Here at the SME Centre of Excellence, we understand that running a business requires you to be as productive and effective as possible while minimising your overheads to create the optimum conditions to make maximum profits. This is an obvious and basic fact of doing business and one that many business owners are told at the beginning of their journey.
Unless you’re in a tech business, you’ve probably never considered how a chatbot could support the development, efficiency and profitability you could achieve and yet, you’ve most likely seen dozens of them on other’s sites, possibly some of your competitors.
Unfortunately, not all business owners utilise the tools they could be to make that happen because of the amount of work that is constantly being done both in and on the business. However, fear not, as we will give you six great benefits of using a chatbot with the view to develop your personal awareness as well as developing your organisations efficiency.
A chatbot is basically a computer program that can interact with humans over the internet. Their simulation of human language and behaviour provides several benefits that can be used in your business.
Save Time
One of the great benefits of using chatbots in your business is that they save time. For instance, when used on your website they can provide fast, automated answers to most questions. Their use prevents customers from waiting a day or longer to receive responses as they would have in the past.
This allows your business to serve greater numbers of people while increasing productivity and decreasing costs.
Save Money
There are a number of different approaches you, as a business owner, can take to implement a chatbot solution. Some of these range from free through to many thousands of pounds but essentially take on the following flavours:
Use a self-service platform to develop a chatbot
Develop your own from scratch
Ready-made solutions
Depending on the requirements, many businesses find they can get a bot that does most if not all of what you are looking for. If this isn’t for you, expect to play from around £5000 for simple chatbot through to £15000 for a one that understands complex requirements.
Whichever solution you opt for, the maintenance costs are very low, meaning that your up-front expense could be recouped in a relatively short space of time.
Provide Greater Customer Satisfaction
Chatbots play a critical role in improving the customer experience and allow business owners to better engage with their audience – without really doing much. They offer real-time assistance to the user, dedicated support and proactive interactions through asking users questions to understand the real problem.
Having a chatbot being available 24 hours per day genuinely allows your website to be used at all times of the night or day thus increasing the probability of a meaningful engagement with a user – even at 2am!
Frustrated customers who don’t get quick answers, on the other hand, may leave your website and never return. Chatbots can eliminate that scenario and help you keep your customers.
Increase Customer Base
There is another benefit of using chatbots in your business. They may help you reach more people which can increase your customer base.
Bots can also be used to warm prospects, schedule sales appointments and help make purchases. In a recent exercise, a new chatbot was set up to help a client close vehicle loans without ever needing a human. It asked all the questions that a human would ask and was designed to include emojis to make the conversation sound more natural.
Cut Down on Errors
There are two schools of thought around the processing of data and the effectiveness of chatbots. One school of thought suggests that humans can make mistakes when handling data or requests, we can forget things, mis-understand or make any number of other errors. This school of thought says that Chatbots don’t suffer any of these issues?
Alternatively, other schools of thoughts suggest that chatbots have a limited capacity to understand and where more complex requirements are needed, it is more effective to have a human at the other end.
Which ever school of thought you feel is correct (or not), it is clear that chatbots are becoming ever more acceptable on websites with some studies showing that 45% of end-users prefer dealing with a chat bot than a human.
Add Good Humour
An additional benefit of using chatbots in your business is that they add good humour. You never have to worry about a chatbot being in a bad mood. They will never turn away customers with an angry response, attitude, or glance.
They can be programmed to have a bit of humour which can make them seem more humanlike. This puts customers at ease and makes their experience with your business more satisfying.
It’s important to make your business the best it can be to generate greater success and profits. As you can see, there are benefits of using chatbots in your business that can help that happen.
If you are thinking of looking at how technology can support your business growth, give us a call to arrange an initial conversation. We will always abide by our overarching value statement that we will offer you the right support at the right time and at the right price – so you can feel confident we have your best interest at the heart of everything we do.
The SME Centre of Excellence team is available to assist you with all your business requirements. Get in touch with our team to see how we can support your business to start, survive and thrive.
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