Today’s consumers are a demanding bunch. They want answers to their questions now, even if now is 3 AM. Others are very likely to respond to carefully initiated advertisements. If you’d like your company to keep up with what customers want, consider using chatbots as part of your overall business strategy. Combined with a well-designed website and targeted marketing strategies, chatbots can boost your exposure and increase your profits.

Most people today are comfortable interacting with chatbots at some level. Alexa and Siri are widely used and demonstrate some of the chatbots’ capabilities, although these examples respond to one individual. Chatbots used by businesses can handle much more.

What Is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a computer program that can communicate with humans. Some are rule-based, others use AI technology, and some use a hybrid approach. The term “chatbot” is somewhat of an umbrella term that includes all these and more types of technologies.

ELIZA was the first chatbot, designed in 1966 to see if computers could successfully mimic human conversation. Since then, the capabilities of chatbots have expanded exponentially:

  • Humans can use typed or voice to converse with chatbots.
  • Conversational chatbots use natural language understanding and machine learning to increase their effectiveness.
  • Chatbots can collect invaluable customer data and assist in advertising and sales.
  • Companies and consumers save time using intelligent chatbots.

The technology powering chatbots is constantly evolving. What was cutting-edge five years ago is old news today.

What Advantages Can Chatbots Provide to Your Business?

The chatbot you choose to utilize for your business can produce different results. Identify your goals and find out what chatbot technology can do to help you reach those goals.

Chatbots can help your customers since they:

  • Provide 24/7 communication options. If consumers have to wait long for an answer to their questions, they’re increasingly more likely to turn to another company rather than wait for a response from you.
  • Route potential customers to the correct information or support person, helping to avoid frustration.
  • Engage with consumers to initiate sales and increase revenue.
  • Interact with and assist consumers on your website, through social media, and more.
  • Provide information to consumers and direct them to a live customer service agent if needed.

They can also help your business in other ways because they:

  • Handle repetitive and mundane communications to allow your human employees to focus on more complicated issues.
  • Deal with more than one inquiry simultaneously and effectively, which is a daunting task for humans to accomplish without frustration, becoming overwhelmed, and stress.
  • Collect and track data to help you develop more effective and targeted marketing campaigns and personalized interactions.
  • Streamline workflows.
  • Save money because you won’t need as many employees.

Chatbots have many advantages, but you shouldn’t eliminate human interactions. Instead, you should choose carefully where to implement them to enhance the communications experience for your employees and customers alike.

What’s in the Future for Chatbots?

Research predicts that the chatbot global market will grow by 25.7% annually until 2030, when it will reach $3.99 billion. Chatbot developers are continuing to improve their functionality in several areas, including:

  • Adding voice commands
  • Improving human-like conversational abilities
  • Handling payments and other business transactions
  • Expanding data-collection areas, capabilities, analytics, insights
  • Social media integrations
  • Entering more types of businesses and applications
  • Automating employee tasks to improve their satisfaction and streamline business processes

How Can Sprout Media Lab Help?

Whether you’re looking for a new, effective website, social media marketing, lead generation, or more, Sprout Media Lab has the experience and platforms to help your business grow. Sprout Media Lab focuses on providing positive results for its clients through a comprehensive list of services.

For more information about how we can help you, call us at (800) 617-6975. Feel free to browse through our online portfolio and submit a free consultation request online!