3 Practical Applications of Chatbots for Customer Service

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Deena Zaidi
chatbots for customer service

Powered by the natural language processing (NLP) and voice-controlled technology, AI chatbots are quickly becoming a popular choice for many businesses.

Considered to be efficient and cost-effective, chatbots are deployed widely to elevate customer experience across different industries. According to a report by IBM, businesses spend $1.3 trillion on 265 billion customer service calls each year. 

With chatbots, businesses can cut such whopping expenses spent on traditional customer service and speed up the response times to free up agents for more challenging work. Integration of chatbots with social media platforms like Facebook Messenger, LINE, WeChat, and WhatsApp make it easier for businesses to provide 24*7 customer service to the client.  

Within the global chatbot market, approximately 45% of end users prefer chatbots as the primary mode of communication for customer service inquiries.

Here are three practical applications of chatbots that positively impact customer service.

Fashion Assistant

Chatbots in customer service can act as a personal fashion stylist. Price comparison allows customers to browse through different products. By chatting with a company’s customer service chatbot in real time, the buying process can become simpler for online shoppers. Chatbots also recommend products and this makes the entire customer experience more enjoyable and stress-free. Chatbot-based customer support is twice as fast as voice-based support over the telephone and this quickens the entire shopping process.

Dressipi works with world’s leading fashion retailers in the UK and helps customers find the perfect clothing with the responses being completely personalized for the shopper, based on their style preferences. The chatbot (called 'Amiya') smoothens the shopping journey for the customers and creates a stress-free environment for the retailers. Fashion chatbots provide customers with their personalized product, outfit and also gives size recommendations, in real time.

Dressipi recommendations_style-bot

Amiya, Dressipi's Style Bot - Source

Smart Trip Assistant

Customer service chatbots perform those daily activities diligently which can potentially get monotonous for human employees. With telephone losing its primacy, chatbots when integrated through mobile apps, social media and web chats can quickly become a preferred channel of communication.

For the travel industry, such customer service chatbots could prove to be a boon. Besides the benefit of booking and scheduling flights, chatbots can help integrate additional services via social media platforms. Passenger experience can be free of stress if chatbots are employed during the journey. For travelers, this would mean that they do not need to worry about small issues like where to change money, where to hail a cab, wait time in the security check line at airports. The only requirement for this automated travel would be a messaging app downloaded on a smartphone. Such services can also extend to hotels, restaurants and even hospitals.

With open APIs, vertical platforms can be created, linking additional services like Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft. In this way, travel companies can expand their footprints and gain a wider customer base by simply deploying chatbots across different checkpoints. American Express and Dutch airline KLM are early adopters of Messenger chatbots for customer service. American Express acquired Mezi so that the chatbot can make travel recommendations and arrangements at the customers’ request.

Mezi

Healthcare Assistant

One of the most useful applications of a chatbot is in the healthcare department. An average patient spends 30 minutes trying to get to the right service in a local hospital. But deploying conversational chatbots in the healthcare sector can significantly reduce long waits and free up times for, patients, nurses, and doctors. From registration to coverage and claims to compliance, chatbots are in popular demand in healthcare services.

An example of efficient services is that which is provided by Avaamo. Avaamo is a conversational AI chatbot in action and is created to innovate healthcare. By employing such chatbots in the healthcare industry, there could be a massive saving of time and money. On an average, chatbots could save over four minutes per inquiry, equating to average cost savings in the range of $0.50-$0.70 per interaction.

Avaamo

Amaavo, a Healthcare Chatbot - Source

Summary

Chatbots are quickly making transformational changes and allowing businesses to thrive through customer interactions. The feedback and survey through chatbots strengthen the position of businesses as they analyze the reason behind different levels of customer approval. Use of conversational AI chatbots only means better engagement and relentless need for customer satisfaction in the near future.

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Published byDeena Zaidi

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