Automating Customer Service with Message Bots: Tips & Takeaways

The other day, I sent a birthday wish to my brother, living on the other side of the globe, via Facebook Messenger. Right after I hit “Send” on the message, Facebook’s very own M popped up asking if I needed some help.

From Siri (iPhone’s built-in digital assistant) to mobile messaging platforms like M, chatbots (aka messaging bots) have been emerging with increased frequency since 2016. What is a chatbot exactly? It’s a computer program that interacts with humans via messaging apps, chat windows or simply by voice.

Today these much-hyped apps are something that cannot be ignored. In fact, they are becoming a big part of our digital lives. And that means they can have a big impact on your business, too.

What Chatbots Mean for Customer Service

Among all the chatbot-driven fields, customer service is a prime focus for automation. That’s because it offers the promise of quick response from intelligent digital assistants available 24/7.

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Chatbots can:

• Make the customer interaction process more efficient
• Enhance customer engagement
• Offer total customer empowerment

Along with back and forth communications, chatbots also perform basic tasks, like helping customers with purchase decisions and providing quick, automated solutions to service requests. In recent years, chatbot-enhanced customer support has been increasing and according to Gartner, by 2020, 85% of customer relationships will be handled without human interaction.

Key Advances: Why Chatbots Are Evolving So Quickly

The first chatbot-like program called ELIZA was developed in 1966. It simulated a therapist, using simple pattern matching and scripted responses. Nowadays, chatbots are equipped with more sophisticated techniques that allow them to understand both the content and context of customer requests, as well as how to respond with useful and relevant solutions.

Specifically, two key developments are marking the advancement of today’s chatbots:

• Rapid growth in messaging services. Over the past few years, messaging technology has become one of the most used services in mobile communication. Billions of people are using apps like Facebook Messenger, Kik, WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE and LiveMessage. These platforms allow users to buy goods, book flights/restaurants and make payment all in one place without downloading a ton of applications.
• Significant advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI). The quality of understanding and decision- making with machine learning has improved dramatically in the past few years. In fact, a chatbot can use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand customer requests faster than selecting multiple options.

4 Benefits of Chatbot-Enabled Customer Service

1. More speed: There’s no need to wait for the next available agent, creating a more positive customer experience. Case in point: a European Telco utilized a chatbot in a pilot program on a set of common customer queries and 82% of the interactions were solved by the bot without any human intervention.
2. More efficiency: It’s a cost-efficient way to provide 24/7 customer support. In fact, messaging bots are incredibly efficient for both users and companies. They can help brands reduce costs up to 29%, as well as make it more convenient for customers to communicate with those brands.
3. More personalization: Chatbots can feed customer data to live agents in real time, helping human workers provide more personalized solutions.
4. More proactive engagement: Chatbots can reach out to customers proactively as they look for products or support on your website. Not only can that result in a better customer experience, it can ultimately foster more brand loyalty, too.

Examples of Ideal Scenarios for Chatbots

However, keep in mind that chatbots may not be suited for all scenarios. Chatbot implementation is most useful:

• If most of the customer requests/queries are in a specific area and the solutions are well-defined. In these cases, the resolution rate can be very high with a well-designed chatbot. For instance, after a three-months learning period, the chatbot teaching assistant of a computing class at Georgia Tech University was able to answers online queries with 97% accuracy.
• If there’s a high volume of requests and customer service responses are often similar.
• If bots can assist human agents. In general, it’s best to handle stressed customers with trained human agents instead of chatbots. However, NLP-equipped bots are capable of recognizing human emotions and seamlessly transferring the interaction to a human agent if they detect anger or frustration in the customer conversation.

3 Steps: How to Get Started with Chatbots

Interested in getting started with your very own chatbot? Here’s where to start:

1. Do your research. Learn how – and where – chatbots are being used with similar companies. It’s thoroughly important to know how your customers use messaging applications for most of their communications.
2. Assess your most common customer service issues. Conduct some diagnostic assessment on your customer chat histories, call logs and email histories to understand and determine the potential issues that could be solved by chatbots.
3. Run a pilot. Choose a set of use cases to run a pilot with chatbots and some human agents. This pilot can be used to learn which use cases chatbots can handle, as well as measure the effectiveness of bots in reducing call volumes.

Any questions about chatbots? Or want to talk more about automation? Just ask. We’re here to help.