Digital revolution is happening often in all the technology wherein some stays with us and some fads away.
Like Facebook created a revolutionary change which connected well with the digital world but Orkut just disappeared without existence.
Artificial Intelligence has taken different roles in different industries in the form of chatbots which will assist you in all your day to day activities, right from waking you up, sending you weather reports, even paying the bills for you. Apple’s Siri, Google assistant are well-known chatbots you have come across. All these AI Chatbots are introduced to make our lives easy.
Chatbots in Marketing Dimension:
A new age piece of technology that has a remarkable impact on marketer’s desire of interacting with their customer in a personalized manner is ‘Chatbot’. The digital marketing space has now adopted the concept of AI chatbot as the next step of automation.
The whole universe is interlinked by social media platforms through two-way communication and the same idea is leveraged in the chatbots.
On a marketer’s perspective, they can have ample number of chatbots who will deal with infinite customers which is the most prominent advantage.
Chatbots will interact and provide valuable insights to the customers who visit your websites and will assist them throughout their web experience. The customers can get all the details, queries, support and even take the purchase decision by interacting with the bot in real time. Furthermore, it will eradicate unfamiliar doubt and confusion raised by the customers, down the road.
Lead generation is the most predominant aspect of having a chatbot on your website. Email marketing will start off with a 15% of lead generation at its best. But down the filtration funnel of follow up, subscribe options, personalized emails, it will end up in the conversion rate of 0.5%, which is a bit disappointing.
This scenario compelled the marketers to step up and reshape the lead generation process by adopting bots.
The traditional Email database is not required anymore. The moment a customer starts the chat, the conversational flow and the reply buttons will help you in acquiring data points and to qualify the leads and the marketers can take it furthermore.
The analysis says chatbots can easily generate 85% of open rates and 35% of click-through rates which is a big number.
The truth is people prefer prompt and real-time replies in the form of personalized conversation which is made possible with the chatbot.
Marketers realized a significant reduction of cost and drastic improvement of efficient marketing effort.
How is a chatbot effective?
Two – way communication in real time:
All the present communication and marketing initiatives like a website, blog, offers, are of one-way communication which won’t allow the user to interact.
Chatbots took an advantage of its interactive two-way communication with a personal touch. This is a strong point which converts a prospect into a lead.
The reason why business technologies lean towards chatbot is that it has the ability to reach lots of people in person.
24/7 tracking and availability:
Gone are the frustrating waiting time for the operators. Unlike a human, chatbots will be available round the clock. They will give prompt replies which will result in attaining the users’ credibility and can even acquire the leads who are located in different time zones.
They can track the customers activity in the internet and collect all the relevant data promptly.
Prominent Handling Capacity:
Chatbots will be become a “ must have” factor in every business as it can handle infinite users simultaneously ensuring not even a single one of them is missed out.
This will create a situation, wherein the average rate of tele caller and customer service executives will have a drop. The advent of chatbots might even become a threat to man kind’s job.
Easier Lead Conversion:
The fact that the Chatbot is much ahead of all other digital marketing initiative is only because the time spent on an individual prospect is low but the data-driven out is extremely high. It runs and plays cleverly with time management.
They have a speedy response, follow-ups and the ability to classify the prospects to take them forward and spend a valuable time on focusing dedicated attention on lead.
Data collection and retrieval:
Information about the customers helps the marketers to make a decision to a greater extent. Chatbot will have a customized approach towards all the prospects. It gathers accurate information which will act as a base to take forward the communication with a relevant context.
A Leads into “Happy customers”:
Streamlined followup, customized responses, and personalized chat will make a smooth conversion of a lead into a customer. It simplifies the process of filtering the leads and handing them to the sales team. Not only an effective process but also an efficient sales conversion which leads to a “Happy customers”.
Humans are emotionally bound and they expect to be treat in a smooth and personalized manner. Accordingly, chatbots are built in such a way to please and treat the users in a well mannered approach, which will make the customers happy and satisfied which will make them to come back again.
More work at less investment:
Human employees will work for a limited time period and they have to be paid. Eventually they have be appraised and an incremental pay should be offered to them.
It is not the case when it comes to a bot. They can
- Work 24/7
- Without pay
- Faster on boarding
- Multiple work compared to humans
- Error free works
- No age bar
This will have a drastic improvement in revenue at a lesser investment on chatbots.
Elevated sales:
Recent survey says, 70% people prefer texting over calling. So this provides the chatbots an opportunity to create a sales through chatting. They sell products which suits the needs and wants of the users. Also chatbots will remember the preferences of the users and give them tailored suggestions and responses. The user tend to do online shopping and so there is no need to drive them to a store. This will have a quantifiable impact on the sales and profits.
Big Brands with Chatbot:
Many big brands employed chats and have come out with predominant success stories.
Sephora
Sephora, a well-known cosmetics retail store, created a chatbot on Kik, a popular messaging app. This bot made the customers take up a fun quiz which was based on beauty products. The insights on the customer’s likes about their beauty product were collected by the bot.
Bank of America
The leading banking giant employed a chatbot in the facebook messenger which pops up whenever a customer login into their website. They interact in such a way that the collects the banking information, loan requirement and money management habits.
Pizza Hut
Pizza hut uses through chatbot as a social media platform by which the customers can order their food right away. They are not going to leave their home or struggle to switch tabs to choose the food anymore. The complete food order could be done just a single chat box.
Chatbots are going to be a revolution in the marketing history. We come to such perception based on the Statistics like,
Today, the number of messages sent around the globe is triple the number sent in 2012.
- The open rates all of the messaging apps are 98% which is exponentially high.
- The top six applications used are messaging app
- The messaging app’s retention rate is double of the other apps.
Conclusion:
Hence, Chatbot is going to pave for the digital transformation irrespective of the business or industry.
It might even lead to the fear of technological singularity, which might lead to a situation where the technological inventions will surpass the human intelligence.
All the advantages of a chatbot will turnout to be a disadvantage to human beings and it is a serious threat to their jobs.
It is left to human to use the technology wisely and not to allow the technologies to overrun the human intelligence.
Technology is always an assistance invented by human, but never a replacement to human. Hence chatbot should be employed in a way that it will not take away your jobs instead it will add values to your job.