The top 5 things you didn't know about chatbots

You might think you know everything you need to know about chatbots—they’re conversational agents that use artificial intelligence to handle many routine queries and issues for your business, including marketing, orders, and customer service. But this definition, while accurate, only scratches the surface of what’s possible when you bring chatbots into your organization. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the biggest myths and surprises about chatbots

1. You don’t need to code to create a chatbot

Chatbots have a highly complex task: simulating natural languages like English in a realistic manner. What’s more, chatbots need to be robust to a wide range of potential user inputs. These factors might lead you to believe that you need to have advanced technical skills to build a chatbot.

The good news is that this is far from the case. These days, there are a variety of low-code and no-code chatbot solutions on the market. By using these chatbot platforms, you can dramatically improve your business agility, decrease time to market, and slash your software development costs—no need to hire expensive full-time developers. Want to learn more? Check out our page on chatbots and conversational AI.

2. Chatbots aren’t only for customers

It seems today that on every other website you visit, there’s a chatbot ready to answer any questions you have and connect you with a human agent if necessary. Armed with this impression, it’s easy to assume that chatbots are only meant to interact with customers.

However, chatbots have a wide variety of use cases, not all of them customer-facing. For example, sales and marketing teams can use chatbots to assist with their lead generation efforts. As soon as sales reps identify a new prospect or have a new conversation with a customer, you can have a conversation with a chatbot to input the details. This information is then immediately saved to your CRM (customer relationship management) software. Other internal chatbot use cases include human resources, operations, management, and finance.

3. Customers increasingly prefer chatbots

Although there are plenty of internal use cases for chatbots, they’re highly successful at customer-facing roles as well. There are a variety of factors that play into customers’ increasing acceptance of chatbots:

• Unlike human support agents, chatbots can be available 24/7/365 to resolve routine customer service issues.
• Chatbots are available to start helping customers immediately, rather than making them wait in long queues to speak with a human agent.
• By deploying chatbots to work on easily solvable issues, human agents can spend more time with, and provide better service to, customers who have more complicated problems.

Of course, the factors above assume that chatbots are well-implemented and effective at their job—which is why it’s so important for organizations to pick the right chatbot partner.

4. Chatbots can be used for purchases

We’ve mainly focused on support as a use case for customer-facing chatbots—but customers are growing increasingly comfortable with using chatbots to make e-commerce purchases, as well.

According to a 2017 survey, more than 20 percent of consumers in the United Kingdom would consider making a purchase through a chatbot. What’s more, this demographic would be willing to spend an average of £315 on their chatbot-enabled purchase. It’s likely that these figures have only increased in the years since then, as customers have grown more comfortable with chatbots in their daily lives.

5. Chatbots are on the rise

Adoption of chatbots is soaring as more and more businesses come to realize their benefits. Below are just a few facts and figures:

• In the past year, 67 percent of consumers worldwide have interacted with a chatbot for customer support.
• IT research and advisory firm Gartner predicts that “by 2022, 70 percent of white-collar workers will interact with conversational platforms on a daily basis.”
• The global chatbot market is expected to grow from £80 million in 2015 to £708 million in 2024.

Want to get started with your own chatbot solution? convedo can help. We have the knowledge and experience organizations need to successfully execute their intelligent automation initiatives, including chatbots. For more information, check out our page on chatbots and conversational AI, or arrange a call with our team of AI experts today for a chat about your business needs and objectives.