A customer support chatbot is a chatbot designed to provide customers with instant answers, support them 24/7, recommend products, receive payments, and answer FAQs. A customer service bot enables companies to reduce the workload of their customer service agents, incorporate consistency, ensure instant answers, and secure payments.
In the video below, Alex reveals 3 powerful ways to enhance your customer support with chatbots. Check it out!
In this article, we’ll explain why you should use chatbots for customer service and how you can do it to improve your customer service. We’ll also unveil how to create a customer service chatbot with SendPulse and review three successful customer service chatbots.
Why should you use chatbots for customer service?
Business owners incorporate chatbots to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their customer support service. They help provide instant answers, assist customers 24/7, and make bookings. Companies can reap even more benefits after incorporating chatbots into their businesses.
First of all, chatbots help you provide customers with instant answers on autopilot. You don’t need to involve your customer support agents in the process, and customers don’t depend on your business hours. Since the chatbot can function 24/7, your clients will receive responses and solve their problems in seconds.
Secondly, bots enable you to reduce the workload on your team by replying to routine, repetitive questions. Your agents can focus on urgent tasks while your chatbot will handle the rest. The bot will be an excellent tool for managing FAQs.
Thirdly, chatbots are cost-effective. Incorporating a chatbot is cheaper than hiring customer support agents to handle repetitive tasks and inquiries. You don’t need a team of professionals to reply to FAQs because you can delegate it to your chatbot. After paying a specific sum for a monthly or yearly subscription, you can create chatbots and improve efficiency. While bots handle FAQsб your customer support team focuses on more urgent and complex issues requiring their immediate attention.
Now that you know the reasons for implementing a customer support chatbot, it’s time to unveil the best ways to level up your customer service with bots.
12 Ways to Improve Your Customer Service with Chatbots
Incorporating customer support chatbots can help you improve efficiency and customer satisfaction. In this section, you’ll find some effective ways to use them for your business.
- 24/7 availability. With chatbots, your company will be able to ensure round-the-clock support. Since the work of chatbots is not tied to business hours, customers can turn to help at any time of the day or night. As a result, you’ll no longer have dissatisfied clients who waited for hours to get the responses of your customer support agents. Use bots to quickly manage repetitive tasks and issues related to the product or service without human intervention.
- Instant answers. Consider incorporating a chatbot to provide instant responses with effective solutions. The bot reacts to customers typing their inquiries very fast, so they’ll need to wait seconds or minutes to get their resolutions. Timely responses will help you improve customer satisfaction and customer retention.
- Multi-channel assistance. You can use chatbots for various channels like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, and your website. You have no limitations on the channels and their number. Identify the preferred channels for your target audience and add a chatbot to them to ensure consistent support. By engaging with clients on different communication channels, you improve accessibility and customer satisfaction.
- Consistency of responses. Customer support agents' answers might vary and differ, while chatbots send consistent responses based on scenarios. This prevents human error and inconsistency that might lead customers to a dead end. That’s why we advise using bots to ensure standardized customer service and accurate and reliable information.
- Handling of repetitive tasks. Chatbot is a perfect solution for managing routine tasks like FAQs, order tracking, and basic issues. In addition, agents have time to handle complex issues. Consider assigning these repetitive tasks to your chatbot to improve the efficiency of your customer support.
- Improved customer engagement. Teach your chatbots to engage with customers conversationally and interactively, making their experience with your brand seamless. Clients will be happy to communicate with chatbots trained to provide accurate and polite responses.
- Feedback collection. Use chatbots as tools for feedback collection. You can gather feedback and information about customer interaction. This information will help understand clients’ preferences, common issues, and trends.
- Post-purchase support. Interaction with customers is essential to sell products and keep up with them after the purchase. Using chatbots for post-purchase support enables you to improve overall customer experience and help solve customer issues that emerge after the sale. The bot can also manage such things as order status tracking, returns, exchanges, product usage, etc.
- Handoff to human agents. If you want your chatbot to provide comprehensive customer support, consider enabling handoff to human agents. If your bot is unable to solve the issue, customers can click “Connect agent” and receive all the necessary assistance and answers.
- Integration with CRM. Consider integrating your chatbot into your CRM. After finishing the setup, you’ll be able to ensure seamless customer data access, provide personalized customer interactions, effectively qualify leads, streamline customer support workflows, and follow up with customers after they purchase. Customer data from chatbots will get straight into your CRM, making it unnecessary to do it manually. With SendPulse, there’s no need to change platforms to integrate chatbots with CRM because the service offers all the necessary tools for marketers. You can seamlessly use its CRM and chatbot builder.
- Multilingual support. If you have customers from different countries, consider providing multilingual support with your chatbot. This way, clients can express their concerns and problems more easily. They can explain the issue in more detail so your chatbot will be able to help.
Onboarding. Since chatbots can guide customers through simple processes according to specific scenarios, consider using them for onboarding. The bot will help clients start using a product or service. It’ll help you provide your customers with clear and accurate instructions, and they will understand your product faster. In addition, it’ll reduce the workload on your team.
Now that you know how to improve customer support, let’s create a chatbot with SendPulse.
How to create a customer service chatbot with SendPulse?
Many services help you create and manage chatbots, and SendPulse is one of them. Indeed, the platform has all the necessary marketing tools to streamline customer service processes and improve efficiency.
In this section, we’ll unveil the process of designing a customer support chatbot with SendPulse in detail so you can use it as a guide. Creating a bot in the service is simple, so no coding skills or special knowledge are required. The intuitive interface will guide you through the process without the involvement of specialists.
We’ll combine the tips and best practices to build a Telegram chatbot and ensure seamless customer service for your clients. Let’s start with the first step.
Step 1. Connect your Telegram chatbot
Register in SendPulse or log in to your existing account. Go to the “Chatbots” tab and click the “Manage bots” button. Your next move implies creating and connecting your Telegram bot. Make a new bot using @BotFather and connect it to SendPulse with a token. Once you finish this process, start building your chatbot flow.
Check out the detailed instructions to easily create a Telegram chatbot in SendPulse. You can do the same for Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp.
Step 2. Add triggers
Create triggers for your customer service chatbot. Think of the words that should trigger the flow and add them to your chatbot. When users type these words, they will launch the flow, starting with a welcome message.
Step 3. Add a welcome message
Imagine you are going to create a customer support chatbot for your business. You need to start creating your flow with a welcome message — this is where you’ll include your FAQ buttons and quick replies.
Below, you can see an example of a welcome message for your business with quick buttons like “Product Catalog,” “Pricing,” “Blog,” “Knowledge Base,” “Other,” etc.
We have two parts of our customer service bot welcome message. They have some quick replies leading to some basic and specific issues. You need to add and connect the “Flow” element to ensure that once users click one of the buttons, the flow will continue correctly.
Step 4. Add various elements to your flow
Drag and drop all the necessary elements for your flow from the left panel to your editor’s field. It will help you diversify your chatbot and provide users with all the information and steps.
Below, you can see an example with the “Action” element that allows users to connect with your human support agents if users need some specific help chatbots can’t provide.
Consider expanding your chatbot flow with images, GIFs, audio recordings, and other files. It’ll help make your bot more engaging. Check out these instructions for a more detailed guide to building a chatbot.
Hope that SendPulse and this guide will help you create an outstanding chatbot that helps address customers’ concerns fast. Let’s check out some great chatbot examples to grab some inspiration for future help desk achievements.
3 Customer Service Chatbots
Today, lots of companies implement customer service chatbots for multiple purposes. We’ll provide you with three excellent examples of chatbots that work and bring positive results for businesses and seamless experiences for customers. Let’s check them out.
AirAsia — Flight Reschedule Refund
Malaysian multinational low-cost airline AirAsia has a great chatbot for customer support. The bot manages multiple tasks and helps solve problems regarding flight changes, double payments, name amendments, flight refunds, flight status, flight delays, and others. Bo bot ensures that customers have all the necessary information provided. The chatbot helps instantly manage refunds, reschedules, and other changes to their AirAsia flights. It also sends all the necessary links for customers to access.
Paula’s Choice — Order Status
A well-known skincare brand incorporates a chatbot to help customers with order status, return policy, and product recommendations. The bot is straightforward to use. A user needs to choose one of the fast buttons to receive information about specific matters. If you want to check your order status, the bot will ask you for your order number and email to track the progress of your order, making the conversation personalized. Sharing information with customers only takes minutes.
H&M — Survey
H&M’s chatbot helps gather customer feedback. After interacting with its chatbot, users can provide information about their experience with a brand. This way, the company strives to improve various areas of its business, including customer support.
Congrats, now you know what a customer support chatbot is and why it’s important. We hope that our best practices and SendPulse will help you create a helpful bot for your business and customers. Register in SendPulse now to develop your perfect customer support chatbot in minutes.
References:
- This article unveils how to improve customer engagement with a customer support chatbot.
- In this article, you’ll find ways to improve customer service with a chatbot.
Last Updated: 08.02.2024
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