2020 Customer Facing ChatBOT Trends

In 2019, 67% of consumers used a ChatBOT for support. Since ChatBOTs are able to provide round the clock service, and that number will only grow larger.  What other trends does 2020 hold for BOTs? Will BOTs replace even more functions that a typical customer service team handles or take an increasing role in generating leads? 

We have put together some of the most prevalent trends for ChatBOTs in 2020.

Providing Humanized and Automated Customer Service

Any kind of interaction with your customers needs to be conversational, and effective conversations can only happen if your BOTs can understand your customers. Currently, 59% of ChatBOT are centered around poorly built ChatBOTs unable to understand human requests. This means the ChatBOT was not built properly and did not take customer questions nor their journey into account.  This can be averted with a well designed, built and trained ChatBOT, a ChatbOT that understands customer requests and recognizes different online dialects, and is able to evolve is paramount for ChatBOTs to take advantage of this trend. With AI and a deep plan, ChatBOTs become more conversational and provide more effective service.

Some use-cases around this trend are:

• Seamlessly transferring customers to agents
• Engaging welcome messages
• Answering FAQs
• Scheduling callbacks

After Hours Sales

ChatBOTs are moving past just facilitating the customer journey they also directly impact your revenue. You can teach your BOTs to speak to specific campaigns and landing pages and to sell specific products. 

Your customers are always online and can land on your website at any time of day or night. Customers can find themselves on your website in a variety of ways. Whether it is a targeted campaign, referral, SEO, or just an organic search your customers typically have questions around your process. Having a BOT that is able to answer FAQs and product-specific questions lead to better customer experiences, which is significant as brands with superior customer experience bring in 5.7 times more revenue. Your customers are craving a connected experience, with 72% saying a disconnected experience would make them change brands.

Some use cases are:

• Answering questions about a car model
• Process a return
• Schedule a customer support callback
• Opening a help ticket
• Recommending the perfect watch
• Breaking down different insurance plans
• Helping a customer finding the right bank or investment account

BOTs that Accomplish Marketing & Branding Goals

Creating and evolving a brand is one of a marketer’s most important goals, the more relatable your brand becomes, the happier your customers become. 80% of consumers reported positive ChatBOT experience, which shows that your customers are willing to interact with BOTs and gives you an opportunity to further develop your brand.

ChatBOT’s 24/7 availability makes them a perfect marketing and lead-gen tool. Your customers can get the information they need at the time it is needed. More than 64% of customers see 24-hour service as ChatBOTs’ biggest advantage. Well built ChatBOTs quickly collect user data and turn visitors into leads, helping you reach your marketing goals.

Finally, ChatBOTs help increase brand loyalty. Harvard Business Review research found that by reducing customer effort, an organization can significantly increase customer loyalty and retention. By using a BOT to not only market to your customers, but actively reduce their effort you create an effective branding BOT.

BOTs will Continue to Evolve with Analytics 

Analytics will continue to play a crucial role in how you develop, iterate, and measure your BOT’s success. Best practices are you use analytics to teach your ChatBOT so it can have a deeper understanding of your customers, and provide them with an experience that is relevant to them.  By taking on the “Build-Measure-Learn” process, you can be agile and develop your BOT and chosen use-case. 

You will never be able to predict how customers will interact with a BOT – what they may say, what they may misunderstand. So by focusing on your analytics, and iterating on them, you can build a BOT that will understand 98% of your customer’s requests.

Since ChatBOTs are becoming more common in the digital world, they will play a more significant role in our online interactions, this is why analytics and iteration are vital to helping BOTs grow into a successful part of your organization. 

ChatBOTs are becoming more mainstream, and as they evolve we will see them become more relevant in business functions and consumer applications. It is an ever-evolving space, that is poised to impact your business, the customer journey, and to revolutionize how we interact online. This evolution will continue to impact digital channels like the web, and mobile moreover,  organizations that embrace ChatBOTs will generate more leads, see their NPS scores increase, and grow their revenue.