Chatbots – The Future of IT Support

Chatbots – The Future of IT Support

The way users communicate with businesses has evolved rapidly, i.e., moving from traditional channels such as email and phone to more real-time and conversational messaging platforms.

Automation technologies such as Artificial Intelligence have left their mark on customer support and are now making their way into IT support and IT service management (ITSM). Companies are interested in two main factors, improving efficiency and reducing costs.

Beyond our personal lives, AI has revolutionized our work environment by communicating with other functions and everyday tasks. Real-time engagement is key to gaining a competitive advantage and a great experience in the digital ecosystem. IT users don’t want to fill out lengthy ticket forms and wait hours for a response.

Advanced natural language processing (NLP) and deep learning have led to more practical use cases for Artificial Intelligence (AI).

What is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is an Artificial Intelligence application that interacts with users through a conversational platform. Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning (ML), and Natural Language Processing (NLP) are used to develop a chatbot. Chatbots use AI/ML/NLP technology to conduct human-like conversations in real-time, making everyday tasks more straightforward, easier, and efficient. 

Chatbots can handle employees’ day-to-day problems faster, thus increasing the efficiency and productivity of the entire ITSM. Automation is a top business for today’s IT leaders, so chatbots are the next generation of automation tools that can do more with less.

Chatbots transfer trivial tickets to human agents. When chatbots are used for IT support, virtual agents interact with users through a conversational user interface to resolve queries faster and are available 24/7. Chatbots are programmed to learn from past encounters and evolve.

Now let’s look at the shortcomings of traditional channels and why users can get frustrated.

Communication Channels

According to the 2018 State of Chatbots Report, chatbot usage is at 15%. Although its usage is low compared to traditional channels, it has been overgrowing in recent months. The following paragraphs explain the apparent reasons why users are moving away from traditional communication channels.

Traditional channels are a source of frustration:

• No immediate answers and long waiting times
• Too much hassle to find answers to simple questions
• Too difficult to understand and navigate the portal
• It takes too long to resolve a simple query.

Chatbot Use Cases in ITSM

Better Self-Service

IT cannot increase the number of agents in proportion to the number of tickets. Chatbots come to the rescue here. Chatbots handle routine incidents and service requests, and users are suggested relevant self-help articles to help them redirect tickets. Virtual agents provide real-time, consistent, and personalized interactions with end-users, improving customer satisfaction.

Chatbots provide consistency in language, response time, and availability. However, chatbots do not replace human agents as they solve complex Level II and III queries.

Ticket Categorization & Assignment

Categorizing tickets is time-consuming at the help desk. Chatbots simplify this process by intelligently classifying tickets into agent groups according to the type of problem. They take into account different ticket classification criteria and also evolve based on prior learning.

If the chatbot cannot resolve the ticket, it is assigned to the appropriate agent, giving it full context on what has happened so far.

Password Reset

Password reset is the most common request to the helpdesk, and agents spend a lot of time dealing with this transactional query. After introducing AI, password recovery is handled by chatbots that connect to the backend and set a temporary password for the user. This is all done seamlessly, without any manual intervention.

Access Provisioning/Deprovisioning

This is the type of service request that users usually ask for. Chatbots understand the type of request, the job title of the requester, the department and send approval to the appropriate management to grant access to the application. Similarly, chatbots automate granting access to users.

Agent Assist

Chatbots help ends not only users but also agents in resolving their requests. For example, an agent requests a report on the volume of support tickets, and the chatbot prepares this report and immediately forwards it to the agent. So chatbots are not just for customers, but they also help agents do their jobs more efficiently. Bots proactively inform agents of any significant incident. For example, bots can relay messages internally within the organization.

Automated Workflows

Approvals for service requests and changes are standard within the IT service desk. The resolution of these tickets is often delayed, pending the correct approval.

In this case, the chatbot automates the workflow and ensures immediate approval by alerting all relevant approvers. Similarly, the onboarding/offboarding of employees is automated by allocating all necessary resources via the chatbot.

Knowledge Management

The key to effective self-service is knowledge management. It contributes significantly to ticket transfer and is an essential resource for self-service. Chatbots are very useful in recommending the correct articles and getting real-time feedback.

Chatbots automatically recommend relevant articles to users. Based on aggregated ticket data, they identify knowledge gaps and determine missing knowledge articles. New knowledge articles are created based on the provided ticket solutions.

• Intelligent search
• Intelligent solution suggestions
• Identification of gaps
• Creation of solution articles

Chatbot Effectiveness

Coverage – the number of questions that the chatbot can answer correctly.

Accuracy – whether the suggestions are helpful or not

Bias – the number of questions the chatbot can answer without human intervention.

The implementation of chatbots should be top-down driven, and it is the responsibility of management to communicate value and pilot with agents. It is important to stress that robots are not a replacement for human agents but a complement to them to do a better job.

Benefits

24/7 availability: improves the overall response time to user queries and is available 24 hours a day, leading to an overall improvement in resolution time and productivity.

Faster ticket resolution: As the chatbot is powered by AI and ML technology, the overall resolution rate increases, increasing customer satisfaction. Faster ticket resolution also means faster business recovery.

Proactive engagement: Chatbots are intelligent enough to predict events and report tickets. Proactive engagement saves costs by eliminating delays and significant service disruptions. Chatbots will proactively inform agents of potential SLA violations.

Cost optimization: Chatbots divert regular Tier 1 tickets, ultimately reducing the overall costs incurred. Helpdesk staff are freed up from regular invoicing tasks and can focus on solving complex problems.

If you haven’t started thinking about chatbots yet, now would be an excellent time to initiate change in your organization rather than falling behind the curve.

Have you checked out our IT & Computing Chatbot yet?

It helps you keep your website is in tip-top shape. Check it out now here: IT & Computing Chatbot

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Three insurance chatbot use cases for customer service

Three insurance chatbot use cases for customer service

Did you know that insurers who provide an exceptional customer experience generate two to four times more sales and 30% more profit than their peers who struggle with customer service?

Not surprisingly, satisfied customers are 80% more likely to renew their policies than dissatisfied customers. However, 71% of insurance customers say they are dissatisfied with their providers.

Excellent customer service is a simple solution to this problem. But how and where should insurers start? 79% of insurance customers say they use digital channels to interact with their insurers.

Customers have gone digital, and your customer service needs to follow them.

Creating the ideal online customer experience

The digital customer experience is more important than ever. With the increasing sophistication of digital technologies such as chatbots and RPA, automating customer service is not just possible but can be a game-changer.

The most powerful way to automate customer service is through chatbots, which use Artificial Intelligence in conversation. Bots are ideally suited to automate many time-consuming but straightforward queries that engage your customer service team.

Chatbots that use Artificial Intelligence provide customers with the fast online service they have become accustomed to. They are also not uncomfortable with the feeling of being assisted by a bot.

Most consumers don’t care whether a machine or a human helps them as long as they get the correct answer quickly. 54% of consumers would always choose a chatbot over a human if it saved them 10 minutes. Bots are the way of the future.

However, it is essential to understand that chatbots are not suitable for every problem and are best suited for solving simple queries. An insurance agent needs to be on the other end of the live chat for more complex questions.

So, what tasks should you automate? Here are three use cases you can quickly automate with Insurance chatbots:

Three customer service challenges bots can solve for insurance companies

Answer insurance policy questions

Providing customers with real-time, relevant information about their policy coverage.

File insurance claims

Enables customers to file insurance claims directly through the bot. As the bot is available 24/7 across multiple platforms, customers can submit their claims when and how they want.

Select insurance plans

Provides potential customers with all the info they need to purchase an insurance product or renew their policy.

What’s in it for insurance companies?

For insurers who choose to use chatbots alongside other customer service tools, there are many benefits. Sure, customers get faster service, but what about the insurers themselves? These are just some of the benefits:

More satisfied and efficient customer service agents

Among the biggest challenges for customer service teams is that most of the questions they deal with are simple and repetitive. Robots can answer these questions quickly, freeing staff to deal with more complex issues and increasing satisfaction and productivity.

Lower costs

Automation has improved the quality of customer service and increased productivity. This has led to cost savings through more efficient agents and increased sales through satisfied customers renewing and buying additional insurance products.

Improved service capacity

Since agents don’t have to solve everyday problems, they can handle unexpected rushes of customer requests.

Ultimately, robots benefit everyone. Customers are more satisfied and more likely to keep their contracts. On the other hand, you improve customer support capabilities and employee job satisfaction while reducing customer service costs.

Have you checked out our Insurance chatbot yet?

It helps you keep your website is in tip-top shape. Check it out now here: Insurance chatbot.

Read More: What Are chatbots, And How Can Home Service Providers Use Them?

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What Are Chatbots, And How Can Home Service Providers Use Them?

What Are Chatbots, And How Can Home Service Providers Use Them?

This blog post explains what chatbots are and how Home Service Providers can take their organization to the following level.

What Is A Chatbot?

A chatbot is an automated chat service that relies on rules or Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide accurate responses to queries based on user input and data.

In other words, a chatbot can take a specific question from a visitor, automatically identify the user’s intent behind the query, and immediately suggest the proper action to solve the problem.

Some chatbots can even harness the power of machine learning to get smarter with each interaction with a user so that their responses can be tailored to each visitor’s individual needs.

Companies use chatbots on their websites, social media platforms, and messaging apps to instantly resolve questions or issues that might arise at any point during a user’s interaction with a brand.

Why Should Home Service Providers Use Chatbots?

With much shorter and shorter attention spans and a general lack of time, people today want to get the information they need quickly. 

This is where chatbots come in. Implementing such technology can help companies deliver a superior customer experience, build relationships with their target audience, and cement brand credibility – while sharing the workload associated with supporting users between customer service teams and chatbots.

24/7 Availability

With the development of the digital age, most customers expect businesses to be available at all times, every day, including weekends and holidays.

Suppose potential customers interested in your product or service cannot get their questions answered on time. In that case, they are likely to turn away from you and look at competitor offerings.

For most businesses, bridging this gap with customer support teams alone is an impossible task.

On the other hand, chatbots are available at any day or night and can even help outside your regular working hours.

Instant Answers To Customer Queries

If you want to achieve 92% customer satisfaction, the benchmark for live chat first response time across all industries is an average of 1 minute 36 seconds.

Trying to rely on support teams to meet expectations is complex and requires additional resources to ensure lightning-fast response times. In contrast, chatbots can deal with a large number of issues instantly, day and night.

Lowered Business Expenses

The bigger your organization gets, the more resources are needed to provide good customer service.

Salaries, benefits, and other overheads associated with building a support team inevitably cut into your profits and limit your capability to expand your business.

In contrast, chatbots do not incur high costs and can reduce customer service costs by up to 30%, with almost unlimited scaling potential.

More Sales And Revenue

According to PSFK, 74% of consumers prefer to use chatbots to get instant answers.

Coupled with the fact that chatbots lead to an average 67% increase in sales, taking advantage of opportunities to serve potential and existing customers that would otherwise go unnoticed is a great way to improve the customer experience.

But chatbots can do much more than help your support team. Chatbots can help you convert visitors into qualified leads, schedule sales calls, and meetings, and even provide personalized product recommendations that can generate more sales and revenue for your business.

How Home Service Providers Can Use Chatbots

Chatbots are a versatile tool for growing your business and can be used in various ways to provide top-notch customer support, reach your target audience, and spice up your sales and marketing efforts. 

The optimal use of chatbots depends on several unique factors – from industry to strategic goals – and is different for every business.

However, for Home Service Providers, which make up most of our client base, we have found chatbots to be most effective at completing the following tasks:

• Answering questions and making inquiries.
• Organizing information and sales meetings.
• Generating and qualifying leads.
• Confirming orders.
• Offering personal advice.
• Collect customer feedback.

To maximize the benefits of using chatbots, you can deploy the technology on multiple online platforms at the forefront of the customer experience. Your site and social media platforms, as well as the most popular instant messengers, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

While building a chatbot from scratch is possible, most businesses do not have the time, knowledge, or resources to do so. Therefore, it is best to use a third-party solution to get started. 

When looking for a platform, look for simplicity and ease of use. However, if you need something more complex, consider a solution.

Ready To Get Started With Chatbots?

Chatbots are the future, and the future is already here. With the chatbot market overgrowing and expected to reach $10.5 billion by 2026, more and more businesses will turn to chatbots to automate their operations.

As the technology to support chatbots becomes more advanced every year, setting up a chatbot early for your business can give you an exponential return on investment in the long run.

Have you checked out our Home Service Chatbot yet?

It helps you keep your website is in tip-top shape. Check it out now here: Home Service Chatbot

Read More: 10 Reasons Why Every Hotel Needs a Hotel Chatbot

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10 Reasons Why Every Hotel Needs a Hotel Chatbot

10 Reasons Why Every Hotel Needs a Hotel Chatbot

Chatbot technology has been created rapidly in recent years and is becoming increasingly popular in the hotel industry. However, several hotel owners are still unaware of what chatbots can offer and how customers benefit from their use. This article will find ten concrete reasons why every modern hotel needs its hotel chatbot.

What is a hotel chatbot?

A hotel chatbot is a form of digital technology that can respond intelligently to human interactions and be used on behalf of a hotel or other business in the hospitality industry. The purpose of a chatbot is to simulate the type of meaningful interactions a customer might have with an actual employee, usually through text.

In most cases, such a hotel bot is used as a digital customer service agent that responds to queries, provides valuable information, and even answers specific questions. How sophisticated a hotel chatbot can generally depend on the underlying technology and how it is used.

How Does a hotel chatbot Work?

A hotel chatbot interprets or understands customer interactions and provides relevant answers to questions or relevant information upon request. Chatbots can be roughly divided into two types:

1. Rule-Based hotel chatbots

Rule-based chatbots are the simplest type of hotel bot available. As the name suggests, these bots can communicate based on a set of clear rules. These are usually based on “if/else” statements. For example, a chatbot could be set up to ask, “Would you like to see our special offers?” If the user says “yes” or selects a “yes” option on the screen, they will be shown special offers. Otherwise, another message may be displayed.

This type of chatbot can be operated via labeled action buttons on the screen, which the user clicks to continue the conversation. However, more advanced chatbots of this type work by recognizing certain words in a user’s input before displaying the following relevant message based on the rules set.

The main advantage here is simplicity, which means they can be highly cost-effective. However, communicating with chatbots can be significantly less natural than interacting with a human, potentially being off-putting.

2. AI-Based hotel chatbots

The alternative to Rule-based chatbots is AI-based chatbots, and these are much more sophisticated. Artificial Intelligence allows them to understand and interpret written communication and then respond appropriately, resulting in highly realistic chat interactions, similar to a customer service representative.

Some of the most advanced AI bots even go a step further and use machine learning to pick up information and adapt their communication accordingly. For example, a hotel chatbot can find a user’s preferences, piece together the information, and make an intelligent recommendation.

AI-based chatbots offer much more personalization and lead to more natural communication. They are also usually more accessible for customers to use, and machine learning leads to continuous improvement.

10 Reasons Why Every Hotel Needs a hotel chatbot

Below are ten concrete reasons why chatbots have become an essential part of many hotel management strategies.

1. 24/7 customer service

Modern customers have high expectations when it involves customer service response times. This can be particularly challenging in the travel and hotel industry, as customers from all over the world may have questions and ask them at different times. hotel chatbots can help by providing 24/7 customer service.

In simple terms, this means that customers can get a timely response regardless of the moment of the day, even if you don’t have customer service representatives to answer them in person.

2. Increase Direct Bookings

For the hotel industry, increasing direct bookings is a top priority. After all, hotels don’t have to pay commission for these bookings, which leads to higher profits. A hotel chatbot can help with this by increasing the number of conversions on the hotel website by answering questions quickly.

In addition, can also use chatbots on social media and instant messenger platforms by offering the possibility to book directly through these platforms or by offering direct links to the primary booking system.

3. Support Throughout the Booking Journey

A hotel chatbot can help increase the number of bookings made and reduce the number of abandoned halfway through by providing helpful, personalized support throughout the booking process. Customers can ask the chatbot queries and request information, while the chatbot can encourage progress.

Chatbots can also be used at the beginning of the booking process to learn what a particular user is looking for, how much money they want to spend, etc., before making intelligent recommendations.

4. Communicate in Multiple Languages

Whether you use a Rules-based or an AI-based hotel chatbot, you can offer support for several different languages. This can be particularly helpful for hotels, as guests come from all over the world, and employing staff with the necessary translation skills is probably not feasible.

AI chatbots, in particular, translate a breeze. This means that customers can get the answers to their specific questions in their language, regardless of the language they use.

5. Up-Sell and Cross-Sell Opportunities

A chatbot can help increase the number of direct bookings and provide a hotel with more opportunities for upselling and cross-selling. This can also be done naturally, matching what was said in the chat, increasing the likelihood that a customer will take advantage of these opportunities.

The chatbot could use the information gathered to offer additional options such as breakfast or wellness offers during the booking process. When a specific room is selected, a chatbot could make a recommendation for a room upgrade. During the stay, a chatbot could also provide live information about restaurant availability.

6. Personal Experience

AI-driven chatbots can help hotels deliver a far more personalized guest experience, and this can start before the guest has even begun the booking process. As mentioned earlier, intelligent recommendations can be made before or during the booking process, but this is also possible afterward.

A hotel chatbot can identify the guest’s preferences through intelligent follow-up questions and then make recommendations for places to see, things to do, car rentals, or restaurants.

7. A More Efficient Customer Experience

Chatbots provide 24/7 availability for online customer contact and improve the overall efficiency of the on-site customer experience. One method to achieve this is to use a hotel chatbot to help with check-in and check-out.

With the help of a smartphone app and chatbot technology, it is possible to complete check-in and check-out using just a smartphone without visiting the hotel reception, thus eliminating waiting times.

8. Reduced Burden on customer service Staff

In the modern age, customer service teams in hotels can quickly become overloaded. After all, they have to deal with guests who want to speak to a customer service representative in person simultaneously, respond to inquiries and other contacts via Facebook, Twitter, and email, and process feedback from customer surveys.

A hotel chatbot can alleviate this pressure by providing quick response times to reduce backlogs and handle many of the most common or most accessible customer service requests, leaving staff to deal with the more complex cases.

9. Personalised Promotional Efforts

Hotels’ marketing efforts often include sending marketing emails, but these techniques are not always very successful. After all, many people ignore marketing emails even if they have specifically ticked off a form they would like to receive. Part of the problem is that they are often generic and repetitive.

A hotel chatbot can improve this situation by offering a higher level of personalization. For example, a chatbot message sent via a social media platform or a chatbot message that appears on the hotel website can lead to a much more personalized, two-way conversation that is more likely to result in a sale.

10. Follow Up With Your Guests

Hotels are increasingly recognizing the importance of connecting with guests after check-out to get feedback. Chatbots are ideal for this. They reach out to guests through multiple channels and learn what guests liked and didn’t like, what improvements they would suggest, and how they perceived the hotel overall.

Data or AI-driven chatbots can also personalize their follow-ups and provide further updates about the hotel itself, helping to generate the kind of customer loyalty that leads to repeat visits.

Have you checked out our Hospitality Chatbot yet?

It helps you keep your website is in tip-top shape. Check it out now here: Hospitality Chatbot

Read More: The Future of the Healthcare Industry

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The Future of the Healthcare Industry

The Future of the Healthcare Industry

1. What are Chatbots in the Healthcare Industry?

Chatbots are software developed using machine learning algorithms, including Natural Language Processing (NLP), to initiate and continue a conversation with a user to help patients in real-time.

Chatbots have already made their way into retail, news media, social media, banking, and customer service. Many people use chatbots on their smartphones every day without even knowing it. From sports news to navigating banking apps to playing conversation-based games on Facebook Messenger, chatbots are revolutionizing our lives.

Payers and healthcare providers, including medical assistants, are also beginning to use these AI-powered tools to simplify patient care and reduce unnecessary costs. Whenever a patient starts a conversation with a medical assistant who sounds human but is an intelligent conversation machine, we see a chatbot in action in the medical field.

2. The Role of Artificial Intelligence

Patients love talking to real doctors, and Artificial Intelligence makes chatbots sound more human. Some chatbots with complex self-learning algorithms can successfully hold detailed, almost human-like conversations.

Are medical chatbots powered by AI technologies leading to a significant paradigm shift in healthcare? Yes. Recently, Northwell Health, an AI company creating chatbots to help patients with cancer treatment, reported that more than 96% of patients who used its chatbots for post-discharge follow-up found them very helpful, demonstrating increased customer engagement.

Machine learning applications are transforming patient care as we know it.

Although still in their infancy, chatbots will improve care and lead to significant healthcare cost savings and better patient care outcomes soon.

3. Benefits of Chatbots in Healthcare

The pros of using hybrid chatbots in healthcare are enormous – and everyone involved benefits.

For one, medical chatbots reduce the workload of medical staff by reducing the number of hospital visits, cutting down on unnecessary treatments and procedures, and reducing hospital admissions and readmissions by improving treatment adherence and symptom knowledge. For patients, this brings many benefits:

• less time spent traveling to the doctor’s office
• less money spent on unnecessary treatments and tests
• easy access to the doctor at the touch of a button

Chatbots provide cost savings in healthcare. Experts estimate that cost savings from chatbots in healthcare will reach $3.6 billion globally by 2022.

6 billion by 2022. Chatbots gradually reduce hospital waiting times, the length of consultations, unnecessary treatments, and hospital readmissions by interacting with patients with the right healthcare providers and helping them understand their condition and treatments, even without seeing a doctor.

In addition, hospitals and private clinics are using medical chatbots to triage and record patients even before they enter the treatment room. These bots ask relevant questions about the patient’s symptoms, which are automatically answered to create a good medical history for the doctor. Then, these medical histories are sent via a messaging interface to the doctor, who triages to determine which patients require to be seen first and which patients need a short consultation.

The truth is that chatbots can neither replace a doctor’s expertise nor take over patient care. However, integrating the best of both worlds improves the efficiency of patient care and simplifies and speeds up treatment without compromising quality.

4. Use Cases of Chatbots in Healthcare

To develop a chatbot that engages users and provides them with solutions, chatbot developers need to figure out what kind of chatbot can most effectively achieve these goals. Therefore, the chatbot developer needs to consider the user’s intention and the best help the user requires; then, we can design the right chatbot to achieve these goals.

There are three prominent use cases for the use of chatbot technology in healthcare:

1. Informative chatbots
2. Conversational chatbots
3. Prescriptive chatbots

These chatbots differ in their conversational style, depth of communication, and the type of solutions they offer.

1. Informative Chatbots

Informative chatbots provide helpful information to users, often in pop-ups, notifications, and breaking news. In general, Informative Chatbots provide automated information and customer support.

Health news and mental health websites also use chatbots to help them access more detailed information about a topic. For example, if you are reading about alcoholism and withdrawal, a chatbot may pop up with this question: “Do you need help with alcohol addiction? Talk to one of our mental health experts”.

2. Conversational Chatbots

Conversational chatbots are designed as contextual tools that provide answers based on the user’s intent. However, a conversational chatbot has different maturity levels – not all of them provide the same depth of conversation.

For example, a maturity level 1 chatbot only provides pre-written answers to clearly stated questions without tracking variations. A chatbot of intelligence level 2, on the other hand, can do this.

Chatbots with a higher intelligence level can understand the context better and provide more than just ready-made answers. This is because these chatbots look at a conversation as a whole instead of processing sentences in isolation.

The higher the intelligence of a chatbot, the more personalized responses can be expected. This is when conversations start to resemble human communications. Conversational Chatbots utilize Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Artificial Intelligence applications that enable machines to understand human speech and intentions.

3. Prescriptive Chatbots

Prescriptive chatbots are conversational by design, and they are developed to provide answers or instructions and offer therapeutic solutions.

Chatbot developers should use a variety of chatbots to engage and provide value to their audience. The most important point is knowing your audience, what suits them best, and which chatbots work in which environment.

If you are developing a chatbot to give medical advice, you should look in-depth at the applicable regulations. There are points you can and cannot say, and there are rules about saying things. To navigate this environment, you need legal counsel to help you build this part of your chatbot.

5. Future of Chatbots in Healthcare

Despite the initial chatbot hype, medical chatbots still have the potential to improve the healthcare industry. The three main areas that can be particularly useful include diagnostics, patient engagement outside of medical settings, and mental health.

At least, that’s what the analysts at CB Insights put forward in their Healthcare Chatbot market study and generally say that the future of chatbots in the healthcare industry looks bright.

Have you checked out our Healthcare Chatbot?

It helps ensure your website is in tip-top shape. Check it out now here: Healthcare Chatbot

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How a Beauty Business Benefits from a Chatbot

How a Beauty Business Benefits from a Chatbot

The beauty industry is a highly competitive field. With so many brands vying for customers’ attention and money, your business needs to stand out to be successful. On top of that, customers are savvy and demanding in this space.

They expect a personalized, high-quality experience every time, so your brand has no margin for error. Which tool meets all these requirements and gives your business the competitive edge it needs to succeed? A Facebook beauty chatbot.

Messenger chatbots are not only an ideal tool for beauty businesses, but they are also easy to create and implement. Are you ready to make your beauty business stand out from the crowd? Learn why a chatbot is the best solution for you and get helpful tips for creating your first chatbot.

Types of beauty businesses that can benefit from chatbots

The benefits of chatbots apply to all players in the beauty industry. Stationery businesses such as salons, spas, and beauty schools can be as successful with a Facebook chatbot as online businesses such as cosmetics e-commerce shops.

Chatbots are also helpful for beauty businesses of all sizes. More prominent brands inundated with Facebook messages can use a beauty chatbot to answer frequently asked questions automatically. It can also help them collect data on prospects and customers and send newsletter-style messages to users.

Smaller brands may not need bots to handle a full Messenger inbox, but they can benefit in other ways. Your bot can convert users who comment on Facebook posts into leads. It can also act as a mini-CRM to collect, filter, and export data about customers engaged with the bot.

How a chatbot can boost your beauty business

A beauty live chat on Facebook can provide valuable information about your business, but more engagingly. It can share details about your services or products, your opening hours, directions or prices, as well as your reviews and examples of your work.

However, that’s not all a beauty bot can do. While they were initially only used to handle simple customer service queries, they have evolved into savvy virtual assistants with even more robust features. Use them for:

Send news and updates to subscribers 🔔

Among the most helpful features of Facebook chatbots for businesses is sending messages to segmented subscribers to retarget them. To engage prospects and customers, you can share information about new products, sales, coupons, and more. You can send out these messages within 24 hours of a user’s last communication with your bot, or you can pay to send a sponsored message at any time.

Provide 24/7 support 💻

The beauty of chatbots (pun planned!) is that they have no closing time. It doesn’t matter what time zone the user is in or when trying to book an appointment or request information. The bot is always available to chat with and help the user, day or night.

Add the live chat feature to your bot so customers can reach a human agent with any unanswered questions.

Schedule and book appointments 📅

A chatbot makes scheduling appointments for inpatient businesses quick and easy. Customers can book treatments instantly, anytime, without leaving the Messenger app or filling out cumbersome web forms.

Sell products 🛍

A beauty bot makes product sales much easier for e-commerce businesses. Just like booking can make appointments sales 24/7 through the Messenger app. Combine this functionality with a bot’s ability to send promotional messages about sales or new products to users, and you’ve created a sleek, highly effective new sales funnel.

Provide personalized, expert advice 🗣️

It’s in the best interest of any beauty company to position itself as an authority in its niche, and chatbots are great for that. You can give users the valuable and engaging experience of chatting with a beauty expert by preloading your bot with helpful tips, tricks, and advice.

For example, questions about the customer’s hair type or eye shape can be used to generate hairstyle recommendations. This can be accompanied by the opportunity to book an appointment or suggest make-up products with links to purchase. This is a high-value but straightforward way to build trust in your brand and also increase sales.

Entertain, educate, and inspire ✨

Chatbots offer other features that help your brand build credibility with users. You can use messages with specific tags to send content designed to educate, entertain, and inspire your users.

For example, you can provide a quiz that recommends a nail color or face mask type depending on their mood. This type of creative, engaging content is usually well received by users and can lead to more brand loyalty and sales.

An example of among the best beauty bots on the market is the story of Beauty Player, a Chatfuel client. First, the company solved the immediate problem of Facebook message inundation by setting up their bot to handle FAQs.

Then they equipped their bot to offer quizzes on the user’s skin type and then recommend products along with coupon codes. Thanks to these innovative features, they attributed a whopping 40% ($250,000) of their sales the next month to their clever beauty bot!

Have you checked out our Hairdressing & Personal Care Chatbot?

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Read More: Applications for Legal Chatbots

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Applications for Legal Chatbots

Applications for Legal Chatbots

Chatbots – which utilize pre-programmed phrases or AI algorithms to read and respond to customers via live chat – have become a standard tool for businesses online to collect customer data.

While not as intelligent as a human, these bots can provide quick responses to queries and gather information about a customer’s needs, even when a human employee is not available to chat.

Because of their data-gathering and question-answering capabilities, these bots are also beneficial for legal organizations.

Below are six applications for chatbots in the legal sector that are currently in use.

1. Directing Users to Site Content

Some law firms and legal organizations have started to blog and publish content on their website in recent years. Therefore, many of these firms have created extensive archives of legal resources that can be extremely valuable for visitors and potential clients. However, a search tool can only take visitors so far, and visitors may not even be aware of the available content.

A chatbot can guide visitors in the right direction. When asked for advice or to answer a straightforward question, the bot can quickly search through the various articles, resources, and tools a company provides on its website.

It can, after that, provide site visitors with a shortlist of the most relevant content available.

2. Filling Out Paperwork

It is not uncommon for people without legal expertise to quickly become overwhelmed with the amount of paperwork they must complete. Chatbots can help keep track of this by filling out the paperwork automatically. 

This is the purpose of a divorce law chatbot developed by the creator of the DoNotPay bot, which helps people process traffic tickets. The divorce bot uses information from chat prompts to fill out court forms, significantly reducing the workload.

3. Responding to Complaints

Other chatbots can also help visitors respond quickly to legal complaints, valuable in the US, where individuals have only three weeks to respond. The bot also directs users to legal resources they can use once they have submitted their responses.

4. Answering Simple Questions

Chatbots can also serve as a more intelligent list of frequently asked questions, providing internal customers with quick information on topics they may not be familiar with.

If a visitor has a simple question or needs a definition for a legal term, they can send a short query to the chatbot and receive an answer. If their problem is more complex and they need solid legal advice, the chatbot can put them in contact with a lawyer or schedule a call.

These types of bots can be helpful for larger law firms that receive many of the same, simple questions from internal customers and don’t have the time to respond to each one.

They can also be helpful for law firms that don’t offer an alternative to calling to make appointments and get information. Sixty-four percent of people prefer a text message to a phone call, and chatbots are always available for a text message.

5. Automated Document Generation

Even with the most advanced voice recognition technology, chatbots are not lawyers and cannot handle complex legal cases or provide real legal support. However, they can take on more straightforward, repetitive tasks, freeing up lawyers and law firm staff for more critical tasks.

For example, drafting contracts and legal documents is often a tedious task that involves customizing standard legal texts with relevant information. Legal Chatbots, which are often used to automate the creation of contracts, policies, and legal documents, can relieve lawyers of some of this work.

Robot Lawyer Lisa can be used to create binding confidentiality agreements. The Spanish-language bot Legaliboo uses Facebook Messenger interviews to create legal documents. It is also common for chatbots to offer some automated contract and document creation for general legal purposes.

6. Collecting Information on Client Needs

Chatbots can be effective even when they are unable to handle a visitor’s request. Bots can quickly gather information about a client’s needs and the urgency of their request in a short chat session. The bot can then prepare this information for an advocate to facilitate the initial meeting with the client.

Using this information, the bot can also sort client requests and assign them to the best possible lawyer or staff member, depending on what a particular visitor needs.

How the legal industry Can Use Chatbots

Chatbots have come to be a popular tool for businesses looking to automate their communication and data collection. These bots can likewise be a powerful tool for the legal industry, and Bots can automatically create legal documents, direct visitors to relevant information, and help them manage paperwork.

Firms that use these bots can streamline their work processes and reduce much of the tedious work required for legal work.

Have you checked out our Legal Chatbot?

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Several Smart Ways to Generate More Leads for Your Business

Several Smart Ways to Generate More Leads for Your Business

Even with the best product, your business is doomed to fail if you get enough leads. This article will show you some clever ways to generate more leads now.

➠ Optimize your web pages for conversions

All your online lead generation efforts need to begin with your website. It’s no use attracting visitors to your website – whether through Google+, social media, or word of mouth – if those visitors then leave without taking action.

Your website needs to be optimized to get the visitor to do something – whatever that action may be. lead generation is usually about capturing a potential customer’s contact information, such as their name, email address, phone number, and other qualifying characteristics that support your sales process.

How do you do this? As simple as setting up a website these days, that’s no guarantee that your website is optimized for capturing leads. There are certain best practices that all pages of your website should follow to maximize the number of leads you acquire.

Not an expert?

No problem. Several tools, such as Leadpages, make creating powerful websites as easy as writing an email.

With Leadpages, you can quickly create and publish websites based on a proven formula for success. The extensive marketplace and library of page templates help even the biggest newbie convert more leads.

➠ Run a giveaway or contest

A giveaway or competition can generate a lot of email and social leads in a short time. It works like this: brands offer a prize in exchange for participants who refer friends, share content, and like your social media profiles.

You can get creative with the choice of prizes/rewards and the actions required to earn points (sharing, tagging, recommending, etc.).

➠ Directly engage with leads

Addressing customers directly should be one of your top priorities.

Most companies opt for direct engagement, e.g., through FAQs. However, this is not the most effective way to engage.

On the other hand, direct engagement uses live chat, forums, and help centers where customer service representatives are always present to ensure that every query is appropriately addressed.

More engaged customers lead to better word of mouth and more leads.

➠ Deploy outbound & inbound marketing

According to the statistics, outbound marketing is still more effective than inbound marketing. But that doesn’t mean you should forget about inbound marketing. Make sure to use both approaches in a balanced way, as this will help generate leads and, ultimately, your business.

From an inbound perspective: personalize your email communications and become active in online communities by regularly sharing informative content and solving common customer problems. This will assist you in building healthy relationships with your customers and generate more leads.

➠ Invest in new technology

New technologies are setting the trend in the market. As an example, smartphones are trending all over the world. This shows that you must invest in making your marketing efforts compatible with these devices to reach as many customers as possible.

In short, you should keep an eye on new technologies and channels through which you can gain more customer contacts for your business.

➠ Develop & optimize informative content

It’s undeniable that content can be a great source of web traffic, which leads to more leads. However, it must be informative and appeal to your target audience. Quality content can benefit you by attracting visitors to your website well beyond its publication date. Try to include images, videos, and infographics to increase the amount of content shared and engagement.

➠ Make your Tweets sing

If possible, include images with your tweets to make things more exciting and engaging for your customers.

Also, utilize hashtags to make your content easier to find. The more often you are found, the more leads you will get.

➠ Market through LinkedIn

As we all know, LinkedIn is a business-focused social networking website. It can also prove to be a great platform to attract new customers to your business. LinkedIn also allows users to post content for an already engaged audience.

➠ Answer a question on Quora

Quora is a question-and-answer-based social network where millions of people from different demographics ask questions every day. If you answer enough questions from users, they will become aware of your profile and most likely visit your website.

➠ Comment on other blogs

Writing comments on blogs can help get your name out there and possibly attract new customers. Be generous and helpful with your comments, and people will want to see what you have to offer.

➠ Start to guest blog

Guest blogging can be valuable for lead generation, but only if the following aspects are implemented correctly:

• The articles contain relevant information for the audience.
• They redirect the visitors to an appropriate landing page on your website.
• The article has unique information
• You actively promote the post to use social proof
• Your audience highly regards the website you are blogging for.

➠ Don’t forget your signature

Make your email signature efficient by embedding a link that directs the reader to relevant content. With the help of link integration, there is a greater chance that maximum web traffic will flow to your content.

When you include HTML codes in your emails, test them on all platforms to ensure everything works properly.

➠ Participate in forums

Forums are the ideal place to get to know your customers better. The better you know your customers, the easier it is to contact them with a potential offer.

Be active in forums, exchange ideas with members, and answer their questions.

➠ Interview influencers

Reach out to influencers that your customers respect and interview them for your blog or social channels.

Keep it as simple as possible by asking short/crisp questions and then ask them to share the final product.

Your potential consumer will see this as proof of your credibility and increase your chances of getting new customers.

➠ Share videos on YouTube

YouTube is not only a video organizing service but also a vast search engine. It is more popular than any other social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, Google++, etc.

Compared to other social networking platforms, all posts stay there for a very long time. Therefore, this is the best channel for long-term internet traffic forwarding.

This platform allows you to create and maintain your channel to post videos on specific events, unmissable guides, and other things. This way, you can stand out from your competitors and attract more customers to your business.

➠ Add a Quiz to your blog

Posting a quiz on your blog can make your content engaging and increase the attention of your online audience, and it can even entice readers to share their feedback on your blog and article. This way, you can also build a closer relationship with your audience and gain more leads in the long run.

Have you checked out our Get More Leads Chatbot?

It helps ensure your website is in tip-top shape. Check it out now here: Get More Leads Chatbot

Read More: 6 Ways Chatbots Increase Sales and Improve Customer Service

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6 Ways Chatbots Increase Sales and Improve Customer Service

6 Ways Chatbots Increase Sales and Improve Customer Service

Chatbots are becoming increasingly popular for a reason, and they can help with lead generation, customer retention, and even increase sales. So how can you use them?

1. Use Chatbots for lead generation

Does your firm rely on high-quality leads to pass on to your salespeople so they can generate value from them and close the deal? If so, chatbots can simplify lead generation for you by allowing you to capture leads with ease across multiple channels.

For example, when a Facebook Messenger bot interacts with a user, the user becomes a contact from your Facebook business page. The bot can further ask the user for their email address, phone number, or other relevant information.

This allows you to add the user to various other contact lists, whether a simple marketing mailing list, a lead nurturing campaign, or forwarding them to sales as qualified leads.

The best thing about using chatbots for lead generation is that chatbots don’t have fixed working hours; they are available all the time and allow you to nurture leads better rather than generate them.

2. Use Chatbots to Increase Engagement

Chatbots are software that is programmed to perform a specific function. They can even have fun “personalities” and act as friendly salespeople to turn to when you have a question.

You can match the “personality” of your chatbot with the tone of voice of your brand to create a consistent brand message. Many companies even give their chatbots names (see Rob Bot, 10to8’s chatbot) and backstories. You never thought that “employing” a chatbot could also be a cost-effective branding measure, did you? You can even embed the chatbot into your “Meet The Team” page.

Using your chatbot for branding activities can increase customer engagement and maintain customer interest, ultimately leading to more conversions and sales.

The chatbot can even be used for pure entertainment purposes, such as waiting for a human to respond or loading data. Not precisely a chatbot, but Domino’s Pizza Tracker, Dom, does an outstanding job keeping pizza lovers informed about their meal status while entertaining them with dad jokes. Funny ideas like this can draw attention to your brand, for example, when people guess whether the pizza tracker is accurate.

If the goal is quick engagement and response, you can set up auto-responders. For example, Facebook auto-responders can send a message directly to a user who comments on a Facebook post if they have this particular setting. Use this setting for posts intended to trigger engagement by asking questions, offering discounts, etc.

Another example is click-to-messenger ads. They work like regular newsfeed ads but direct the user to a messenger window with your chatbot instead of your website. Ads like these lead to more contacts and therefore generate more leads.

These two tools can be combined and implemented in various ways, including competitions, surveys, quizzes, and more, to engage your customers and keep them loyal to your brand.

3. Use Chatbots for Frequently Asked Questions

Every business has several questions that they are frequently asked. These may be questions about shipping, warranty, pricing, or privacy. That’s why most websites have an FAQ section that visitors either go to or don’t and turn to you instead.

The problem is that answering the same questions repeatedly takes up a lot of time that could be spent on projects that generate revenue and grow your business. This is where chatbots come in.

FAQ chatbots to answer the most FAQs buy you more time to focus on other tasks.

 It also means customers get an instant answer to their questions in a mobile-friendly interface so that they can get service anywhere, anytime.

4. Use Chatbots to Provide 24/7 customer support

Chatbots are not only mobile-friendly and can serve customers on the go but also offer 24/7 customer support. When serving customers worldwide, you no longer have to worry about business hours or time zones.

Customer service chatbots work day and night, meaning your customers can interact with them whenever they have a question.

Depending on the feature set you program your bot with, your customers can ask questions, request services, buy products, and much more.

Providing 24/7 chatbot support can increase customer satisfaction and improve your overall customer service. This way, you, the human support team, can only intervene when a more complicated question arises that a chatbot cannot solve. This way, you can provide fast and high-quality support.

5. Use Chatbots to Sell Your Product

Believe it or not, consumers like to buy products from chatbots that offer a personalized shopping experience.

Programming your chatbot with a sales feature can bring you more direct sales, as potential customers can make a purchase directly from the chatbot interface. Chatbots can also shorten the sales cycle if your business relies on lead generation and a sales team to generate value from leads.

The sales process is also simplified as the customer is guided through the sales funnel. While a chatbot may not close the deal for you, it can schedule a call for the customer with your sales reps. And also, scheduling calls as early as possible can considerably accelerate the sales operation.

Plus, you can focus on delivering a high-quality customer experience because your chatbot can take on several other tasks that don’t require human input. Your support, sales, and consumer success teams can focus on onboarding, retention, or loyalty programs, leading to even more sales, fantastic customer satisfaction rates, more contract renewals, and lower churn rates.

6. Use Chatbots to Simplify Your Work Week

There’s no doubt that chatbots are great tools for simplifying a range of tasks: They can generate leads, increase engagement, take care of FAQs, provide 24/7 support and even sell your products and services.

Using chatbots for these and many other functions can save you time and money that you can use for other things.

As with any automation you implement in your business, chatbots can save you countless hours a week and take the pressure off. Implement a chatbot today and reap the rewards tomorrow!

Have you checked out our Get More Sales Chatbot?

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