In the new era of AI Chatbots play a prominent role in business operation, lead generation, sales increase, and fulfilling the customer’s queries to a large extent since the last decade, the Chatbot has been adopted by major industries across the world.
After noticing the business benefits and the flourishing market size created by Chatbot, several businesses are looking forward to launching their version of it on both web and application platforms.
In this blog, we will be going to observe and present the following:
- Chatbot and Its market
- The benefits of Chatbot
- How many types of chatbots are present?
- Its impact on business and market, and society
- MVP features of Chatbot
Before digging deeper into the feature-cost-benefits analysis, have some look into what exactly chatbot is? And its market flourished.
Chatbot and its Market
Within the past decade, chatbots have witnessed an unmatched demand from several industries around the globe, including e-commerce, logistics, retails, banking, insurance, education, food, healthcare, hospitality, and many more. Initially, it was limited to the e-commerce business, but since the advent of mobile applications, the whole scenario shifted 360 degrees. According to data, by the end of 2022, more than 80% of industries will adopt Chatbot as an integral part of the business.
The chat summary of the customer and potential customer is also used as an excellent piece of feedback, and this data is used by a data scientist to mine back a piece of advantageous information about the customer’s buying pattern. And this information helps businesses to build their customer strategies and increase sales.
By the time 2024, the market size of Chatbots technology would have swelled to $1.36 Billion, a number that is driven by the inception of disruptive technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the chatbot mechanism.
After analyzing the market share of chatbots, one thing is clear – Chatbots are going to be an eminent segment of businesses across industries. And why not? After all, the business benefits that they have to offer are unique and unmatched.
Talking of the business benefits of Chatbots, let us look at what they are before we move on to the chatbot development cost.
How Chatbot benefits businesses?
In the path of making your business a 24×7 business, Chatbots and artificial intelligence play a prominent role. Although it might look like that the cost of chatbot technology is expensive, but the reality is just the opposite. Chatbot helps the business to generate a high level of customers and sales, and that takes your cost per customer to the lower side, all in all, due to the high number of customers eventually the cost gets decreased and makes your operations cost-efficient.
- Lowered operational cost
Chatbots help the company to reduce the operating cost by answering the visitors what they are looking for and offering them some product or service. These activities lessen the cost of calling and executives hired by the company to perform it. In addition, hired executives have the job for nine hours only, but the chatbot work for you 24×7 without any break and with the vast knowledge in the database of the Chatbot it would be better to handle the visitor’s query at the first level of interaction and when the human touch is required it will transfer the call to customer care executive. This whole new process is able to lower the operation cost of business to a large extent.
2. Bottom down the labor cost.
A recent report by McKinsey estimated that around 29% of customer service positions in the U.S. could get automated via an adequately designed chatbot in the future. The reality of chatbots that can interact with a large number of people at the same time reflects at a time where the customer engagement industry would be commanded by chatbots.
Additionally, businesses who have employed chatbots in their customer service program know-how chatbot execution costs much lower than the salary of an employee while doing twice their work without any rest.
3. 24*7 availability with Cost-effective
Customers nowadays expect businesses to be available 24×7 to answer their queries. And the data also shows that the businesses which are still not able to function on a 24×7 mode are not just booking low customers and profit, but also lacking behind their competitors.
All-time availability shows the great extent of accountability and loyalty of businesses to their customers.
When you employ a chatbot that is designed and well equipped to answer the queries of the customer even in the odd hours, that helps to trap the unexplored leads that you are missing to grab, this also makes your customer more repetitive and dependent on your business by which you can change your brand image by 180 degrees.
4. Allocate your resources in a better way
When the customer representative executive doesn’t have a list of customers to see and realize that even in their absence, their customers will be operated and handled in a better way with the help of Chatbot, they can concentrate on devising strategies on keeping the users hooked and finding ways to help Chatbot close more leads and customers.
This way, chatbots prevent sales representatives from falling into the cycle of mundane work and monotonous job cycles, allowing them to keep learning and helps to motivate them also.
5. Swell revenue and profits
There are many businesses that have been using Chatbots for customer queries, lead generation, and more significant sales. Through chatbots, you can keep notifying your customers and viewers of the sale and discount time and surge the traffic and increase the sales number.
Ahead of that, integrated with social media platforms and messenger chatbots help to generate robust brand awareness and work as a conversion magnet for business.
6. Escalate customer engagement
It is essential to keep your clients involved with your brand. As indicated by companies, organizations involve their customers through marketing on social media and are able to surge user spending by 25% to 35%. While social media is performing its work, chatbots can contribute by making customer engagement interactive and accessible.
7. Monitoring consumer data & gaining insights
As we already know that chatbots are excellent tools and devices to chat and interact with customers. With the input and data businesses gather through basic inquiries, businesses can improve their product/services and even upgrade their website and administration/operational activities according to customer’s needs. For instance, if you have an interactive landing page but are not able to convert organic traffic sales, in this case, you can collect information from visitors who are visiting the page and analyze why they are leaving the page without buying or taking action and so forth.
Let’s discuss the different types of chatbots we have and chatbots that are most commonly employed by businesses in distinct industries.
Type of chatbots
When we talk about the different kinds of chatbots, we have to focus on both the Subset and the Superset of Chatbot development type, having elements that go into interactive chatbot development.
The supersets chatbot
There are two categories of chatbots that your business can invest in:
- Bots Implemented in Own App –
These chatbots work inside a mobile app that performs a determining function like booking a service or ticket etc for the sake of automating the interaction happening between the app and the user. - Bots that operate Within Messenger –
These kinds of chatbots stay in messengers that support bot interaction. These work foremost for businesses that have more than one app for their business or wish to keep their business in the center of social media.
The Subsets chatbot
- FAQ chatbot – A basic FAQ or QnA chatbot provides the user with automated responses to frequently asked questions by viewers in a question-and-answer conversational style.
- Conversational Chatbot – The chatbot type uses language understanding services to have easy-flowing conversations with the end-users. They usually collect the basic information about the users and keep them engaged till a human customer care executive comes back online.
- Transactional Chatbot – These are the chatbots that help the app users research and inquire into buying something off the app without ever talking to a human customer care representative.
- Predictive Chatbot – These chatbots are the most improved and advanced ones in the market at this time supported by A.I. Chatbots are developed and customized on a case-by-case scenario. They are incorporated by heavy machine learning, and businesses utilize predictive chatbots to analyze how users might react and what could be their next step.
MVP Chatbot Features
Conversation
The conversation is one of the primary needs and features of a chatbot, and it should be based on a fundamental principle. As per the basic principle, the request for messages shall be logical and extended for each customer. For instance, when a customer asks about the address of your office, the Chatbot should tell the user just the address. If it is also informing about the contact details, it implies that the entire rationale is broken.
If the task is somewhat hard for you, it’s wiser to hire a freelancer to produce the messages.
Payment system
This feature is performed by e-commerce chatbots. If your bot’s primary aim is to surge sales and generate new distribution channels, in this case, you should take care of at least one payment method. This is the time for you to choose between a custom payment solution or a third-party system.
A sound and efficiently designed payment system eases the flow of payment security and allows for analysis of customer and payment behavior. You don’t need to worry over expenses that are generally charged by third-party systems. Regardless of the advantages, the cost of a custom payment framework is extremely high. That’s why most of the small organizations execute services such as PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, and others.
Geolocation technology
One of the exciting features of chatbots is Online mapping. It helps Chatbot to attract traffic and generate new customers by identifying the area of the business on the map. For example, users can request the bot to help them navigate the street, shop, or restaurant they’ve never been to. By using Google Maps Platform and integrating it with your chatbot, you can access this feature with zero effort. This feature aids your business by pulling out customers to visit your place.
To illustrate the best example of it, take an example of a grocery shop chatbot. In this, the user just needs to place an order with the Chatbot, make a payment through an integrated payment gateway, share location with the grocery delivery personnel and get the order at your doorstep.
Personal touch
The personal touch is more about the character and personality than the technologies. Introducing users by their name rather than pronouns increases their feelings and emotions. The individual mentality and personalization for every customer ensures increased brand loyalty and positive input about your Chatbot.
To make a unique and great chatbot, you should utilize the knowledge of a professional brand expert. In case you are on a tight budget, you can always bring into play your creativity and imagination.
Synchronization of system
With the help of account synchronization, you can increase user engagement and activity on Chatbot. In the promo system, the users have some awards or bonuses from past purchases, which users can spend during further investment. Nevertheless, if the Chatbot is not synchronized with the business website, it doesn’t display the rewards. Thus, you require to ensure that your platforms have a typical database that continually shares data.
A synchronized record allows and is helpful for you to carry out efficient digital marketing campaigns. Whenever there’s a sale or discount on a product/service from the customer’s wish list, the Chatbot sends a notification about it. This methodology is more fruitful than promotional emails and messages.