Chatbots are a hot topic right now. And for a good reason — they have the potential to revolutionize how consumers interact with businesses. But chatbots aren’t just a passing fad — they can be a handy, long-term solution for companies of all sizes.
Chatbots are computer programs that mimic human conversation and communicate with customers, usually on websites, social media, and other apps. There are many different AI-powered chatbot use cases, and every industry can benefit from incorporating them into its customer engagement strategy.
In this article, we’ll explore a few key chatbot use cases and explore how they could help drive success in your business.
Types of chatbots use cases by function
Let’s start by looking at chatbot use cases across different business functions.
Customer support
Chatbots can ease the pressure on today’s customer service teams as first-line support by handling most simple requests. Chatbots can verify order details, answer WISMO requests, offer quick solutions, and even collect customer feedback which helps to improve overall customer satisfaction.
Businesses that use conversational AI chatbots as a part of their customer journey have reported a decrease[1] in wait time for their customers. When used correctly, chatbots can help you save time and money by handling simple support requests automatically. They can also improve the customer experience by providing faster resolution times, multilingual support, and 24/7 availability.
Sales
When potential customers visit your website, no matter how clean and responsive the design, they may be unable to find the pages they want immediately. However, if a chatbot is available on every page, it can prevent potential customers from leaving your website by proactively reaching out and nudging visitors into a purchase decision.
For example, Freshchat helped Fantastic Services engage with their website visitors by routing customers to sales or support using its IntelliAssign feature. Customers are sent to the right person in the first instance, reducing wait time and frustration. Engaging Freshchat increased Fantastic Services’ chat ROI by 100%.
Chatbots can handle many administrative tasks that — if missed — prevent the sales team from developing more relationships with leads. Your bot can book demo appointments with customers, walk customers through the onboarding process, and promote free trials and discounts.
Marketing
Chatbots can help automate and personalize your marketing campaigns. You can easily nurture customers through the sales funnel using a chatbot. Chatbots can also segment your audience and send personalized content based on preferences and interests.
Automating your marketing campaigns can free up time for your team to focus on other tasks. And by personalizing your messages, you can increase conversion rates and improve the customer experience. You can also inform customers about upcoming events like Q&As or webinars through chatbots.
You can use a chatbot to qualify leads by asking them questions about their needs. The chatbot can then make recommendations about products or services that would be a good fit. Whenever a customer interacts with a chatbot, there’s an opportunity to capture their email address or other contact information.
Employee assistance
Chatbots can help employees with various tasks, from scheduling meetings to ordering office supplies. And because they’re available 24/7, they can provide assistance when human resources are unavailable.
Chatbots can help employees by acting as virtual assistants beyond assigning tasks. For example, chatbots can send notifications to employees about upcoming deadlines, link to appropriate pages in the knowledge base, and help employees find customer data more quickly.
Freshchat helped software development company CISS with its customer experience operations. CISS uses Freshchat to help automate chat assignments to its human customer support team based on the type of customer query received. Since CISS supports a wide range of specialties, task assignments must be spot on so support requests are handled promptly.
Chatbot use cases by channel
Website
Businesses have come to realize that websites are no longer a one-way channel of communication. Your website is the face of your business. Consumers no longer visit a store to see products or order services; they visit websites to take action. People want to make educated purchases, get updates on their orders, and get easy, fast solutions to their issues. In order to meet these customer requirements, chatbot software is the right tool for your business.
By having chatbots on your website, you can:
- Proactively engage with website users with chat popups
- Reduce repetitive questions by providing self-service via chatbots
- Use data on user behavior to deliver personalized messaging
- Provide support in different languages via multilingual chatbots
Social media
Chatbots aren’t limited to your website; they can be used to interact with your customers on social media. You can provide prompt and personalized responses by monitoring social media messaging platforms for customer questions and comments.
This is especially useful for businesses that operate in multiple time zones. Chatbots can help ensure customer queries are answered even when humans are unavailable. The use of chatbots means you can be active in more places, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn — the sites where your customers are.
Chatbots are masters in conversational marketing; they can help you increase brand awareness and build relationships with potential and existing customers. Engage with your customers any time of the day or night on whichever messaging platform they use.
In-app bots
Maintain a consistent brand experience by using in-app chatbots. You can use them to send a push notification to customers to purchase items they’ve left in their shopping cart or recommend similar products. In-app bots can also upsell and cross-sell products and services.
For example, you can send a customer who’s just purchased a pair of jeans a message that says, “Hey! You might also like this product.” And include a link to a top that pairs well with the jeans. This is a great way to increase sales and create a more personalized customer experience.
The best thing about in-app bots is that notifications are hard to miss. Unlike email, which may be checked less frequently, people check their phone notifications several times throughout the day.
Messaging channel bots
Chatbots can be used to conduct marketing campaigns on popular messaging channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat. Messaging channel chatbots are one of the most efficient ways to reach a large number of people with little effort.
All you need is a list of people you want to reach and a message to send them. The chatbot will take care of the rest. It will send your message to everyone on the list and then keep track of who responds.
Segment your audience by location, age, gender, and other metrics to personalize the chatbot’s messages. Or you can use a chatbot to track engagement by asking customers to rate their experience or answer survey questions.
Chatbot use cases by industry
Research has found that chatbots can save the banking, retail, and healthcare sectors 2.5 billion hours[2] in customer service. Now let’s take a look at chatbot use cases by industry.
Banking and insurance
Chatbots can help banks and financial institutions reduce wait time in an industry known for long delays in communication. Especially in a critical industry like banking, customers expect prompt responses and 24/7 availability – and chatbots can support financial institutions that need to offer these capabilities without expanding internal teams.
For instance, Freshchat helped Klarna achieve a first response time of just 60 seconds by increasing how many users were serviced via chat, thereby decreasing the pressure on phone support.
In addition, chatbots can be used to upsell and cross-sell products. For example, a chatbot could suggest a credit card with a lower interest rate when a customer is chatting about their current credit card debt.
Chatbots can also help customers keep track of their finances. A chatbot could notify customers when a bill is due or when a payment is processed. Customers can also use a chatbot to log important fraud reports, helping banking services cut down on the number of fraudulent transactions.
Healthcare
Healthcare organizations are using chatbots to help patients schedule appointments, find the nearest healthcare provider, and offer quick answers to common healthcare-related queries.
Chatbots can help patients manage their health at home by walking them through simple at-home treatments, reminding them to take their medication, or tracking their progress toward a fitness goal.
Automating simple tasks via chatbots helps free up time for nurses and doctors. And by providing 24/7 support, they can help ease the burden on overworked staff.
Telecom
Telecom is another industry known for long wait times for customers, but chatbots can ease the burden on service teams by helping tackle the workload on the frontlines. Chatbots can perform many tasks for telecom companies, including customer support, answering frequently asked questions, and resolving simple issues.
If a customer is having trouble connecting to the internet, the chatbot can run a diagnostic test and provide a solution. They can handle requests without the need for human intervention, which frees up the busy customer service agents who can work on more complex issues.
Fraud is a big problem for the telecom industry, costing the industry $39.89 billion in 2021.[3] Chatbots can help to spot potential fraudulent activities. Machine learning can detect when there is unusual traffic visiting a website and recognize the warning signs. A chatbot can warn a customer or a company agent before a cyber attack takes place.
Government
Government organizations are complex, with many different departments and services. This can make it difficult for citizens to get the help they need. Chatbots can help by providing a single point of contact for all queries.
Chatbots can answer simple questions or direct users to the correct department based on the query. They can also help fill in forms and provide information about government services. The additional help from chatbots can keep customers away from the phone lines and reduce waiting times.
Institutes can also use chatbots to help their employees on the backend. This can include finding customer data, pulling relevant knowledge base information, and handling two-way messaging between departments.
Freshchat helps Casey Cardinia Library in Melbourne by offering Information-as-a-Service on live chat. Customers can query information about books and upcoming events, and live agents can relay the info using canned responses. The library has found that using Freshchat is more effective than face-to-face interactions.
Retail and E-commerce
Conversational commerce is the future of retail and e-commerce. It involves using chatbots to provide a personal touch in the sales process. It’s estimated that chatbots will help deliver over $140 billion in retail sales.[4] Chat triggers can be set up to proactively reach your customers and offer them assistance. And if a customer abandons their cart, a chatbot can remind them to checkout.
Retailers are under pressure to provide a better customer experience. Chatbots can help by providing a personalized shopping experience for each customer journey. They can suggest products based on customers’ preferences and past purchases. If a customer is having a problem with an order, the chatbot can raise a ticket to the customer support team.
Chatbots can also assist with internal communication, which helps different departments work in unison. Freshchat’s work with Delivery Hero helps the quick commerce company facilitate two-way messaging between its support team and riders. Communication is key for Delivery Hero to make deliveries quickly and without issue.
Real estate
Selcting a property is a time consuming process and on average, it takes 10 weeks for a person to settle on a property. A real estate business mostly receives queries on property viewing and virtual tours. While an agent can help with these queries, since these are usually repetitive in nature, it can take precious time of your agent and leave a lot of queries unattended.
A real estate chatbot can answer repetitive questions, help with virtual tours, help generate leads by initiate conversations with prospective buyers or sellers, collect qualifying information, answer common questions, and offer 24/7 real-time support without burdening your agents.
Conclusion
Chatbots can be used in a variety of industries to improve customer service. They offer a personal touch that is missing from many automated systems. Chatbots help increase sales and reduce waiting times for customer queries.
Make sure you stand out from your competition by using Freshchat with your website. Our chatbots are easy to use and can be customized to your brand. Sign up today for your free trial to get started.
Sources:
[1] https://assets.website-files.com/6150ee3224861001f5f29135/623ab39ea2518a4eff75c066_Chatbots.pdf
[2] https://www.juniperresearch.com/press/chatbots-to-deliver-11bn-cost-savings-2023
[3] https://www.subex.com/blog/2021-cfca-global-telecommunications-fraud-loss-survey/
[4] https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/chatbot-market-stats-trends
