A live chat platform can boost engagement and improve the quality of your chatbot interactions. Learn the pros and cons of using Chatbots for interactions.
Live Chat
May 19, 2021
Chatbots are becoming a more popular way to drive engagement and save time on customer service. However, the effectiveness of chatbots is limited by a few factors. First, chatbots depend on high-quality data and design to anticipate user needs. Second, a chatbot may not be the best way to achieve your digital goals.
Since their widespread adoption started a few years ago, chatbots have exploded in popularity. According to; Business Insider, “consumer retail spend via chatbots worldwide will reach $142 billion—up from just $2.8 billion in 2019.” This interactive technology is booming because it fulfills consumer needs.
The advantages of chatbots include availability and speed. Since this technology requires no staff, it can run 24/7 on your website. In addition, chatbots can instantly respond to a customer message. These advantages make them powerful ways to support customers.
There are also some drawbacks to chatbots. Chatbots are usually not effective at troubleshooting complicated problems. In addition, a chatbot cannot suggest a creative solution to a customer question. Finally, customers may feel that their needs are not being met when interacting with a chatbot because the technology cannot “read between the lines” or understand emotional nuances. Fortunately, the limitations of chatbots can be mitigated by using them in cooperation with live chat.
Want to find out more about how to design and use chatbots in your business? Check out the; complete guide to chatbots.
The better approach to engaging customers is to use live chat and chatbots together. 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. Outside of regular business hours and events, chatbots are a better choice. Instead of asking your employees to work the night shift, let the chatbot pick up the slack in those off-hours.
Now let’s focus on how using a live chat platform can boost engagement and improve the quality of your chatbot interactions.
Whether you seek to grow an audience, make sales, or drive lead generation, all of 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 when combined 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.
Resource: Running a live virtual event for the first time? Use the; virtual events checklist to prepare and run your event.
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:
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 is not going to be able to address these questions. However, your employees may notice an increase in customers asking about supply chain problems. In that case, take that live chat feedback and use it to improve your chatbot.
To make sure your chatbots keep improving over time, review the following steps every month.
Review transcripts of live chat sessions on your website to see what kinds of questions customers are asking. If you have a large volume of chat sessions, use the following tip below as an alternative.
Reviewing hundreds or thousands of live chat sessions to improve your chatbots may not be practical for your organization. In that case, reach out to your employees via a survey. For example, please make a list of the employees who provide live chat support and survey them once a month about common questions and answers.
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.
Adding a 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. Not sure if Arena is suitable for your company? You can; try Arena Live Chat for free and see if it is suitable for your company.