How do chatbots really work?

Chatbots have been around for decades but the recent progression of artificial intelligence  and machine learning has made them better, faster and much more intuitive. The biggest benefit of an Click4Assistance AI chatbot is that it can work with your live chat, as well as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. But to understand how chatbots work, you need to understand what a chatbot is… 

What is a chatbot? 

A chatbot is a service, usually based online, controlled by set rules and more recently artificial intelligence and machine learning. You would engage with a chatbot on a chat interface such as live chat or instant messaging app, like Facebook Messenger, Slack and sometimes text messaging. In essence, today’s chatbots are built to do more than just reply to you immediately, as they are also designed to help you navigate a website and locate things you’re looking for. For instance, if you are on a clothing retailer’s website and you are looking for long sleeved white shirts for men, you could just ask a chatbot, if available, rather than spend ages looking for it yourself. The chatbot, if trained to do so, should be able to locate the item’s web page and send it to you if it is available, and if not, be able to provide an alternative. 

When you look at that scenario, you can really see the potential of an AI chatbot for sales. Imagine if that customer was looking around and could not find what they were looking for after a couple minutes, and just left the website. While that’s only one small sale slipping through the cracks, imagine how many sales like that are slipping through. It’s a lot more than any business would be comfortable knowing about. Chatbots can immediately improve revenue and conversions by simply engaging and offering alternatives or even up-selling. 

Chatbots don’t have to be all work! 

Because chatbots can be trained to do anything, it can engage users waiting in a queue by telling jokes, giving them updates about the weather, and even asking them about their weekend plans. The potential of friendly, non-serious engagement with a chatbot is limitless, making your brand more relatable, human and gives customers something to tell their friends about, since having a chat with a chatbot about feeling frazzled after a glass too many on a Friday after work is somewhat out of the ordinary and definitely chat-worthy. 

Chatbots are more important now than ever 

What’s the big deal about them anyway? They are not exactly novel, and they are simple text based services. Not only do they improve your customer service and sales, this is the first time people are using instant messaging apps more than social media networks. That is massive, when you look at the scale of social media at the moment. While instant messaging predates social media networks, with the likes of ICQ, AOL and MSN Messenger, they were not as widespread at the time, and only accessible via a desktop computer. Today, these instant messaging apps are in the palm of nearly everyone’s hands making instant messaging more valuable than advertising. 

In essence, if you want to build an online business, you have to go where the people are, and they are all using instant chat applications. While there are billions of active users on social media networks across the globe, in 2016, data showed that mobile messaging app usage was far surpassing that of social media networks. Is your business taking advantage of this opportunity? 

This is where the importance of chatbots come in. If more than 60% of consumers prefer using instant messaging options and many of these messages are coming in at varying hours of the day, including out of office hours, a chatbot can assist by engaging these customers for you immediately so that your team does not have to. 

Click4Assistance has developed an AI chatbot that can engage an unlimited number of users simultaneously and also seamlessly integrates with WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, allowing your social media and live chat to be covered at all times, even when your team is out of office. This will allow your customers to speak with someone, even if they are not human, and get basic assistance and information before your team reaches out to them. If they are looking for something specific, the chatbot will be able to take them through a few basic questions and then transfer them to the right department, so that they will essentially skip the queue and potentially have fewer transfers. 

All of this, your live chat, social media messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, and your AI chatbot will be all in one desktop dashboard, so your team does not have to constantly switch apps. If you’re interested in deploying Click4Assistance, the UK’s premier GDPR compliant live chat software solution, to increase your business’ productivity for 2020, give us a call on 08451235871 or send an email to theteam@click4assistance.co.uk and one of our experts will be with you right away. Not ready to reach out yet? Discover how it works, try a demo, or better yet, try Click4Assistance completely free for 21 days.