All about Chatbots: Pros, Cons, and How They Can Help Your Business

Many business owners, both large and small, continuously desire to provide the best customer service. With the use of chatbots, it has become easier for these businesses to reach out to their individual customers at any time through the apps they use the most.

Whether these are through human-like bots or hybrid ones, many companies are tapping into this technology to provide high-quality online assistance to customers even without real human interaction.

What are chatbots?

In the simplest terms, a chatbot is any software that can directly converse with a human. It can answer a query or perform an action depending on what the user needs. However, chatbots can’t converse in a human-like manner. Although they are now equipped with artificial intelligence and natural learning features, they still have limited capabilities.

What are the advantages of using chatbots?

They are fast and accurate

Chatbots offer a rapid and targeted service, responding to users inquiries immediately with specific information. This improves the communication process and, as a result, boosts the number of sales. Whereas humans need time to think, seek answers online, or close and open tabs, chatbots can do them at a lightning speed. 

They are available 24/7

Because they are robots, they get neither tired nor sick. They don’t take lunch breaks, either. They can work round the clock, seven days a week. And the best part is that they can handle a number of requests simultaneously. This allows users to access what they need when they ask for it, which is certainly a good way to take your customer service up a notch.

They can capture and examine data

With the right machine learning capabilities, a chatbot can gather and examine customer feedback. This helps you gain deeper and more valuable insights into what your customers really want. From there, you can improvise your marketing plan to become more targeted for your customers.

They can resolve issues

Because of its AI features, chatbots can point out and resolve a problem before a user vents out in public. They can move conversations away from the public’s eyes and onto a private channel. As we are all aware, a quick response time makes a customer happy and satisfied.

What are the disadvantages of using chatbots?

They are not for everyone

Although chatbots can imitate human conversations, they can’t offer comprehensive solutions. They are only designed to answer templated questions. Thus, for those companies providing B2B services, a chatbot may no longer be effective beyond the initial support. This type of business still requires a real customer representative to ensure a smooth transaction.

On the other hand, not all customers are fond of using bots. According to Business Insider, only 45% of users prefer chatbots as the main touch point for customer service inquiries.

They are not humans at all

That fact alone makes it impossible for them to replace the human touch. No matter how useful chatbots are, they can’t do everything a human can. While you can create fun, personalized or empathetic messages, many customers can still see right through bots. And most of them seek and appreciate a real human interaction. To ensure loyalty and trust, always remember to include a human touch. 

They can’t handle complicated problems

Sure, bots can identify issues as they arise, but they may not be competent in handling bigger problems. For this reason, we suggest that you use a chatbot during certain hours – perhaps at night. Then ensure that you have a customer service team to respond during business hours.

After the bot’s initial response, a human can still step in, find out what exactly happened, and continue the conversation seamlessly. Otherwise, if your bot can’t fix the issue and there’s no one to follow up, you might only annoy an already irate client. Cosource provides a team of customer service representatives ready to assist when the bot fails to do so.

Where can you find or use chatbots?

Chatbots are available on a huge range of platforms, with many utilizing existing messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Slack and WhatsApp. They are adaptable and easy to integrate into websites, too. A live chat that pops up when you visit a website is a good example of a web bot.

Website Bots vs. Messaging Apps Bots

Whereas messaging channel bots can help improve your response time, data gathering and analysis, rating and statistics, a website bot can significantly improve a customer’s purchase journey and experience since you can customize and modify it.

You can have more engagement on messaging apps; however, the users will always be the platform owners and not yours. In an unfortunate event that the platform decides to limit the reach rate of its bot or shut down its bot altogether, you will lose control over your target audience. But, by building your own website bot, you have the power over your customers’ information. Plus, you can interact with them in any way you’d like.

Although still in their infant stages, chatbots are sure to improve, evolve, and offer tremendous benefits to any kind of businesses in the future. Want to learn more about chatbots? Chat with us today.