Most business owners, precisely in the technology industry, have heard about chatbots by now. Business leaders may have studied about these small conversational programs that enable people to interact with machines. And they may even have communicated with few of them.

A person outside of the business world may have spoken to PG tips’ Monkey chatbot, Poncho the weather chatbot or the Domino’s pizza chatbot. What is basically a chatbot? It is a service driven by rules and artificial intelligence (sometimes) that you interact with through a chat interface.

>See also: A CIO’s guide to chatbots: Everything you need to know

In the middle of all this, you have probably wondered about the influence chatbots will have on your business. They are having an impact on almost all kinds of businesses. What should you do to prepare? How will your business fare? Should you rejoice or worry? There are few things that entrepreneurs must know why they need chatbots. Let’s bust some myths and prepare you for the 21st century conversational style.

The chatbot trend

About a year ago, there was a lot of discussion surrounding the influence of chatbots in the future. That time is over. Chatbots are here now and there is no denying their presence absolutely.

Some of the biggest brands are utilising them already. Fortunately, the chatbot trend is not so far away that you can’t catch up. Doing a bit more research after going through this article will keep you updated. Your business is in a situation to benefit a lot from our robotic chatting friends. No more time is left to wait or deny. Now is the time to catch up.

>See also: Top 10 things to consider when adopting chatbot technology

There is much talk on the artificial intelligence concept and the way it will have an effect on our lives. Some people speak of the singularity while few others refute the idea completely. As a business owner, the major point to remember right now is the chatbots are here to help. They are programmed to help you attain better results, operate more effectively and make your life easier. You can control them completely as they work as per your instruction. This age of chatbot revolution is an exhilarating time for everyone as the business owners can get highly benefited from it.

Impact of chatbots

How will chatbots create an impact on your business? By impacting each and every department. Chatbots are everywhere, whether it is speeding up time to response on your customer enquiries(customer service team), enhancing conversion rates on your landing pages(sales team), or unblocking the employee enquiry mailbox (HR team). When it comes to HR, data analytics is playing a crucial role, according to research carried out by Peoplehr.

The reason why data analytics is being discussed here because it will help people understand chatbots well. Your operation may not be large enough for you to think of all the implications just yet, but it pays to be prepared. For instance, let’s take your customer service team. It is usual to assume that 80% of the enquiries they get cover about 20 percent of the topics. A large amount of automation is possible right here and it is made easy with chatbots.

>See also: Rise of the chatbot: security concerns

What would result if a customer service chatbot were to handle 50% of these repetitive enquiries and automatically answer them, conversationally, all the time? Talk about a large amount of weight lifted off your customer service team. They can now pay attention on providing answers to the questions that require a much more human touch.

The same rule gets applied to every other department. Chatbots will enable your business to be more efficient and organised on all fronts by freeing up time for your employees and you to do what they do best and by automating what can be automated.

Consumer approval

When discussing about chatbots, consumer approval of this software is a general concern. Are your customers willing to interact with a robot? Will they prefer humans to robots for the interaction? This is actually a very valid question. Recent studies have revealed that consumers are excited and pleased about using chatbots.

>See also: Chatbots should be experts, not virtual assistants

The chatbot revolution is something the consumers look forward to, something that will transform our lives for the better, but not just an exciting new technology opportunity to geek out in. As a business owner, you must be aware of the mindset of your customers towards this kind of automation.

Adaption of chatbot technology

The adoption of chatbot technology in business may sound highly advanced at present. But, in six months businesses will have been left far behind as the competition will have made the plunge.

Business Insider forecasts that by the end of year 2020, about 80% of businesses will be having conversational automation in place. Around two years may sound like you have sufficient time to get there, but you do not. As a business owner, you can’t afford to get left behind. Adoption to chatbots involves a lot of time as there are things to fix, things to develop and things to plan.

>See also: The chatbots are here: are you prepared?

Conclusion

Till now, chatbots can be utilised to turn up efficiency, speed up processes, and decrease workload. That is not all they do. At present, chatbots are still exciting and new to everyone. On one hand, not knowing about chatbots is the reason why many businesses will get left behind in 6 to 12 months. On the other hand, this is the reason businesses that take the jump have so much to gain.

Chatbots impact customer’s point of view of a business, along with impacting the bottom line. So, are you ready to embrace the future?

Sourced by Savaram Ravindra, content contributor at Mindmajix.com