Chatbot software is a computer program or application that simulates human conversation with the user to provide solutions, automate responses, or collect information. Equipped with Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities and advanced AI, chatbots today have become more conversational than in the past, when they had limited potential.
What has changed for businesses in using chatbots? Exploring this can answer the question "Why choose chatbot software?"
Chatbots appealed to businesses because they were cost-efficient, scalable, and available 24/7. They also helped companies alleviate the pressure on their customer-facing teams by being used as the first line of communication.
With OpenAI's Generative AI and Conversational AI chatbots have become intelligent, which has opened their potential for a plethora of use cases and made them a must-have for businesses.
Reasons to choose chatbot software for your business
We'll start with chatbot software's advantages before the incorporation of extensive AI capabilities and move on to the advanced functionalities it offers now.
Available 24/7
One of the most significant advantages of chatbots is that, unlike their human counterparts, they'll be available 24/7. This makes them a perfect addition to the customer-facing teams for any industry, regardless of size.
Chatbots become a superpower companion for startups and small businesses that are already operating on a resource crunch and can't afford to have similar human strength. Since providing a great customer experience would be their priority for midsize businesses and enterprises, they employ chatbots to be there along all the customer touchpoints to provide an easy engagement option at any time of day or night.
Zero waiting time
Being available 24/7 makes it easy for businesses to attend to their customers instantly with zero waiting time. As we're moving towards seeking instant resolutions for even complex tasks/queries, customers aren't willing to compromise on waiting time. With chatbots, businesses will be able to provide such an instant experience.
Scalability and cost-efficiency
As businesses grow, chatbots can be scaled to handle the increasing volume of queries without hurting too much of the company's finances. Chatbots will continue to operate the same way as before without adding operational costs, which makes them a faithful companion for businesses.
Personalized engagement
Before chatbots, something businesses that cater to mass audiences couldn't crack was personalization, as the volume of customers was too much for customer-facing teams. With chatbots, businesses get the advantage of attending to every one of their customers individually. They can cater to their personalized needs at once and at scale.
The generative, conversational, and analytical aspects of AI make chatbots even more powerful at understanding customers' emotions, conversing with them empathically, and providing them with solutions.
One aspect of personalization that has evolved is speaking the customer's language. Businesses now catering to global audiences aren't limiting their engagement to one language. Their customers can interact with them in their own language via multilingual chatbots, resulting in a more comfortable experience.
Better engagement experience
This brings us to the next reason businesses choose chatbot software. When combined, these aspects of chatbots help businesses improve their customer touchpoints and provide a better engagement experience.
This leads to customers getting timely assistance whenever needed, improving their overall experience with the business, and leaving them satisfied and happy. This increases the likelihood of them being repeat customers and also encourages them to share that experience with the public.
Integration with your tech stack
To provide relevant assistance to visitors, chatbots are linked to website resources and act as knowledge base chatbots, FAQ chatbots, and more. Chatbots can refer to the linked documents and resolve queries.
With AI capabilities, since chatbots can do more, integrating them with your tech stack can give them access to all the related information about visitors to provide personalized assistance. It gives chatbots the ability to attend to and resolve most of the incoming chats and can increase the deflection rate, freeing up the agents for more critical tasks.
Connection with your IM channels and mobile apps
Similar to the advances in conversational technology, there is a momentum shift in business platforms. Websites, though largely still the biggest platform, aren't the only way to connect with customers. We're seeing businesses that are solely present on social media platforms or instant messaging channels. We also see many emerging businesses that are only on mobile apps.
In such cases, would chatbots become irrelevant? No. Chatbots can be integrated with your IM channels and even on your mobile apps to help you extend the same benefits one would get from websites.
Advanced self-service options with AI
All the above-mentioned reasons and the incorporation of AI features make chatbots the best option for providing advanced self-servicing options to your visitors. Empowering them to be self-reliant increases their satisfaction with your service.
Analytics and reports for actionable insights
In addition, businesses will see how chatbots are performing via analytics and reports modules. This will give them an idea of what's working, what's not working, and what changes they should make to assist their visitors better. If they see chatbots struggling in a particular aspect, they could refine and deploy them for better conversations and resolutions.
An industry and department-agnostic tool, chatbot software can be used by businesses of any type and size. If you'd like to know more about using chatbots, read our detailed article: Top chatbot use cases for 16 departments and industries.
Chatbot software is great. But which one should you get?
Why Zoho SalesIQ is the best chatbot software for your business
Zoho SalesIQ is a chatbot builder with advanced tracking, conversation, and automation modules. We think it's the best chatbot software for your businesses, and here's why:
Resolution without human assistance
With Answer Bot, our AI chatbot powered by Zoho's NLP, businesses will be able to attend to all incoming queries, which helped LambdaTest increase their teams' efficiency by 40%. Answer Bot can help your customer-facing teams focus on critical tasks that enhance the overall engagement experience of your visitors.
By integrating SalesIQ with OpenAI's ChatGPT, Answer Bot becomes even more powerful. It uses the information from the attached resources and knowledge bases to provide conversational and apt responses to visitors.
Zero-code bot builder
Along with Answer Bot, if your business use cases require a flow bot to guide visitors, a drag-and-drop no-code chatbot builder can do the job.
The ChatGPT card is available in the codeless bot builder, which helps visitors access ChatGPT right inside the chat widget if their query extends beyond what you have in your resources.
To learn more about our zero-code bot builder, read our blog on how to build a chatbot for your website in 5 steps.
Want custom bots? Build custom bots
If your business requires more custom functions to align with your goals, you can build coded bots that suit your needs.
ChatGPT assistant
Build your own assistants with ChatGPT and combine them with SalesIQ to improve visitor engagement. Your customer-facing teams can use ChatGPT for language and review assistance.
Speak your visitors' languages
SalesIQ's chatbot now supports 35+ languages, providing a personalized engagement experience to your global audience. Based on the visitor's IP or the language they use to initiate the conversation, the chatbot will automatically switch to that language and continue the conversation.
Connect your IM channels and mobile apps
SalesIQ's chatbots can be deployed to popular instant messaging channels worldwide. We offer integration with WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and Line. Learn more about social media chatbots.
Mobilisten, SalesIQ's mobile SDK (Software Development Kit), lets you deploy chatbot features. Your mobile apps will also get a website and IM.
Interested in seeing how the best chatbot software works? Sign up for a free 15-day trial and test it out yourself.
Related resources
Here are some blogs to help you understand chatbots and what they can do for your business.
SalesIQ-Haptik integration
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Survive the holiday ecommerce support surge with chatbots
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FAQs on chatbot software
How will a chatbot improve my customer service response times?
As chatbots are computer programs, they don't get tired or take a break and can be deployed 24/7. Unlike human agents who cannot handle more than 3-4 chats simultaneously, chatbots can handle all incoming inquiries instantly and simultaneously. Adding chatbots as the first line of customer communication helps businesses improve customer service response times. They can attend to queries instantly, making the first response time almost 0 seconds. As it can answer and sometimes resolve queries, it even decreases the total time taken for resolution.
Can chatbots handle multiple customer queries at once?
Yes, thanks to the supporting architecture, chatbots can handle multiple customer queries at once. The architecture is called concurrency, which is the ability to handle multiple tasks at the same time, and Parallel processing, which is the ability to process multiple tasks simultaneously. Also, chatbots can run multiple threads in a single process to handle requests from various customers.
Can chatbots support multiple languages for the global audience?
Chatbots can support multiple languages. For instance, Zoho SalesIQ's chatbots support more than 35 languages. It enables businesses, especially those that cater to a global audience, to create a personalized experience for their visitors as the bot can speak to them in their language of choice, making it easy for them to understand and reply. It enhances their overall experience with your business.
Can the chatbot operate 24/7 and provide support outside business hours?
If you're a business operating worldwide or catering to global customers, your visitors expect you to be there all the time, even outside your operating hours. When configured, chatbots will work on behalf of your customer-facing teams 24/7.
You can learn more about how a chatbot works here.
Will this reduce the workload of my live agents and free them up for more complex tasks?
Yes, chatbots will definitely reduce the workload of live agents. As chatbots can be integrated with your knowledge base resources, FAQ articles, and website information, anyone interacting with the bot will get the answers without interrupting the live agents. For example, SalesIQ's support team has deployed SalesIQ's Answer Bot to handle customer queries. Almost 40% of the incoming queries are attended to and resolved by the bot, which frees the agents to focus more on complex tasks. Only when the bot can't provide a resolution will it be taken to the live agents.
Do chatbots offer proactive engagement (i.e., initiating conversations based on user behavior)?
Initiating conversations automatically based on user behavior is called triggers, and with chatbot triggers, businesses can provide proactive chat engagement. They can be set up based on multiple custom criteria. For example, chatbots can be configured to engage proactively with those accessing your website from a specific country, going through the website for more than 10 minutes, or spending their time on your main web pages. Using triggers nudges the passive visitors to engage with your business and increases their chance of getting converted to paying customers.
Does it use AI and machine learning to improve responses over time?
There are many types of chatbots based on how they're built and the purpose they serve. The primary categories are:
- Traditional rule-based chatbots
- FAQ chatbots
- Hybrid chatbots that combine the functionality of rule-based and FAQ bots
AI and ML can be incorporated with FAQ chatbots or hybrid chatbots to improve their conversational skills and enhance their generative capabilities. So, yes, AI and machine learning help chatbots refine their interactions with visitors, pull information from resources, present it, and improve their responses over time.
Can chatbots escalate conversations to live agents when needed?
As intelligent as they are, chatbots do have limitations when answering customer queries. If the information is available in the resources, it'll be able to read through them and share the answers. In cases where customers are facing technical issues that would need the assistance of live agents, chatbots can be configured either automatically or manually to escalate the conversation to any available live agent to look into it.
Can chatbots be deployed across multiple channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and my website?
Businesses have moved away from the website-only model, as channels-only models are popping up all around us and doing well. Similar to adding a chatbot to a website, it can be deployed across channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and others based on your needs. Zoho SalesIQ, the best chatbot solution, can be integrated with all the popular channels worldwide, such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and Line. By integrating chatbots with channels, businesses can instantly respond to channel queries.