How Chatbots Are Reinventing Lead Generation & Customer Service

The fast pace of digital transformation is changing the business landscape, and is showing no signs of slowing down. Customers’ needs and expectations are increasing, and they now demand instant online service. As a result, our methods of communicating and interacting with them are evolving to meet those demands. A technology that is quickly becoming an effective solution to meet these demands is chatbots.

The interaction between artificial intelligence and humans was once science fiction, but this fantasy has now become a reality. Due to recent advancements in AI, machine learning and natural language processing technologies, chatbots have become a technology of major focus and excitement.

What’s a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a computer programmed bot, or AI software designed to simulate spoken or written human speech for the purpose of interacting conversationally with human users. It uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to interact and exchange information with users. Plus, it will analyze, answer, and predict queries faster and more accurately than a human can.

How Do Chatbots Work?

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the technology behind chatbots. Chatbots process text presented to them by a user through means of a series of algorithms that interpret and identify a user’s intent. Chatbots then provide the most appropriate response based on this information.

Examples of Chatbots

Chatbots come in the form of virtual assistants like Google’s Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana. Others are accessed via messaging apps like Facebook, or via business apps and websites.

How Chatbots Can Be Used in Business

• In restaurants, to take orders from customers.
• In marketing campaigns, to ask customers questions.
• Simplify the online shopping experience for customers.
• Assist customers with eCommerce purchases.
• Provide round the clock customer service support.
• Increase employee productivity by automating simple tasks.
• On websites to interact with prospects and customers.

Benefits of Using Chatbots in Your Business

• Increased sales.
• Better customer engagement and satisfaction.
• Improved customer service.
• Enhanced customer experience.
• Reduced cost of customer service.
• Automate repetitive tasks.
• Increased lead generation.
• Gain in-depth knowledge and understanding of customers.
• Provide 24/7 customer support.
• Give instant online responses and resolve queries quickly.

How Commercient Uses Chatbots to Enhance the Customer Experience

Commercient’s Innovation Team is deploying various chatbot applications to create highly engaging user experiences for our customers and partners. We are using AWS Lex Bot to provide conversational interfaces for registration and support systems using voice and text.

Amazon Lex provides the advanced deep learning functionalities of automatic speech recognition (ASR) for converting speech to text. In addition, natural language understanding (NLU) recognizes the intent of the text, to deliver effective conversational interactions.

Commercient, whose SYNC is the #1 ERP and CRM data integration platform for sales, is also using Drift Chatbot to give our clients a personal assistant. It allows us to provide live chat customer service support on our website 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This ensures that customers and website users get instant responses to their questions every time.

Customers can perform tasks such as requesting support contact information or scheduling an appointment, without needing to speak to an agent. They can get technical support answers from our knowledge base delivered via intelligent chat.

Pinkesh Patel of Commercient, who holds a Master Of Computer Application, and is currently pursuing his Ph. D., says, “We find the following features very useful easy to use: High-quality speech recognition and natural language understanding, multi-turn conversations, and powerful lifecycle management capabilities.”

Patel and his team at Commercient are changing the speed and accuracy of communication, making the customer experience greatly enhanced.

Revolutionize Your Sales and Customer Service with Chatbots

Many businesses know the importance of good customer service, and how bad customer service can affect their bottom-line.

These are some of the ways that chatbots help businesses improve customer service and increase sales.

Chatbots can:

• Gather customer insight.
• Personalize your marketing.
• Increase engagement.
• Provide quick responses to users and reduce query response time.
• Allow businesses to provide 24/7 customer service support.
• Reduce human error.
• Helps make customer service more personal with product recommendations.

The Future Of Chatbots

Chatbots are going to get a lot smarter. One day, they may be so advanced that you wouldn’t know whether you’re conversing with a human or a chatbot.

Gartner predicts that by 2020, the average person will have more conversations with bots than with their spouse.

In the years to follow, the workplace will increasingly comprise of machines and humans collaborating to transform business processes. With future technological breakthroughs, the conversational capabilities of chatbots will significantly improve, and they’ll become a standard in the customer service industry.

Chatbots have already proven their value and deserve your attention if you want your business to keep up. In the fast-paced world of technology, businesses need to identify and leverage the opportunities exposed by technological advances such as chatbots.

Those who adopt a digital approach to business will leave their competitors in the dust. Complacency is guaranteed to put your business at a disadvantage against your competitors.

If you’d like to learn more about how ERP and CRM data integration from Commercient SYNC, please contact us today.