According to new market research by the Global Market Insights, Inc., the Chatbot Market would exceed USD 1.34 billion by 2024.

The omnichannel experience is where the businesses are headed towards as customers are constantly on the move and looking for interactions and solutions. One way for businesses to ensure that they are there for their customers round the clock, offer personalized services and solutions, share customized discounts and offers, and engage even those who abandon a purchase, is by having an AI-powered chatbot.  

Forrester recently conducted a survey, where it was found that over 46% of the companies have made investments in adopting AI systems for their sales and marketing teams, while 40% had made this investment for their customer support. This trend shows that companies across the globe are trying to invest in proving better customer service by switching to chatbots for their service delivery.  

Not sure, how this trend could have a positive impact on your business? Here's my small writeup that highlights the 7 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Chatbot.  

1. Increases customer engagement:  

Your customers are engaging with your brand on the go and would need answers instantly to all their devices. While your website might have the answers they are seeking, the attention span of an average user is very limited and they might leave your website even before they find what they’ve been looking for.  

“Businesses and customers alike could save around 2.5 billion hours of time by the year 2023, through the use of chatbots.” - Juniper Research

A chatbot can come handy as it can enhance customer engagement by keeping them on the website for longer, provide assistance, and personalized experience by answering all their queries.  

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2. Higher conversions:

An efficiently adapted chatbot, help you gain more leads, improve your customer support service, and provide relevant information to your customers through dynamic forms.  

Your customer journey mapping can be made more efficient when you are available at all points to answer their queries and concerns. This leads to a promised increase in conversions. Did you know that a report by Juniper research stated that by the year 2022, Chatbot Conversations would help businesses deliver $8 billion in Cost savings?  

The reason for this is that the average time a customer has to spend to have her queries answered over the phone is halved when they are interacting on chat, which in turn becomes a great push for conversions.  

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3. Ideal for all business types:

Gartner, in its recent report, stated that by the year 2021, 50% businesses from across the globe will invest more on chatbots than on their mobile apps, the reason for this being the wide applicability that chatbots have for all business types, scales, and operations.  

No matter the size, genre, scope of the business, chatbot services can be customized for all business types and needs. For instance, when you opt for a service provider like Serviceform to help your business with your chatbot needs, they ensure that the tool is customized to suit your industry, customers, and business needs.  

This ensures that your customers do not miss out on the human element, even while they’re in conversation with a bot.  

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4. Omnichannel experience:

Most chatbot solutions can be integrated with ease to your software. Serviceform uses its prebuilt integrations for chatbots and forms integration to any CRM, invoicing software, or other backend solutions to facilitate the use of chatbots on any software or website. This helps businesses to deliver a real omnichannel experience to all its customers, as your chatbots would be accessible from all devices and platforms.  

Research reports show that over 89% of the customers prefer to interact with businesses over chat and get back to the interactions from where they left. Having an omnichannel chatbot would help you achieve this, without having to keep your customer waiting, or making them repeat the information over and over again.

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5. Scale up operations:

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Using chatbots to handle customer interactions would be an effective way to deal with a huge inflow of customer queries, rather than employing resources to respond to each of these. According to a Gartner report, over 85% of the customer interactions would be managed without human intervention by the year 2020. So, this is the right time to invest in a chatbot and be future ready!

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6. Enhances brand outlook:  
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Customer interactions play a key role in establishing the tone of your brand communication, and virtual interactions are a wonderful way to build this aspect of your brand. Building a healthy rapport with your customers through online communication on
multiple channels, with a reduced investment on human resources, and quick turnaround time is an ideal way to build a strong brand image.

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7. Available round the clock:

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Your support staff might not be able to answer chat and queries round the clock. There is also a possibility of missing out on a few messages when human intervention is needed, remember that your average website/app visitor does not want to wait for more than five seconds to connect to an agent.  

This kind of turn around time is impossible for humans to achieve and would cause you to miss out on some prospects. This trend of chatbots handling customer support is increasing so widely, not just for the round the clock operations, but also because of the data it helps one generate. According to a report by the Narrative Science, around 44% of the executives who were surveyed, believed that artificial intelligence’s most important benefit is automated communications, which provides them with the data that can be used to make crucial business decisions.  

Need help in setting up a chatbot for your business? Drop a comment and I will guide you, how!

1. Increase customer engagement  - Consumer committed brand interactions

2. Higher conversions - Increased conversion of leads to customers

3. Ideal for all business types - Applicable to businesses of all scales

4. Omnichannel experience -  Real-time interaction from multiple devices

5. Scale up operations -   Effective utilization of resources

6. Enhance brand outlook - Healthy customer-brand interactions

7. Available round the clock - 24/7 customer support on the go