Ladies and gentlemen, this is the future. No, we haven’t colonized Mars – yet – and we don’t have personal housekeeping robots, but digital marketing has undoubtedly had some developments that we would have never thought possible. We do have a different kind of bot; let’s all welcome B2B chatbots!
Bots are taking over the many different ways that you can interact with your existing and potential clients, and even at this rate, that opportunities still seem to be limitless if you ask us.
We’ve all heard of bots answering customer service requests, but now you are seeing them sell, update, disseminate information and make life generally interesting for everyone.
A Couple of B2B Chatbots Statistics
Did you know that if you want a chatbot right now, you are not alone? According to a survey conducted by the folks at Oracle, 80 percent of businesses would want a chatbot by 2020.
It gets better; too, some companies have been reporting major successes. From companies who do makeup reporting more than 10 percent increased appointments being booked via chatbot, with coffee sales being boosted by 20 percent via instantaneous replies. It is undeniable that chatbots are indeed helping with the business.
Related: 5 Pieces of Advice for Live Chat That you Can Never Live Without
How Can B2B Chatbots Help My Business?
A lot of people started using chatbots in the hopes of answering customer service requests, but then we saw the applications become limitless. Chatbots are now present in these areas:
- Human Resources
- Finance
- Sales
- Recruitment
- Personal Assistants
- Marketing
- Hospitality
- Travel
It is undeniable that a lot of industries have already been penetrated and nothing is stopping them from penetrating even further.
There is also a cost efficiency calculation when employing a chatbot, they can now replace specific roles that have previously cost money and made human resource requirements too onerous and burdensome for the company. They can also be used to augment what the staff have right now and allow them to handle more significant things in general.
Related: 5 Surprising Benefits of Live Chat Software
How Do Chatbots Work for my Business?
Before you jump on the bandwagon, it is essential first to understand the potential and limitations of chatbots. Chatbots allow you to instantly respond to a customer or a client’s request via some variations in the algorithm or responses being used. This will enable chatbots to immediately fix problems and answer queries.
You can connect them to a database and use them to extract information. For instance, you want to check what credit card transactions you made on a particular date, a chatbot that is linked to your bank’s database can answer your queries.
People like interaction and the way chatbots are designed makes them interactive, isn’t asking questions about your banking statement better than logging into your account online?
However, they also have limitations. They are limited by what is programmed into them, so that means you have to predict responses and how your bot will answer queries.
Don’t fear though, as long as you have been tracking customer requests, it should not be that hard to do at all.
What Can I Use a Chatbot For?
The most obvious use for a chatbot is to answer frequent queries that your customers have, but you can also use it for many other things.
Content can be given a significant interactive boost if you add a bot that can answer queries right then and there, or make things more interactive by providing more insight to the already “rich” content that you have.
Are you planning on selling a product? The people who were marketing the last Call of Duty game used a chatbot to preview the video game to potential buyers of their product, the last time we checked, it was a success.
Information dissemination is also great with a chatbot. Take for example companies that offer a travel service; they can use a chatbot to send information about a customer’s flight and other details about itineraries. Imagine having the company chat with you and remind you about your trip, instead of having to rummage for that PDF in your inbox.
So as long you have to interact with your customers and you can either predict their replies or “control” their responses, then you can always find a way to insert a chatbot into the whole experience.
Discover how AI chatbots can grow sales.
The Future is Here
Believe it or not, there are guides available if you want to create your chatbot from scratch. You do not even have to spend a ton of money in the process. The way you use a chatbot is highly dependent on what you want to do, and as detailed in our little article, there are a lot of ways you can use them.
The bottom-line is that the playing field is changing. How is your business going to adapt to it at the soonest?
Related: 5 Marketing Technologies to Invest In 2018
Check out our recent Client Success Stories!
