Chatbot For Enterprises

 

All Communications now-a-days are controlled and managed by technology driven applications and tools. The reason behind is that Customer preferences of interactive experiences are always changing and evolving. Customers want quick responses to their queries and also response should be accurate as per their expectations and queries. Customers want multiple options to connect to the Enterprises - Email, Voice, Video, and simple applications so that they can interact clearly and effectively.

Chatbots is such an application, providing one of the best Customer experience. Chatbots are software applications that enable human interactions using text and voice. Interactions are pre-defined or AI controlled with natural language processing. Chatbots intelligently capture what users exactly want and guide them to desired outcomes. End users experience seamless interactions as if they are talking to a real human executive.

Features of a chatbot

A well-defined chatbot interacts with the end users and based on historical conversation data, learns to improve customer interactions and outcomes.

1) Chatbot should be able to capture, analyze users’ intent and respond accurately. Chatbot built using machine learning and NLP learns intent and context, and continually improves the response in the future.

2) Chatbot can be purely conversational or dialog based. In conversational Chatbot all the interactions and responses are handled using machine learning and NLP. In Dialog based Chatbot, interaction flows are defined and users are provided with options to enter or select the options.

Usage of Chatbot in different Industries

Chatbot helps to completely automate customer interactions. Once a Chatbot flow is ready, we can integrate it in many ways to capture customer intents:

1) Integrate with Web site to manage traffic

Chatbot on a website helps to shift customers' interactions from a Form-based method to Dialog based interactions. Users coming on to the website can start the conversation and based on the interaction it can provide the specific details.

2) Integrate with lead management system

Chatbot becomes a key channel for capturing new leads and prospects. Enterprises running marketing campaigns can integrate and embed Chatbot links in their campaigns. For example, a Chatbot link can be embedded in an Email body, social media posts or SMS campaigns.

 

3) Integrate with CRM /ERP  and core systems

Chatbot is not a standalone application. It can easily be integrated with the third party CRM/ERP or other core systems in any sectors. This integration can be done easily using API models and data from these systems can be fetched real time. API integration helps in automation of the business processes in any verticals -  Banking, Ticket management, Insurance and Education etc.

4) Integrate with Alert Systems

Chatbot helps in providing real time info and data to the enterprise. Finding data points, Reports snapshot, payments alerts, others critical information can be easily integrated for the end users.

Benefits of Chatbots to SME and Other Enterprises

Overall objective of a Chatbot is to automate, engage and capture users’ requirements and to provide all the necessary details to the Customer during the interactions.

1) Infrastructure and Resource saving 

An automated Chatbot application helps in reducing infrastructure and manpower cost. More than 80% of customer interactions can be successfully handled by well-defined Chatbots. This helps in overall cost optimization and shifting Customer interactions on automated business processes.

2) Better Customer satisfaction

Using Chatbots, customers queries are answered without any loss of customer sessions. Also Customers can spend as much time while interacting with the Chatbots without incurring huge costs. Customers can be served by multiple Bots based on business requirements. Chatbots can be redirected to live calls or to live Chat Agents if Customers queries are still unresolved.

3) Leads management and better Leads Conversion

Chatbot can be used as a single channel to capture leads from multiple sources - Social Media, Emails, SMS etc. Leads can be captured through Chatbots, users’ queries can be captured and responded to quickly. Chatbots help to provide all necessary information - Product details and prices during interactions. This helps customers in making fast decisions and hence leads to better lead conversions.

4) Analyze Customers behavior

Chatbots capture all customer interactions in real time. All customers' intents and contexts are processed and stored in the system. Conversions can be tracked and scaled with the help of customers' behavior and interactions. Predictions can be made using Machine learning models.

 

How to choose the best Chatbot Application?

Chatbots have many features as mentioned in this article. Enterprises must choose the Chatbots based on their business requirements. Business requirements should be transformed to the expected Customer interactions and their responses. 

Based on the requirements, Enterprise can decide which features are important to them. For examples, in some cases, a Chatbot with fully powered AI and NLU capability can be evaluated. But it requires a lot of data preparation and planning.

In many cases, simple dialog based flows can be implemented. Customers are given a set of options as per business requirements and customers select and provide the relevant information during the interactions. The Dialog keeps on moving forward with a new set of options. Enterprises can decide to push rich-media like videos, images, documents so that customers get a better experience while the interaction is under progress.

Many Enterprises also want real time data integration with their CRM/ERP. So, a perfect Chatbot application should be able to integrate with third party applications using standard API models. 

Also, Chatbots should not be customized for every new requirement. It should have an Administrative interface where all the flows/Dialogs can be configured, flows finalized, tested and implemented. Enterprises should not depend on Chatbot service providers or their internal Development team to develop each new requirement from scratch.

Chatbots not only should provide evolved experience to the Customers, it should provide a strong, fast and scalable platform to the Enterprises. Enterprises must be able to get business benefits from the Chatbot implementation - increased leads, increased number of customer interactions, reduction in cost of infrastructure. Enterprises should evaluate the key outcomes for the business and then choose the right Chatbot.