How Chatbots and AI Impact Customer Education?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Have you ever experienced this situation? You have to contact customer service of a company you’re using, so you go to their website and click on the little pop-up window asking if you need to speak with someone about the company’s services.
For some time, you may think that there is a real person answering your questions but in reality, the first questions are answered by a chatbot (depending on the nature of the query, a chatbot can answer most questions).
Many industries benefitted from the advent of this AI-powered technology, including online business. Although chatbots can’t handle all customer queries, they can be useful for many routine queries that comprise a large share of customer service requests.
It’s safe to assume that chatbots will be increasing in popularity because of their ability to prevent minor customer service issue and ensure that customers’ requests are answered.
So, let’s get to know them better and what they can do to improve customer education.
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Table of Contents
1. Provide Website and App Users with Service-Related Information and Reduce Costs
The adoption of chatbots has been growing in the recent years, mainly because they can handle a lot of work in customer service and reduce associated costs. The reason why they are being adopted mainly by large companies is that AI automation only makes sense in case of a relatively large support volume.
For example, if a business has 8 support agents, the cost savings won’t be significant, so a chatbot wouldn’t be worth the investment. However, if a company has lots of customer service requests, chatbot is something that can really help.
In addition to websites, app users also can greatly benefit from AI. For example, Starbucks designed an AI-powered chatbot in their mobile app that allows customers to explore products, create their own customized beverages, speak to the barista to order drinks by voice, and even give tips.
Here’s some data from IBM indicating how chatbots can reduce customer service costs:
- They can improve response times by 99 percent
- They can recognize 40+ distinct use cases to identify simple queries and resolve them quicker
- Reduce customer service per-query cost from $15-$200 (human agents) to $1 (chatbots)
Clearly, the possibilities to provide customers with information about products and services are impressive. That’s why IBM has already predicted that 85 percent of all customer interactions will be handled without a human agent.
2. Providing Product Training to Customers
Many companies are using chatbots on instant messaging platforms to increase customer education in areas related to their products and services. For example, a personal care brand Sephora launched a chatbot on Kick that it used to engage with customers.
Here’s how it works: initiating a chat results in a message from the bot welcoming you (“Hi Megan, welcome to Sephora!” etc.). In a few moments, the chatbot begins providing the customer with information on what it can do. For example, it can say that you can get makeup reviews and tips.
If the customer agrees, the chatbot begins sending relevant content such as product reviews and how-to videos. For the time being, the language of the bot doesn’t seem natural, but it helped a lot of people find useful information.
In fact, Sephora’s chatbot was so successful, Kick even published a case study on how the brand used the platform to engage with teens for prom.
3. Create VR Training Simulations
“AI-powered technology can be a huge help with the live training of customers,” says Bryan James, a customer service expert from write-my-essay-for-me.com. For example, they can experience how a product or service in a virtual simulation would assist them in their daily lives instead of watching videos of how it works.
Many brands have created custom virtual reality experiences to showcase their products and services. For example, IKEA provides its potential customers with a virtual kitchen experience to help them truly visualize how it would look in their home.
Thanks to this technology, customers don’t have to guess how an IKEA’s kitchen will look in their home. Moreover, they can identify potential design solutions and ultimately create the best kitchen they can possibly can.
The aforementioned Sephora also has an impressive virtual reality solution called Virtual Artist. Basically, it’s a makeup app that allows to try on different products such as eye, lip, and cheek makeup instantly as well as looks created by beauty experts.
4. Measure Effectiveness of Customer Education Programs
Customer training and education programs including ones mentioned above can provide insightful data and information on customer preferences and needs.
Businesses can take advantage of this feature and collect information that measures the effectiveness of training programs and software products.
Conclusion
AI is certainly here to stay, so an increasing number of businesses are trying their best to keep up with the trend. Indeed, using AI-powered technology such as chatbots is beneficial for many reasons, including customer education. The features described above show that business can deliver amazing things to customers and focus on what’s best for them.
Tom Jager is a professional blogger. He works at A-writer. He has a degree in Law and English literature. Tom has written numerous articles/online journals. You can reach him at G+ or Facebook.
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