Chatbots continue to grow in popularity and offer a wide range of benefits for businesses. A chatbot is a great way to provide instant support to your customers without having to hire additional employees.
Together with a comprehensive knowledgebase, many businesses are beginning to utilize this AI driven technology and now is one of the best times to take advantage of these innovative services. If you are still undecided, here are some of the main pros and cons of using a chatbot for your business.
Pros of Using Chatbots for Your Business
1. Around the Clock Availability
One of the top benefits of using a chatbot is that they are always available, whether it is early in the morning or in the middle of the night. Customers can receive immediate support without having to wait on hold. Ultimately, this creates a much better consumer experience and is much more effective than hiring more employees to handle these duties.
2. Maximize Employee Efficiency
Another advantage of chatbots is that they are much more efficient in handling a large number of customers at the same time. On the other hand, employees can only handle one client at a time, which creates a much longer wait time and a more frustrating experience for each customer. However, employees can focus on their core job tasks in the workplace, while chatbots can handle many other types of interactions with customers.
3. Saves Your Company Money
Businesses are always looking at different ways to save money and improve the bottom line. Using a chatbot is a great way to reduce operational costs compared to paying additional employees to handle customer requests. Chatbots can also be a low investment, which saves your company a lot of money in the long-term compared to paying more employees.
4. Automate Routine Tasks
Answering the same questions over and over again is never a fun or productive experience for employees. However, you can automate many of these routine tasks by using a chatbot to answer common questions and concerns from clients. Automating these everyday tasks will increase productivity in the workplace and create a much better working environment for employees.
5. Showcase New Products
Chatbots are not only a great way to answer questions but can also showcase new products and services for your business. You can showcase these new products by using push notifications to send to customers based on their interests. Ultimately, this is a great way to increase consumer engagement while playing a key role in marketing new services for your business through the use of chatbots.
Cons of Using Chatbots for Your Business
1. Risk of Misunderstanding
Although chatbots have come a long way, they cannot yet replace the flow of human conversation with all its nuances such as colloquialisms, humor and subtle emotions. They may be up to scratch for use in formal settings, but they are a long way from replacing humans in more personal applications. At present, the risk of a misunderstanding occurring remains quite high.
2. Difficult to Make
It can be a major challenge to create your own chatbot. Investment in software engineers and technology experts may be large and ongoing support will most likely be needed. Luckily, there are ready-to-use chatbots on the market you can purchase for a one off cost or on a monthly subscription.
3. More Security Needed
When you are collecting your customers’ data, it must be stored securely. Using a chatbot opens up another data channel with customers and additional security measures must be taken. Third-party chatbots must be able to provide secure channels and keep their software updated. Extra privacy concerns can be costly and need to be considered before deployment.
4. Not Popular with Everyone
Chatting with what is essentially a robot is not for everyone. Many people are wary of the advance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and refuse to participate in this new technology. Some customers will always prefer the human touch and chatbots will not be for them. Additional support resources may still be required to serve all your clients.
5. Can Do More Harm Than Good
The worse thing you can do is implement a chatbot that is not suitable for your business. A badly designed and trained chatbot will end up frustrating your customers and your business will suffer. Always give the option to clients to speak to a human if your chatbot fails to satisfy their needs.
Final Thoughts
Chatbots will continue to play a key role in customer relations and offer immense benefits for businesses of all sizes. Around the clock availability, improving employee efficiency, saving your company money, automating everyday tasks, and highlighting new products are only a few examples of the many advantages of using a chatbot in the workplace.
Utilizing an AI chatbot enabled by a knowledge base is a great way to gain a competitive edge and better meet the unique needs of your clients. Be sure to examine the pros and cons to see what opportunities chatbots can bring to your business.
About the Author
Prabhjot Singh is Marketing Team Lead at Knowmax. Knowmax is an enterprise grade knowledge management platform that helps in findability of actionable information from an ever increasing ocean of information.
