Customer service

How often have you sat on the phone, listening to Muzak, waiting over a half hour for a customer service representative to pick up the phone and answer your question, which takes you five seconds to ask? You know the score: Most businesses have terrible customer service.
But some of us are getting impatient. We have a younger generation, for instance, used to be able to do everything online – ordering food, doing banking tasks, shopping, and more – and they don’t want to sit on a phone waiting to speak to someone who reads a script and provides little benefit.
This is especially important, in light of the fact that most customer service calls and complaints are simple to resolve. This is where chatbots come in. Instead of having to call and sit on a phone waiting to ask a five-second question, you can simply message a customer service chatbot and get your answer in a flash.
By providing this option for customers, you will lower the stress of dealing with customer service and increase customer satisfaction with your brand.

Consumer analysis

Chatbots can play a large role in analyzing customer data and optimizing sales and marketing strategies in light of this analysis.

According to Forbes, “Chatbots can be programmed to track purchasing patterns and monitor data from consumers. This tells a company which products to market differently, which to market more and which to redevelop for the relaunch.”

This means that you will save money by not having to hire another analyst and that the analysis will be a higher level due to the lack of human error.

Personalized ads

Another chatbot strategy that’s proven to be successful is the creation of personalized ads.
These work as follows: When a customer reaches out to your chatbot with a customer service inquiry, the chatbot will greet the customer, gather some preliminary information, then ask that the customer holds for a moment. During that interval, the customer’s name and other information can be used to generate personalized advertisements. Personalized ads are often useful in sales conversions.
An important point here is that while chatbots can be a great backup for real employees, as an alternative to call waiting, they have to appear real. If the chatbot is low quality and the customer can tell it’s not human, the result may be damaging customer feelings toward the brand.

Proactive customer interaction

Most brands employ passive customer interaction, i.e., they only respond to customers and do not reach out. But, instead of waiting for Chatbots are ideal for these “reach out” initiatives. To do this, the accompanying action should be something small, like inquiring whether or not the customer needs assistance — which lets the customer know that the brand is present and available to assist as needed. This alone will boost the customer’s feelings of closeness to the brand.

Site feedback

Chatbots are great for reaching out to customers via simple questions and the gathering of feedback. This strategy is useful, especially for website optimization. Garnering feedback from customers will help you fix low converting pages and improve your site all around.
For example, if you have a landing page that receives huge numbers in organic traffic, but no one is buying, you could have your chatbot reach out with a survey, to glean information as to why people are leaving the page without purchasing.

Lead-nurturing

Using the information that chatbots collect about a customer, you can create customized messaging that guides the consumer along his or her “buyer’s journey,” ensuring movement in the right direction that achieves higher conversion rates.
You want to be careful to not be annoying with customized messaging, however. There is a fine line. It would also be wise to do some A/B testing on your customized messages to see what types of copy work best.

Sell Your Products & Services

If you’re a small business owner, you’re probably short on free time. As in, you have none at all. You’re busy closing deals, managing your team, and performing various other entrepreneurial tasks. Unfortunately, this means you don’t always have the time to give your customers the attention they need.
You’re only one person, right?
It may not be possible to clone yourself, but when it comes to marketing, Chatbots can get pretty close, allowing you to (finally) be in multiple places at once.
Customers get frustrated when they ask the same question, again and again, lodge a complaint or make a suggestion, and then don’t receive a response for days. As a business owner, you also understand the frustration of trying to be both responsive and thorough but being criticized regardless of your effort.
The chances of losing a customer are instantly reduced by replying through an automated chatbot.
A great example of this is the clothing company H&M. When customers interact with the company’s bot, they’re quizzed about the style of clothing they prefer. Then, when the bot has enough information, it can make recommendations that are tailored to the customers’ tastes.
Depending on the types of products and services you offer, you can use your chatbot in a similar fashion (no pun intended). Your bots can sell your products for you, and because they’re online 24/7, they can actually make good on the phrase “make money while you sleep.”

Make Payments Easier

Some chatbots these days are even able to take and process payments (and it’s always good to make it easier for customers to give you their money, isn’t it?).
Use your chatbot as a payment tool so that, if a customer needs to make a payment, the chatbot can handle the transaction for you. It only takes a few clicks.