Do you need a talking robot?

The robots are coming

Chatbots are already everywhere - from your Friday night takeaway order to your social media platform and Siri or Alexa. This year, 80% of companies will be using the technology, and by 2022 banks will be using these talking robots to automate up to 90% of their interactions with customers.

What are they? Basically, it’s a computer program, for example on a website or an app, that you can have a conversation with. You type in questions and get answers. Most banks and insurers provide some kind of chatbot, it’s behind those windows that pop up asking “how can we help?” These bots respond to certain key questions, phrases or words, e.g. “What are your opening hours?”

That’s clever. More advanced chatbots use artificial intelligence so they learn as they go; as more information is fed to them the conversations become increasingly natural. However, they still tend to stick to rules.

Good for business?

Chatbots can take on some of the more laborious and simple tasks, such as answer customer queries and complete orders. This tends to be where most firms are using the tech at the moment, because you can use programs to respond to frequently asked questions. Rather than have 100 people all asking the same question and someone in the team having to respond, you can use a chatbot to do all that. This saves time and means staff can focus on more valuable work and more complicated queries. Example. One insurance broker is using chatbots to help customers create new policies, alter their current ones or cancel things in a matter of seconds rather than minutes.

Always on

The other advantage is that these chatbots don’t work shifts and don’t need sleep, so if you have customers needing a response or wanting to purchase something in the middle of the night it can take care of it. More advanced chatbots can also help ensure that if the query isn’t resolved then it becomes a priority when staff get in. This makes the whole customer experience slicker. Example. A record shop in the US netted extra sales of a reported $1m thanks to its chatbot which alerted customers to recommended albums that were in stock. They can also be used to alert people to special offers.

What’s the cost?

What it will cost depends on the type of chatbot you’re after, but there is no shortage of options. One chatbot managed to resolve queries in 5.4 minutes on average, compared with 38 hours without it. The cost was $1 per query compared to $15. Type “set up a chatbot” into a search engine to see what’s involved.

Tip 1. Around 80% of your queries are likely to relate to around 20% of the products or services you offer; a chatbot can therefore take on that 80% leaving staff free for the other 20%.

Tip 2. Have a look on your competitor’s websites to get a feel for how many are using chatbots and how.

Tip 3. You need to test it extensively before making a chabot public. A poorly designed one will look like a gimmick rather than help customers out.

Tip 4. Reassure staff. Chatbots won’t replace them but make their lives easier, e.g. by not dealing with the same query five times per day, allowing them to focus on more interesting queries.