Chatbots are essential for customer satisfaction, helping to improve your customer service offering at every step of the way. 

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If you run a business then you don’t need us to tell you how important customer service is. Good customer service can make your business whilst a poor experience can break you. 

Your product or service can be the very best but if your customer service isn’t up to scratch then encouraging repeat custom and recommendations will be almost impossible. 

In recent years Chatbots have helped to transform the way you serve your customers, helping to improve customer satisfaction and retention. But what are they and why are they now an essential part of any customer-facing business?

What are chatbots?

In 2021 people want answers instantly. 91% of consumers globally want real-time assistance and unless you’re willing to pay your customer service team to work 24 hours a day, this is where chatbots come in. 

Chatbots offer customer support at any time of the day or night, whenever your customers need it. 

Installing a chatbot onto your website couldn’t be simpler. Chatbots are available on various ecommerce website builders such as Squarespace and Wix and you can also use plugins such as Collect.chat or Gobot to install a chatbot on a WordPress website. 

By the end of 2021, 85% of customer interactions are expected to be handled by virtual assistants meaning chatbots are here to stay. 

How do chatbots improve customer satisfaction? 

Installing a chatbot on your website can help to transform your customer service and improve the satisfaction of your customers. Let’s find out how…

Offer immediate assistance – In the digital age, everything is instant. With just the click of a button, you can order your groceries, book a holiday or speak to relatives on the other side of the world. 

With access to fast internet as essential to everyday life as running water and the clothes on your back, people are used to getting what they want, when they want it. 

If a customer has a question or problem, they want it answered immediately otherwise they will look elsewhere. Answering your customers’ queries quickly helps to improve their overall experience and keeps them on your website for longer. This allows them to feel valued and makes it more likely to spend their money with your brand. 

Relying on a human team alone however, is costly and time-consuming. You’d need an extensive team of customer service specialists to cover a 24-hour shift and wait times can quickly add up. 

Chatbots solve these problems. Unlike your human workforce, they don’t need to sleep or take a break and can deal with multiple customers at any one time, helping to keep wait times as short as possible. 

Create a personalized experience – Chatbots use NLP in order to fully understand both the question that a customer is asking and its context. 

This ensures that the responses a chatbot gives the customer are fully personalized to their specific query. Chatbots will usually start by asking a customer’s name, ensuring the experience is akin to talking to a human. 

Chatbots are adapted to understand the emotions and metaphors that humans use in everyday conversation, whilst they can also be trained to ask specific targeting questions in order to provide customers with personalized recommendations. 

Every customer is unique and will be coming to you with an individual concern. Communicating with them in a personalized way is, therefore, key to answering their needs and ensuring they leave feeling satisfied. 

Support customers at every stage of their journey – A customer’s journey is often much longer than you think. 

From landing on your website as an idle browser, making an informed purchase, returning to make another purchase or requiring a refund or assistance post-purchase; there are various steps along the way where a customer may require assistance. 

Chatbots can support customers at every stage of their journey whether they have only just discovered your brand or if they’re a long-term customer. They can be adapted to ask specific questions in order to determine exactly which stage of their journey a customer is at, and provide them with the most relevant information and assistance. 

You can train your chatbots to work for every journey stage. For example, if a customer is looking for a specific item, a chatbot can direct them to the product page. Or if someone requires information on the status of their order, a chatbot can provide them with tracking information. No customer will be left unsatisfied! 

Humanize your business – There are endless e-commerce brands on the market meaning it’s crucial for you to find ways to set your business apart from the competition. 

You need to ensure you’re offering the best customer service. Nobody wants to feel like they’re talking to a robot, even if they actually are. Training your chatbots to use a more conversational tone of voice and ask natural questions can go a long way to humanizing your brand. 

If customers feel like they’ve spoken to another person, rather than being handed a list of generic FAQs that aren’t relevant to them, they’ll be much more likely to leave feeling content. This helps convert them into a customer that’s likely to return as well as recommend you. 

Collect customer feedback – The only way to guarantee that you’re constantly offering the best customer experience is to regularly assess it. 

Customer feedback is crucial to understanding the level of service you provide and to identify any gaps that may be letting you down. 

Whilst you can re-target customers via email and social media to request feedback, chatbots are a great way to target customers whilst they’re still actively engaged with your brand. 

Many chatbots feature a poll or short survey at the end of their interaction with a customer, asking the customer for feedback on how relevant and useful the service was. You can then use these insights to continually improve your chatbots and customer satisfaction levels. 

Chatbots and customer satisfaction: A summary

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, customer satisfaction is always going to be the key to your success. 

Supporting your customers through their journey is essential. Chatbots can help to level up and adapt your customer service to meet the individual needs of each person. 

From offering instant support to helping to humanize your brand, chatbots have become essential to customer satisfaction and you simply can’t afford to be without one.

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