Given the exponential rise and development of new technologies today, business leaders have a wide range of opportunities to market their brands while improving the experience of their consumers. In an undeniable way, Chatbots have quickly become the star of this year. In spite of existing for over a decade, most brands have understood the effectiveness of Chatbots for their businesses. By definition, a Chatbot is a computer program that is created to mimic conversations with the help of artificial intelligence.

Chatbots are already used, for example, in multinational companies to generate new sales channels, facilitate the sales process and respond to consumer queries. Chatbots are not only useful for large organisations but small businesses can benefit from them too. Here’s some detailed insight into the usage of a bot for business.

Database collection of customers for businesses:

Even though chatbots are simplified for the customer, they are much smarter than one might think. The first positive thing to remember about them is that they have a very good memory. Let’s take the example of flight bookings made with Chatbots, they are created to understand different flight routes and destinations in order to provide the most accurate information concerning the departure times and the arrival times of the flights. This kind of bot helps users to have a real-time response to what they are looking for and allows the company to grow its database of customers.

Opportunities for Sales:

Chatbots are not just fo r transferring information. They can also be used to directly influence a company’s sales. Recently, Taco Bell, a fast food chain, created a Chatbot that was designed to automate the sales process. TacoBot allowed users to place their orders online by sending a message via the Slack platform. Inteldesk too has chosen to provide digital agents in the form of Bots to improve the user experience and customer service to increase sales.

Influence Purchase Decisions:

It is normal that the majority of small business executives lack time or even staff to offer each consumer exclusive attention and advice. Chatbots offer the best dynamic solutions for this problem. Some clothing chains such as H&M have adopted Chatbots to influence their sales. 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 a sales consultant 24/7.

Responding to Customer Queries:

This is the simplest and most effective way for companies to create their own bot. A Chatbot is able to translate and take into account the demands of a large number of consumers and answer them. It is important to train the bot to understand the most basic and frequently asked questions. But it is very likely that the inbox of the bot is quickly filled with requests. Therefore, it must be able to respond to different demands immediately. For example, Silvia is one of the best platforms that contains a virtual character that has a voice and a brain and can therefore easily communicate as a human being.

Improving Social Media Engagement:

Last April, Facebook at the f8 conference announced that its messaging platform, Facebook Messenger, would be open to brands to create and host chatbots. This will allow brands to achieve higher levels of sales and naturally encourage engagement on social networks. Therefore, hosting a suitable Chatbot on Facebook will assist brands in expanding their fan base with the possibility of increased engagement and this in turn will help the business boost sales.

Simplify Payment Processes:

As Chatbots help users order certain products, they must make sure to also provide a means of payment but this can be quite challenging. It is important to adopt the latest payment technologies and offer different options to the user and perform this within the bot. For example Snapchat introduced Snapcash last year, which is a tool that works like a virtual wallet and records the details of the user’s credit card in order to allow it to send money to brands or Friends via a message. Setting up these tools will simplify the payment process thereby increasing sales online.

The concept of Chatbots are being pushed by major brands and developers with a large number of applications uploaded every day. If your business has decided to adopt the Chatbot technology it is important to conduct some market research and monitor competitors along with partnering with a Chatbot agency to develop an effective Chatbot strategy.

With users spending more time on their e-mail applications, mobile phones as well as on their desktop, marketers are trying to include their marketing messages in these platforms. For the uninitiated, Chatbots are tools powered by artificial intelligence where a robot is hosted within a messaging application. They can help a brand communicate with its consumers without the help of human intervention.

Therefore its important to ask the question: Why are Chatbots essential for Marketing Professionals?

1. Chatbots will populate an increasing number of digital platforms

The number of platforms that brands need to maintain their digital presence is constantly increasing. This has resulted in several marketing campaigns that have been conducted through different channels and the need to keep them regularly updated can be a difficult task. The size of each of these campaigns  has also increased considerably. Many brands now have a global presence.

By using Chatbots, marketing professionals can connect their accounts and update them via messaging platforms like Slack, SMS, Facebook Messenger, etc.

2. Chatbots help marketing professionals keep up with the changing trends

It is important for marketers to constantly keep an eye on their campaign performance indicators to spot the effectiveness of a campaign. This data represents the evolution of the trends in relation to their target and gives the brands a real insight into the reaction of their consumers to certain messages and advertising campaigns. Being attentive to trends can help optimize the brand strategy. Chatbots can make this easier and automated.

3. Chatbots respond to the growing demand for analytics

As the number of digital platforms increases, the importance of streamlining and optimizing marketing budgets has, in turn, increased. Marketers need to be vigilant about the data of each of their campaigns in order to maximize their performance. The use of Chatbots gives them instant access to the data they need without having to go through the vast datasets in Excel, Google Analytics, and others. By using Chatbots, marketers can keep a lookout for key indicators that define a trends as they happens to take the necessary action immediately.

4. Chatbots help in consumer responses as well as instant processing of the request

The growing number of companies bringing their products and services online has resulted in a wave of “instant responses” for consumers. Users expect an instant response from brands at all times of the day and across multiple time zones. Although manual interaction with a large individual audience can be difficult, not applying customization or not responding in a timely manner can also result in the loss of customers and an overall negative image of the brand. Chatbots allow businesses to engage with the customers in an instant manner.

5. Chatbots are easy to use

Digital marketing will become easier and more thought provoking for marketers with the rise of Chatbots.  It would be interesting to see how consumers react to this change. In the meantime, Customers and brands will likely view Chatbots as their own personal assistants!

As thousands of developers are creating bots, chat bots have taken the world by a storm. However, chat bots have been here for a long time but the recent interest in them is due to their seamless integration into the consumer’s instant messaging applications. A bot is an automated software that performs repetitive and often mundane tasks however, when it is communicating with the audience as an entity in itself over text we refer to them as chat bots.  This form of bot is the one that is currently the subject of fascination in the tech industry.

Why now?

The growing interest in conversational user interfaces can be explained considering various factors. The revolution of Chat Bots in 2016 is all about the timing. This is an age of exponential growth of language processing mechanisim, automated learning and artificial intelligence combined with the human contribution that allows for the expansion. The introduction of various algorithms from big tech giants like Google has accelerated the progress of chat bots.

Moreover, the cost in developing a chat bot is much lesser compared to the creation and maintenance of a mobile application or website. Scalability is also an important factor as it is easier for software changes by adding services than to increase its facilities and hire more labor. Finally, the rise in distribution services has also allowed the revolution to progress. With apps like Facebook Messenger, and WeChat that reach over billions of users, bots interact with the largest communities in the world.

Potential Gains and Usage

The bots change the digital landscape and domains of 3 key players. The first is its benefit in better customer relationships. In this age where companies are seeking for more economical solutions artificial intelligence helps develop this relationship in a much more balanced manner.

The second domain that a bot affects is personalization. Until now, nothing could replace a face to face interaction. However, brands are already exploring the idea and offering more personalized solutions with the help of a bot. Users now have the opportunity to have their own personal assistant. They already exist in our pockets with the Siri or Cortana and are focused on understanding the questions and providing relevant answers. The new age of bots collect data and are also connected to each other. This makes it possible for the bot to provide personalized recommendations and increases their efficiency in the process.

Chat bots are helping transition from human interaction to artificial intelligence interactions with a robot and this is based on the bots conversational intelligence. In the future, we could expect bots to be solely responsible for customer service exchanges.

It is important to note that the solutions offered by the bot only solve 10% of the process. However, as bots gain more conversational intelligence they will be able to carry out more advance tasks. It remains to be seen whether bots can ever fully replace human interaction in the customer service industry but one thing remains certain that conversational user interfaces with robots are here to stay.