What is a Chatbot?

Before understanding the benefits that adopting this type of technology can bring to your business, it is key to understand what a chatbot is. It is a technology that allows the user to have a conversation through a software that is integrated to a certain messaging system such as: Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc. The system is programmed to interact with the customer or potential leads to resolve doubts, but without a physical person answering. Among other things, it allows you to quickly answer their questions, provide after-sales service, give useful information about the place of service and means of payment, among other things, so that you can help a customer in their next purchase and always offer immediate attention.

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The benefits of having a BOT in your business

During the pandemic of 2021, we had to adapt to a world with less contact, which is why new forms of customer service emerged, since it was no longer possible in person. It is no secret that conversational chatbots have revolutionized customer service, to the point that they are already part of our daily lives. In fact, according to several studies, 38% of organizations plan to implement a chatbot in the next few years. This means a 40% increase in the adoption of chatbots for customer service and other functions in the coming years.

Chatbots are the new generation of assistants, it is one more way to humanize your brand or service. That's why it's time to think about incorporating it into your company, it will undoubtedly have a positive impact on it, we tell you everything you need to know about Conversational Artificial Intelligence below.

Chatbots are programmed to interpret the context of the conversation and answer our questions thanks to certain Artificial Intelligence tools such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), which allows them to understand us, or Machine Learning with which they are able to automatically learn each interaction. However, in the market the most common are chatbots previously programmed to answer certain questions. So, there are two major differences so you can find two types of chatbot:

Simple Chatbot: This artificial intelligence software works on the basis of a series of commands and keywords, previously prepared. If the user asks a question without that keyword, the chatbot will respond by inviting the user to rephrase the question.

Intelligent Chatbot: They are a higher level and complexity category, generally used for more advanced technologies such as Siri or Alexa, does not work based on questions or keywords. Live chat responds with suggestions or ideas over written text. It is a step further by offering a wide variety of dialogue streams and providing a more natural and "human" experience.

This means that chatbots can learn to answer, ask and converse, among other things, through artificial intelligence. However, when choosing a chatbot for your business, this type of advanced technology is not necessary, because believe it or not, customers or users will always ask the same questions. This means that, although they sometimes seem like magical beings capable of finding the answer to all our questions, chatbots are science and as such, they respond to a technological programming formed by questions and answers that have been previously implemented.

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Chatbots for B2C companies

Today we can witness the importance that chatbots have acquired in our daily lives. There is no doubt that every B2C (Business to Consumer) business must pay special attention to a fundamental element: its customers. Many companies are already aware of the numerous advantages of improving their customers' experience through conversational Artificial Intelligence. This is why it is necessary to make use of all the resources at our disposal to improve their shopping experience, consultation, etc.

This is where intelligent chatbots appear as the definitive solution for this type of business model, offering optimal customer service and automating, with agility, all types of frequently asked questions, transactional queries, procedures and processes.

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Why does your company need AI-enabled Chatbots?

Customer expectations are currently higher than ever, because competition is even greater in any field. Having a virtual presence, optimizing and modernizing our tools are some of the keys to success. Today, everyone has at their fingertips information of all kinds with which they can compare or search for services and products of any kind.

In this scenario, customer experience is vital to make the difference with other B2C businesses. For this reason, the role of chatbots is key, as they are a great tool to offer a good service. Availability plays an essential role and can make the difference between a satisfied customer and an unclosed purchase. This is a great advantage of chatbots! They can be online 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with no waiting times to make an inquiry, order or complaint.

Chatbots are attentive at all times, they will never leave a customer unanswered or a question unanswered. Thanks to this, you can capture visitors and convert them into customers, in a world where immediacy is more important than anything else, chatbots are the future.

On the other hand, the shopping experience is not just about minimizing response times. Today, we want to receive a close and, above all, personalized treatment. Thanks to the application of AI models in virtual assistants and chatbots, conversations are becoming increasingly fluid, natural and customizable.

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What are the advantages of having chatbots in my business?

Without a doubt, having bots to manage your business is an advantage of our times that you have to use. Long waiting and management times do not go hand in hand with the speed of the world we live in. This is why a delay in attention can reduce your customers or potential customers by up to 10%. Chatbots help you to level up your business and boost it incredibly. We tell you all the advantages you will have when using them:

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1. You will be able to answer frequently asked questions immediately.

The chatbot is the first link in the digital sales process, an increasingly complex process that requires greater commitment on the part of the company to meet consumer expectations, which tend to be higher and higher, and therefore require greater responsiveness on the part of companies.

With a chatbot it is possible to automate most of the frequently asked questions and answer customer queries about our entire product or service immediately, thus achieving a better user-brand interaction.

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2. 24/7 customer service

Bots improve the customer experience by answering common questions quickly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This guarantees something very important for all types of companies, satisfied customers with immediate answers and solutions. It also helps human agents to be focused on more relevant tasks, without being overloaded with too many queries during non-working hours. Even better, machine learning-enabled bots continuously learn from customer interactions and begin to address more challenging queries as time goes on.

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3. You will obtain the client's data in a friendly way.

Chatbots can help you get to know your customers even better, they allow you to find out what are their frequently asked questions and their most common needs, as well as the products or services they are interested in. The chatbot allows you to obtain this data in an efficient, friendly and natural way. This way, you can make strategic decisions to improve the experience and offer a more personalized service with each interaction.

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‍4. Ability to handle countless customer inquiries.

A human call center agent can only serve one customer at a time, and multiple agents are needed to handle all user queries in the case of multiple users. This way, you can minimize human errors and make every interaction fruitful. Automated chatbots are the opposite: they can handle multiple conversations simultaneously, with minimal waiting time and no errors.

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5. Improve your company's image

Nowadays it is of great importance to differentiate from competitors, offering the customer added value in the product, service, attention or any other aspect of the company. A good starting point can be to improve customer service to offer a more satisfactory user experience. For this, using a chatbot is key, since they are available 24 hours a day to calm the customer's anxiety and solve problems in real time.

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Successful cases of chatbots implementation in Latin American companies.

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Gas Abastible

Abastible is a leading supplier of natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas in Chile. The company had plans to expand its services to Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, which is why it was looking for a way to get closer to its current and future customers. The solution found was to offer a customer service through the world's most popular messaging app, WhatsApp.

Abastible implemented a chatbot that is able to offer customer service, discounts and even sell cylinder gas to its customers, all through interactive buttons. The results have exceeded the company's expectations:

• They generated 42 million messages in the first 4 months of the campaign.
• More than 40 thousand orders were requested by WhatsApp.
• They gained 50,000 new customers in the first year.

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Dignified Health

Salud Digna is an organization focused on providing prevention and timely diagnostic services in Mexico. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the implementation of restrictions, Salud Digna had to cope with a record number of laboratory test requests, but with fewer open sites and limited staff.

In order to fulfill its commitment to deliver world-class health services to the most vulnerable communities in Mexico, the organization needed a smart and cost-effective solution to provide millions of patients with fast and secure access to critical information about COVID tests. That's when the company decided to open a channel on WhatsApp with the help of a company specializing in conversational AI, to enter this world.

Since 2020 Salud Digna offers several services through the app: customer service, scheduling consultations, location of clinics closest to the patient, etc.

Since they adopted their conversational AI care by WhatsApp:

• Salud Digna achieved more than 9.75 million interactions with patients through this medium.
• They closed 2020 with 84% of patients served by the virtual assistant.
• They spend 50% less time on calls.
• 89% of interactions no longer require a live agent.
• 3.7 million WhatsApp queries made to date.
• 5.1 million appointment confirmations for COVID-19 tests sent.

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Ford Motor Argentina

As part of its digital transformation, Ford Motor Argentina was looking for ways to make the online customer journey more attractive. One of the challenges was to synchronize the numerous branches and customer service centers to improve the user experience.

After surveying customers about their after-sales preferences, the company decided to use a unique, hybrid system. With access to internal systems and databases, automated dialogues and location-based handover protocols, "FORDi" chat traces the entire costumer journey on WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger and Instagram.

In this way, if there is a successful communication through the chat, the customer is automatically entrusted to an appropriate representative in the geographical proximity. In one year, FORDi has provided Ford Argentina's customer service team with an increase in productivity and numerous more powerful contacts:

• 3.5 times more requests on messaging apps.
• 90% of the conversations were resolved with the chatbot.

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Cinépolis Cinema

Mexican cinema chain Cinépolis demonstrates how communication through Messenger can achieve significantly higher conversion rates. With more than 600 theaters, it is the largest cinema chain in Latam. The goal was to offer its more than 16 million Facebook followers a better user experience through Messenger connected to Meta.

Services such as movie times and information or the final booking process were implemented in Facebook Messenger with a chatbot. It can be used by the user in a more natural chat thanks to Natural Language Processing, a successful example of conversational messaging in combination with automation with AI chatbots.

Cinépolis increased customer satisfaction and boosted sales with Facebook Messenger. In addition to the success of conversational commerce and the resulting increase in sales, as well as significantly improved conversion rates, the data collected can now also be used to make more accurate predictions about visitor volume. This also allows for better planning of human resources, and therefore more effective management.

In figures, the company's earnings are as follows:

• Conversion rate 8 times higher through Facebook Messenger compared to email.
• 90% of the conversations were resolved automatically.
• 95% lower cost per customer purchased for Cinépolis subscriptions, compared to other social media.

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Boost your B2C business with Waddi

At Waddi we make sure to transform and improve your business communication processes through conversational chatbots. Contact us at www.waddi.io to learn more about how we can help you boost your business.

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