Are you familiar with bots? If you run any kind of service- or retail-based business, you need to be. According to Mark Armstrong, a managing director of EMEA at Progress, bots are a necessity for businesses that want to succeed in the digital age. Armstrong says, “Bots, specifically chatbots, are being hailed as the next big thing, replacing the need for downloadable apps. Integrated into an already viable platform, a bot can do things that a normal human chat wouldn’t necessarily be able to accomplish easily, like check the local weather, order pizza, or hail a cab.”
What is a bot?
So what exactly is a bot? Recode.com defines it as, “Software that is designed to automate the kinds of tasks you would usually do on your own, like making a dinner reservation, adding an appointment to your calendar or fetching and displaying information. The increasingly common form of bots, chatbots, simulate conversation. They often live inside messaging apps — or are at least designed to look that way — and it should feel like you’re chatting back and forth as you would with a human.”
To put it another way, bots are like human agents or assistants which make it easier to get things done more quickly. Different types of bots include chatbots, crawlers, transactional bots, and game bots. Some of these bots appear in apps like Skype and Facebook Messenger.
Bots will significantly affect the way companies use technology. Here are two ways that bots can help to improve your business.
Focus on more complex issues
With bots, you can provide customers with personalized, immediate customer service and support. You can use bots to answer frequently asked questions and create custom answers. This means that your customers can have their questions answered instantly instead of having to experience long wait times as with a call center. This will allow your customer service representatives to focus on more complex tasks and issues. It will also allow your business to handle more customers and add value to your business overall.
Anant Kale, CEO of AppZen, says that, “Bots will be doing processes and transactions that today require human understanding. It may be checking for that payment issue on your credit card [or] contacting the help desk in your company to fix a problem on your laptop.”
Boost sales and increase profit
Since bots are automated agents which are available 24 hours, your customers can get their questions answered quickly and make a purchase right away. Otherwise, without having their questions answered, they may decide to put off the purchase or forget to return. This could result in you losing business to your competitors in the end.
Some companies like H&M are using bots, particularly chatbots, to influence their sales. Ohmybot.net reports that, “These bots ask users a number of questions about their clothing style and then offer them a variety of clothing choices. This type of Chatbot can also recommend accessories or outfits related to the questions asked. This helps employees gain more time as consumers can turn to sales consultant 24/7.”
In short, bots have infinite patience and endless time to devote to your customers, assets that your employees may not have. In that manner, bots can help improve every aspect of customer service and support.This will give your human employees more time to concentrate on the more complicated facets of their job.
If you would like to know more about how integration and automating processes can improve your business, please contact us at Commercient.
