Customer Service Chatbot | Digital Messaging Channels for Service

What can customer service chatbots do for your business? Quite a bit!

A customer service chatbot uses artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and natural language understanding (NLU) to mimic human speech. Businesses have been steadily adopting chatbots and incorporating them into their service models to answer customer questions and automate routine tasks. While chatbots have some limitations - they're not very smart yet - they can play a useful role when performing the right tasks.

Some businesses may have some reservations, and rightfully so, about the impact customer service chatbots might have on the customer experience. Our research shows that, with a 28% satisfaction score, chatbots haven't yet won the hearts of consumers. However, younger customers have a higher opinion of chatbots. In fact, Generation Z and Millennials think customer service chatbots make it faster and easier to get issues resolved.

If you're still on the fence about customer service chatbots, here are some of the many ways they can be deployed to improve efficiency and enhance the customer experience.

Assist with the sales process

Customer service chatbots can also help with lead qualification by gathering relevant information from a customer. For example, if someone wants assistance purchasing corporate software, the chatbot could ask them about the number of anticipated users and the purchase timeline. This would allow a business to send the lead to the right sales team. Customer service chatbots can also take a more proactive sales role by engaging shoppers online and making recommendations based on what they have viewed or what's in their cart.

Automate routine tasks

Customer service chatbots can help automate tasks that would otherwise be done by a person. This frees up your skilled employees for more value-added activities. Some examples of these tasks include appointment setting and booking hotel reservations. In a chat session, the bot can find out a customer's preferred dates and times, check availability, suggest alternative dates, and confirm the final appointment or reservation details. Customer service chatbots can also take food orders and call cabs for customers. Businesses have been very creative with making chatbots work for their business model.

Resolve issues and answer questions

Companies often use chatbots as the front end of online chat sessions. Customer service chatbots are good at tapping into knowledge bases in order to answer customers' basic questions. When they can answer a question, that’s one less contact for agents to handle. They can also gather information about the issue - customer name, order number, nature of the problem - and forward it to a live chat agent in cases where the issue is too complex for the bot to handle.

NICE inContact can help with your chatbot needs

NICE inContact CXone empowers organizations to provide an exceptional customer experience by acting smarter and responding faster to ever-changing consumer expectations. We have partnered with leading chatbot providers to provide our software clients with easily integrated chatbot solutions that will provide customers with the seamless experience they expect. Find out more about these capabilities here.