of website can benefit from a chatbot including e-commerce stores, blogs and affiliate sites.
It is now easier than ever to install a chatbot on your site. And without paying thousands of dollars on development by using no code builders like ConversioBot.
These simple drag and drop builders allow anybody to build and install their own chatbot in minutes. Without any technical skills and at a fraction of the cost of hiring a developer.
Learn more how ConversioBot can help grow your business
Find more essential reading on our blog including the following;
- Why you need multiple sources of income.
- Why you should hire a freelancer.
- The success system that never fails.
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