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The pandemic opened the door and speed up the process of accepting AI chatbots as helpful tools for solving such major challenges as face-to-face communication between customers and employees, the need to decrease fixed costs, the lack of staff, the need for 24/7/365 online self-service and assistance, therefore they have been adopted fast and easy, and successfully by various businesses in all sizes and almost all industries.
In 2020, Gartner named digital self-service as the core activity businesses needed to maintain their business and recover. Now, in 2023, chatbots are more used than ever in all of their types, with their many functionalities, by companies worldwide and the trends are that they are here to stay for long. Chatbots were also listed in the top 5 solutions to implement if you want to further grow, and in 2022-2023 AI chatbots became the top solution among many other that have currently been adopted by businesses. CBInsights also included AI chatbots among 25 technologies that will shape and change the world and the business in the post-covid times. Businesses could do much more for customers and their experience, and for employees if they combine the traditional elements of human service with the latest technology.
Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions about chatbots and how they can be useful for businesses and organizations in their better positioning and communication with customers and partners online, as well as a few important things to know before start planning the AI digital assistant.
What is a chatbot?
A chatbot is a software solution that is implemented on a website, in a messenger, in a mobile application or elsewhere providing users with information through text, images, video, audio, links, and more. Chatbots can perform a variety of tasks, from answering frequently asked questions to automate tasks and reservations, service inquiries, gathering customer information, questionnaires, and more. The functionalities of each specific chatbot depend on what the business assigns to it to do, where it will be implemented, and with whom it will communicate – with clients, partners, or staff.
Some 43% of the existing chatbots are located on websites, according to global research by Juniper Research (Why Chatbots Are Essential to Retail,2020), and the trend is the number of chatbots located on the business website to increase as this allows the business to have better control over the content and functionalities and to not depend on various messengers as a technology. You can see the 10 benefits of adding an AI chatbot on your site in our blog post to convince yourself more.
What types of businesses and projects are chatbots suitable for?
Chatbots have a very wide range of uses due to the specifics of the technology itself and can be used in all businesses – any industry and size, according to the needs of the business and with a clear answer to the question: what do we need to automate or optimize?
Before the pandemic, chatbots were known mainly as a tool for digital marketing and were used for marketing campaigns, collecting emails and phones, and push notifications for news and promotions. However, in the past few years banks, insurance companies, and medical sectors were among the top adopters of this technology used mainly for customer service and support.
In the changed post-COVID-19 business landscape, the global market for Chatbots estimated at US$651 Million in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of $2.6 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 21.8% over the analysis period 2020-2027, according to Research and Markets. The global market for AI chatbots was estimated to triple between 2020 and 2026 and reach $8 Billion. Taking into account the ongoing post-pandemic recovery, growth in the Web-Based segment is readjusted to a revised 23.7% CAGR for the next 7-year period. What growth!
The pandemic put the focus on the need for fast contactless remote online customer service and communication, and chatbots shine with many benefits and opportunities in this regard. Many businesses have focused on automating routine tasks and customer service with the use of chatbots – to take customer questions and inquiries 24/7, to provide instant information, to check a status or to accept a service inquiry, to make a reservation, etc. This is the first line of service that bots do well and is usually routine work for the employees that they would gladly not do themselves. If you are interested more in the effect of AI chatbots on the overall health and wellness of the company and its employees, there is a fantastic article written especially for Umni by the organizational psychologist Stanislava Zapryanova-King.
Chatbots over the past years have become a mandatory element on the websites and Messenger accounts of many businesses. Finally, businesses also began to use chatbots for their internal needs – communication with staff, training, Human Resources, and more.
Five things that business owners and managers do not know about chatbots, but are important to know to use them properly in their business?
The first and especially important thing is that the chatbot is not a plug-and-play solution. A good chatbot can start at a basic level when users just click on the buttons in it and scroll over some cards and carousels, but this is the stage where feedback is collected on how users use it and what they are looking for to identify the future direction of chatbot development. Chatbots are long-term projects that require attention, analysis, check for mistakes, and upgrades so that one day a business can have a fully developed smart digital assistant. The chatbot itself provides feedback on customer behavior in it, which is important for making informed intelligent decisions in marketing, sales, and operations.
Integrations come in second place. They allow chatbots to automate routine tasks. Most businesses perceive chatbots as some standalone solution on their website or in a messenger, or mobile app and miss the opportunity to integrate chatbots with their reservation system, CRM, or other platforms and software that they use to allow customers to complete tasks in the chatbot without leaving it. For example, this is the case with reservations or accepting service requests via a chatbot, or checking status, or changing the date and time for an already booked service.
Third, the ability to use conversational AI in chatbots is underestimated. It is wrong to label chatbots as “dumb” when they fail to answer a customer question – they just need time, data, and training, the same as a new employee. The challenge for using AI is the need for the business to provide data – in the case of chatbots, these are the collected customer questions so that the AI module can be trained to work well. For this reason, the advice to any business that thinks long-term in this direction is to start this process now so that it can have a working solution in 6 months or a year. It is also recommended to work with an AI chatbot service provider that has industry experience. One such company is Umni with a focus on turning customer questions into industry-focused trained conversational AI as well as having a background of a chatbot agency creating custom-made chatbots for various businesses.
Fourth, the business adds itself the content information on the AI chatbot platform, provides and maintains the answers on the industry/company topics in the conversational AI module in a business-controlled environment, and also can make changes throughout the entire content at any time when needed. The team shall ensure to provide up-to-date and valuable information so the chatbot users could find what they are looking for and be satisfied at the time of their interaction with the chatbot. These are only a few of the main differences between the business AI chatbots and those giant standalone AI chatbots modules like ChatGPT, LaMDA, BlenderBot, or others, that use information from their database (trained to over trillion records of data) and search live online to generate their answers in freestyle One can chat with them freely on thousands of topics, but no one can predict what the answer would be or guarantee its quality and correctness. The giant AI chatbot models of Google, Meta, and OpenAI are still in their research stage of development.
Fifth, but not least in importance, chatbot technology is not expensive anymore as it used to be before. It became a mass technology that could be used by any kind of business, size, and industry. People may have many wrong expectations or ideas of the technologies, but the facts are that the trends of chatbot usage is for sure growing worldwide as more and more businesses are benefiting tremendously from their usage.
How can a company prepare a good project for a chatbot solution?
The company must identify those routine customer assistance tasks that take staff time but are identical enough as a process and can be automated to optimize and improve team performance and provide customers with a 24/7 instant self-service option. At the same time, the business shall begin collecting the frequently asked questions and structuring them into groups under topics if conversational AI will be included in the chatbot development. It is important that there is at least 1 person or a team that is in charge of the chatbot project planning, creation, implementation, and continuous supervision, adjustment, and development. And one more tip: make sure you know how your customers will find the chatbot easily from the beginning of the project and plan its promotion accordingly.
A good inquiry for chatbot development would answer questions such as:
- What does our business want to automate,
- What is the target group/who are the chatbot users,
- How do we expect this to happen – what functionalities will there be in the chatbot,
- Will there be integrations with business systems, and what they will be and do,
- Will conversational AI be used,
- Also, how many languages the chatbot will work in and where it will perform – on the site and/or in the messenger,
- What volume of communication is expected to be redirected to the chatbot?
How do customers get to the chatbot of a business?
This is an extremely important issue because it concerns the long-term planning and marketing of the company that is implementing a chatbot in its digital ecosystem. It is not enough to just implement a chatbot and expect it to do a great job. If customers do not know about it and are not actively directed to use it, even if the chatbot is greatly developed, it will be like a Porsche locked in the garage.
Based on the location of the chatbot, the chatbot can have its own separate landing page or be placed on a specific page, have its own URL link and QR code, and individual parts of the chatbot could also have their own link and code. Users could be directed to the chatbot or to specific parts of it if technically possible in the specific chatbot, such as an order form, from anywhere online and offline. This allows the chatbot to become the main point of communication with the business, which would accelerate it and improve it. Here is an example of how could customers be directed to the chatbot from anywhere online and offline via link or QR code to be assisted with their questions at any time of the day.
For the company, this means that the chatbot should be promoted regularly and everywhere as an element of the overall business promotion – as a link or QR-code: in posts on social media and by email marketing or SMS to customers, as CTA on the site and in other online media, as an element in the signature of employees in emails, as a QR-code of business cards, brochures and other printed materials, and even on the packaging or labels of the business products such as amenities, compliments, giveaways, souvenirs, memorabilia, etc.
How long it takes to create a chatbot?
The development time depends on what the chatbot should do: whether it is a simple chatbot with one or two forms or a smart one, if there are integrations with other systems, forms/questionnaires, how large will be the conversational AI module, and other functionalities, as well as how long it would take the business to prepare the content for the chatbot. It can take from a few hours to months. The conversational AI module will continue being developed after the chatbot will be implemented.
Trends that are coming strong
By 2027, chatbots will become the primary customer service channel for roughly a quarter of organizations, according to Gartner. By 2024, Insider Intelligence predicts that global consumer retail spending via chatbots will reach $142 billion-up from $2.8 billion in 2019. The use of conversational AI in chatbots and turning communication into a stream of useful business data is a major trend in the development of this technology.
Another trend is the gamification in chatbots, doing marketing campaigns with them to constantly engage customers with interesting and useful content, games, quizzes, promoting new products and services, and more. This is evergreen content that keeps customers interested in the company and turns them into loyal users.
New in the field is also the incorporation of AR and VR in chatbots and voice assistants. It really has a wow effect. For example, instead of looking at a picture of a hotel room or a meeting hall, with one click in the bot customer can “walk in” and look at everything down to the smallest detail. Then ask a question, that the chatbot would answer instantly through the activated conversational AI that would in the end provide the customer with the option to book. All in one place.
We have wrapped up the most important information for beginners that would like to start a chatbot project but do not know anything about the technology and its specifics. Of course, if you want to learn something new every week, you can follow our LinkedIn account for fresh trends and tips and tricks in the growing chatbot world. You can also contact us for a personal consultation exactly for your business and needs to start outshining the competition!