Facebook has recently updated its plugin for websites, allowing visitors to chat with businesses over Messenger. One of the key updates within this plugin is that it enables those who do not have Facebook to use Messenger to communicate with businesses.
The Rise of Chatbots
The use of chatbots in today’s customer service industry is growing rapidly. With customers expectations growing and developing about the way a brand should communicate with them, more and more companies are beginning to use and develop chatbots to meet these expectations. Currently, more than half of internet users are satisfied with chatbots and around 60% of millennials already use them on a regular basis when purchasing goods. It has also been estimated that by 2021, 85% of customer interactions with a company will be handled without human interaction. This will be great with providing customers with reliable and fast replies that they need, with chatbots being able to know the answer to around 80% of customer queries. This in turn will be ideal for businesses in freeing up space for customer queries that cannot be answered and need the human interaction.
What is the Facebook Chatbot?
The Facebook chatbot allows customers to start a conversation with a business as a guest which allows for a quicker turnaround time instead of the customer having to submit a query through a website. This has been proven to be significantly more appealing to customers, due to the ease and functionality of the option just being there for a quick turn around answer. There is however one limitation of customers using this method, you are only able to engage with ‘guest users’ when they are active on your website. This is due to the guest user being able to end the chat or the chat expires after 24 hours. Therefore, if you try to interact with the user after they have ended the chat or it has expired, it will display an error message, which isn’t ideal if you can’t give an answer straight away or if you need to get back in touch. However, although the transcript of the message will only be available for customers 24 hours, business will be able to keep the transcripts, which is ideal for helping with what your company is looking to improve or if you’ve fulfilled the customer’s request.
Although this method doesn’t allow you to reply to customers messages as and when you can, it is instead made for direct, real-time communication. This doesn’t mean that it is any less beneficial to use. Facebook has said that businesses using the new chat plug have seen a 45% increase in customer inquiries about the products and services that a company offers, which makes it definitely worth considering!
4 Reasons to Consider a Chatbot
1.They are available to customers 24/7
On average, customers spend around 7 minutes of their time waiting to be connected to an agent to answer their query. With chatbots, this is not the case. Chatbots are able to operate all day, everyday throughout the year, without requiring a break, meaning the days of waiting for the next available operator are gone!
2. They save money
Chatbots help businesses reduce down the staff required to help handle customer queries. They are also a one time investment. This means you could merge a customer support chatbot into your company to answer simple customer queries, allowing for only the more complex questions to be given to customer support agents. This will allow for a business to reduce the amount of support agents needed as the chatbots will be able to take on some of the workload.
3. Interact with more customers at a time
Us humans are restricted to the amount of tasks we can complete at one said time, with a study finding that we can only concentrate on 3-4 things at a time and going beyond that can cause errors. However, chatbots are significantly different. They are able to simultaneously answer thousands of customer queries at a time, allowing for customers to be answered instantly.
4. You are selling to millennials
With millennials having said to be the most tech-savvy generation, they often look to the internet for quick answers to the questions they have. And with 93% of millennials owning a smartphone, it is easy to see why chatbots are very appealing to them. With a study also finding millennials dislike phone calls, chatbots seem the simple solution. Therefore, if your product lines are aimed at millennials, investing in chatbots will be a wise decision!
Would a chatbot be something you would consider for your business?
