In recent times, the benefits of chatbots have become more understood, especially in the areas of customer services and sales processes. According to statistics, chatbots are predicted to tackle a massive 85% of customer service interactions by 2020.
With most early adopters being large corporations such as banks or firms with large customer service arms, the question remains as to whether chatbots are a crucial marketing tool for start-ups, or if growing businesses should invest their money elsewhere?
As digital platforms continue to accelerate at an exponential rate, stakeholder engagement has transformed into a ‘24/7’ operation, where unless a start-up has the brand strength to compete with corporate giants, not having a chatbot could be seriously detrimental to growth and sales success – here’s why:
1. Saves time and money
Chatbots save both time and money, incorporating one into your company website will enable you to provide customers with a fast automated response, improving customer relations or driving potential sales.
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Remember, the modern-day customer doesn’t want to wait for an answer, just as much as a business doesn’t want to miss out on a sale. Chatbots offer the perfect solution, assisting business development executives in their day-to-day role without a start-up having to outlay costs for additional resource. How? chatbots can successfully filter through the more complex customer queries or pre-vetted sales leads, enabling team members to focus their attention where it is most needed.
2. Increases user engagement
Chatbots can be programmed to respond in different languages, meaning start-ups looking to sell and engage with customers across multiple countries need not worry about language barriers.
Chatbot can also be used to observe which web pages a customer has browsed previously and provide information based on their viewing habits, allowing for a more personalised experience and improved ‘buyer journey’, increasing customer retention.
3. Gives customer satisfaction
For a start-up, customer satisfaction is paramount.
Start-ups have the unenviable task of needing to impress a customer immediately in order to prevent them from seeking out competitors, who are more established for that particular product or service offering.
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Chatbots can provide customers with immediate answers to questions 24 hours a day, seven days a week, meaning they obtain a fast, effective and consistent response for any product or service based queries, improving customer relations as a result.
4. Track customer trends
Questions and commands consistently implemented into a chatbot can be analysed to help a business grow.
How? They help track buying patterns and consumer behaviour by monitoring user data and helping decide which areas in which to increase marketing and which to redevelop.
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A chatbot can also act as a questionnaire by collecting responses from visitors to the website on their likes and dislikes, gaining market research to aid improved product or service offering.
5. Increases sales
One of the main benefits of chatbots is their capability to drive customer acquisition and sales.
According to figures, 83% of consumers need support to complete an order online. By incorporating a chatbot and direct messaging capability, not only are you able to fulfil and effectively manage this massive demand, but you can also increase online sales, whilst driving down your cost-per-acquisition.
Overall, Chatbots offer a host of benefits to both established and start-up businesses, and for many offer a low-cost tool that can effectively support customer relations, whilst driving business growth.
Written by Matthew Davies-Binge, founder of Profile Digital Agency
