Chatbot adoption has rapidly increased over the past decade as businesses seek to improve efficiency and service.
The first generation of chatbots used simple scripts and automation to provide preprogrammed answers to common questions. That innovation added value and eased burdens on support teams.
The next evolution of chat technology and AI will be completely different. Generative AI allows chat to engage audiences, suggest products, and more. While we’re excited about generative AI, it’s smart to consider the pros and cons of AI chat so that you can choose the right path forward for your business.
What Are The Pros and Cons of Chatbots?
Chatbots have exploded in popularity since their widespread adoption started a few years ago. Business Insider states, “consumer retail spend via chatbots worldwide will reach $142 billion—up from just $2.8 billion in 2019.”
Traditional Chatbot Pros
The billions of spending from chatbot interactions are driven by two primary advantages:
Availability
Chatbots can run 24/7 on your website so that consumers can get answers whenever convenient.
Speed
Chatbots can respond quickly to questions by using decision trees and scripts. This approach means customers don’t have to wait on hold in lengthy phone queues.
Traditional Chatbot Cons
While chatbots have a lot to offer, this technology has some things that could be improved.
Complex Troubleshooting
If a customer has a novel or rare problem, it’s unlikely that a chatbot will be able to help them. In these situations, chatbots are usually programmed to refer a user to chat together with a human agent.
Empathy
Chatbots are usually unable to express meaningful empathy or engage an angry customer. For example, a customer might be upset about a delayed delivery. A shipping delay may be outside of the company’s hands. Meaningfully engaging an angry or disappointed customer will likely be beyond a chatbot’s capabilities. In other words, a chatbot is likely unable to “read between the lines” when faced with a significant customer concern.
Contributing To Revenue
The majority of chatbots are focused on customer service. Delivering excellent customer service can increase loyalty and support long-term revenue. Directly selling a new product is beyond the scope of many chatbots.
Advantages of Generative AI Chatbots
Generative AI is a subset of artificial intelligence designed to generate human-like responses.
Unlike traditional chatbots that rely on preset responses, generative AI learns from customer queries, data analysis, and natural language processing to create contextual responses that are more relevant and accurate. Integrating generative AI with chatbots can improve the quality of interactions, reduce response time, and increase customer satisfaction.
Generative AI Chatbot Pros
Personalized Responses
With the help of machine learning algorithms, chatbots can analyze customer data, such as their previous purchases, search history, and preferences, to provide tailored recommendations and support.
Brand Based Responses
The best generative AI technology is based on quality data. For example, you might train an AI system only on your company’s website. This training approach means an AI chatbot is more likely to provide on-brand responses to customer questions rather than generic ones.
Generative AI Chatbot Cons
Training and Testing
Generative AI technology is relatively new. As a result, it takes relatively more experimentation and effort to make this technology work compared to traditional chatbots.
Chatbot Misuse and Bias
Human misuse and abuse of chatbots is a known problem. For example, the Microsoft chatbot Tay was “trained” to express highly problematic comments, which upset many people. In addition, bias is a problem for chatbots. Consider Amazon’s HR machine learning technology which systematically undervalued female applicants because the system was trained on a data set of overwhelmingly male employees.
The tremendous power of generative AI means these problems will be overcome. As this technology matures, offering live chat experiences for your users is smart.
The Hybrid Approach To Chat And AI
Today, the best way to use AI is to integrate it with other chat experiences. For example, use live chat support staffed by employees when you have a major live shopping or live streaming event.
In those circumstances, unexpected problems or questions may happen, so having an employee available to respond makes sense. Chatbots can pick up the slack and support customers outside regular business hours and events.
Arena AI Concierge for Publishers, Content & Affiliate Commerce is here. Request early access.
Two Ways To Increase Customer Engagement With Live Chat & AI Chat
Now let’s focus on how using a live chat platform can boost engagement and improve the quality of your chatbot interactions.
1. Drive Higher Engagement With Live Chat
Whether you seek to grow an audience, make sales, or drive lead generation, all those goals rest on engagement. If people leave your website seconds after arriving, it won’t be easy to connect with them in any way. Live chat, especially with live events, gives customers an excellent reason to stay on your website.
There are two ways you can drive engagement and keep users on your website longer with live chat. First, allow customers to interact with their friends in a live chat room. For example, you might run a virtual event for sports fans where people can ask questions of their favorite athletes. That’s not all. You can also run occasional special invitation-only events for your customers featuring exclusive guests.
Arena Live Chat makes these live events more engaging, so customers will happily stay on your website longer. That means you will have more opportunities to use conversion cards to encourage purchases and other conversions. The opportunity to interact with like-minded people through live chat is something special that chatbots can’t offer.
Are you running a live virtual event for the first time? Use the virtual events checklist to prepare and run your event.
2. Use Live Chat Data To Improve Chat Bots
Your chatbots are only as good as the data used to power them. When you first set up a chatbot, it makes sense to start with basic questions and answers like the following:
- What is the status of my order?
- How do I request a refund?
- How do I register for events?
- What are the company’s hours of service?
- How do I contact sales?
These initial basic questions will help you to get started with your chatbots. Over time, your customers may ask other questions specific to your company or changing situations. In 2021, many companies have been negatively impacted by supply chain delays and problems. By default, a chatbot will not be able to address these questions. However, your employees may notice more customers asking about supply chain problems. In that case, take that live chat feedback and use it to improve your chatbot.
Review the following steps every month to ensure your chatbots keep improving over time.
Review live chat transcripts
Review transcripts of live chat sessions on your website to see what kinds of questions customers ask. If you have many chat sessions, use the following tip below as an alternative.
Survey live chat staff for their views
Reviewing hundreds or thousands of live chat sessions to improve your chatbots may be challenging for your organization. In that case, reach out to your employees via a survey and ask them about the most common questions they encounter.
Test new additions to your chatbot
Develop updates for your chatbot based on the new questions and answers you encounter through live chat sessions. For instance, you might add tech support questions and answers if your company offers live-stream video sessions.
Over time, you can make your chatbots more capable of addressing common questions. Your employees will have more time and energy to solve new products, influencer promotions, and other creative solutions.
The Fastest Way To Add Chat To Your Website
Integrating generative AI with chatbots and live chat platforms provides businesses an efficient and cost-effective way to improve customer experiences. With personalized recommendations, robust security features, and automated responses, businesses can build loyal customer relationships, gain more leads, and increase revenue.
Adding a Gen AI chatbot to your website can take a lot of testing. You have to think of the most common questions, test the chatbot and then make improvements.
What if you need a way to drive higher engagement this week? Installing Arena Live Chat is a good option. You can install Arena Live Chat in less than 10 minutes on most websites.
