Chatbots - The New Life Savers and Marketing Professionals for your Business
All – In - One
We have earlier heard of WeChat, parent company, Tencent, which is an app that is creating waves in China due to its numerous features such as
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Messaging,
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Social networking,
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Mobile payments,
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Cloud storage,
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Education,
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Live streaming,
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Sports,
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Movies,
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Artificial intelligence,
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Digital assistants,
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Hospital bookings and appointments and even in education (initial stage).
Looking at the fields this app has got into, we can imagine the level in which the makers have invested in AI and also signifies the vastness of the use of it. Earlier, this app was famous for its social media features and messaging platform. Social media does not mean only smileys and stickers, but the manner in which it connects more amount of people and keeps them connected.
Chatbots in Business
With the advancement of time, social media has upgraded itself, and pros like Facebook have started employing Chatbots to make their task easier. Chatbots are the robots to whom we can text, ask questions, and get our issues resolved just like a human.
How Chatbots Helps In Increasing Profits
A large no of businesses nowadays, are run through social media and employing Chatbots in it, which has proven effective in increasing the profits of the company. Let’s see how is it possible.
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Customer Handling and Scaling up Operations
We all have been in line and heard the unbearable waiting tone when calling customer care and half of the times, we just keep waiting and waiting, and then after a while, drop the call due to irritation. But it won’t be now, as businesses have started using Chatbots which makes it easy to have a conversation (even though to a non-human) and get our problems solved. It is 24*7 accessible so people’s feasibility is assured. In this manner, there is no waiting for the customers, and more no of people can be attended as compared to a human attending them, which helps to connect with more people who are satisfied.
These Chatbots also remember the choices that were discussed with them, so, the customers don’t have to tell the whole story again to get to the solution. There are Chatbots employed in travel sites, which can provide us the whole itinerary based on our choices and help out in planning a visit to any place.
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2. Savings All the Way
Chatbots would prove a big saving to the business as they would be doing a lot of work without a drop of sweat efficiently. This doesn’t mean that humans won’t be required then and everything would become automated. Instead, it would provide time to do more innovative work for the betterment of the company.
Another option is integrating the chatbot into the popular social platforms, which would be accessible to the customers and would not need any additional installation of apps whatsoever.
A chatbot in a customer support would be quite beneficial as people would be asking numerous questions, if these questions are answered by a bot, half of them would get filtered and only the relevant and complex queries would be reaching the human, saving a lot of time, energy and resources of the company and this would definitely help in increasing profits.
3. Shopping Buddy and Financial Advisor
Many of us have faced issues while shopping online for various products. This confusion increases when there are products with similar features. Chatbots at this stage can help us out in knowing the distinct features in each of them and selecting the most favourable one through product reviews, ratings etc. People can also ask for clothing recommendations, giving it a personal touch. Cosmetic product selling websites like Sephora, guides customer in buying any product, provides makeup tutorials and shopping assistance too. Financial advices can also be provided by a chatbot pertaining to how it is programmed, helping people in making financial decisions, in turn getting customer satisfaction. Mastercard has a chatbot which makes it easy for customers to spend and control their transactions and also help order from various stores.
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4. Interactive Marketing Platform
Business is all about converting lead into a customer. Marketing is an inevitable part of any business and the more customers it can get, the more the company profits. Businesses employing Chatbots can reach out to more people and interact with them through marketing campaigns, which informs the business about the current situation and helps it to plan accordingly the next ones. This, not only helps in lead generation but increases the customer base, in turn the brand value of the company.
5. Personal Assistant 24*7
A chatbot would be useful in keeping reminders and telling the businessmen about their daily schedules and other schedules just like a personal secretary and would also update the task directory of them if needed. Another feature is expense tracking. It can keep track of all the expenses made and would keep updating it time-to time, helping to know it at and making any modifications in it if necessary. It would also predict the outcome of the project works, depending on all the information provided to it, which would be useful in modifying any plan, mid-way of project to get the expected results.
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Present Situation
Using Chatbots is still new for many businesses, while it has already proven a hit with Facebook’s messenger platform generating large revenue. According to a report of Forbes, in 2018, there are more than 300000 active Chatbots on its messenger platform assisting and interacting with people.
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Apps like Dominoes are using Chatbots for taking pizza order and delivering them.
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They are also being used in cab applications like Lyft for booking a cab based on the user’s choices.
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Musical apps like Spotify are using it to play the desired type of music for the user, instead of typing the song name or searching for it.
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Wall Street Journal uses Chatbots to notify and also help customize alerts for receiving stock updates, live-stock news etc.
Conclusion
Chatbots are still considered an emerging technology, but they are quickly maturing and becoming a staple in many businesses’ customer service, sales, and marketing operations. That said, a lot of current generation chatbots are still in their infancy – they have big ambitions but lack the experience and expertise needed to truly deliver. The path to greatness is not a forgiving one.
