The sudden rise of chatbots has caught everyone’s attention in the past year, and digital marketers and e-commerce brands are taking the movement seriously. Organizations with their own application or website have begun to implement them in their online presence.
For a semblance of clarity, a chatbot is a message box displayed when visiting a website. The bot answers questions, schedules meetings and appointments, and transfers inquiries to real people. This form of Artificial Intelligence leads to more sales and ultimately saves companies money. The aim of chatbots is to assist website visitors more quickly and more accurately than ever before, not to mention they are working 24/7 so you don’t have to. They provide visitors with the best experience possible.
Since its rise in 2018, chatbots have proven to be as adequate as humans in carrying a conversation and can drive quality content to a company website. In a market trying to keep up with consumers’ need for instant-gratification, chatbots provide relief from the chaos.
Chatbots are not replacing live representatives and are not taking jobs away from real people; they oftentimes transfer online conversations to a live rep. Chatbots are not perfect—if a bot doesn’t know the answer to a question, they will connect the visitor to a representative.
The process of speaking to a bot eliminates tedious and frustrating forms that website visitors previously had to fill out before they could even speak to a sales rep. The bot gathers and saves the information given within the conversation and relays it to a live person in order to generate future leads and determine the company’s target audience.
In marketing and sales, the customer is always right, and consumers are saying that chatbots are here to stay. Consumers are four times more receptive to speak with a robot than an actual human. As of today, all 195 countries use chatbots on business websites, and by 2020, 80% of all businesses will implement chatbots on their sites.
Soon, organizations are going to create and run their own chatbots rather than hiring an out-of-house developer. This would mean companies would have full control of how personal their customers’ website experience would be—very exciting steps for the near future of business.
Not only do chatbots speak with humans, but they speak to each other as well to share customer information. Bots are on their way to communicating within their own network to ensure customers do not have to reiterate information they provided in the past. Also, they will soon be able to intelligently function without the assistance of a service rep—and voice assistance chatbots are here! Although they are primarily in physical store locations, voice assistance bots (like Siri and Alexa) can instantly and verbally answer questions based on products. They will become increasingly more popular in the years to come.
Chatbots have truly taken over the internet and their reign has only just begun.
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Check out our article on why AI isn’t as scary as you think.
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