By Jutta Stienen -
Part 1 – Debunking 8 myths about chatbots in customer service
In this blog post we unveil 8 myths about chatbots in customer service to help your business avoid common pitfalls in the successful deployment of chatbots.
In 2019, chatbot interactions generated 2.6 billion USD in retail sales. This number should increase to 22 billion USD in 2023, according to researchers at Juniper.
While chatbots do have their limitations, the common misconceptions about chatbots in customer service are what often lead to costly deployments and disappointing results.
What exactly is a chatbot?
A chatbot is a computer program that simulates the experience of chatting with another human. The term includes a broad spectrum of technology and tools with various degrees of complexity and sophistication. You can create a chatbot for practically any digital platform, from Facebook to online customer service department.
Understanding chatbot technology for customer service optimization.
This blog post is part 1 of a 3-part series.
In case you missed the other 2 parts, here they are:
Part 2 – Deep learning and machine learning chatbots: how do they work? »
Part 3 – How to implement a deep learning chatbot in customer service »
Here are 8 commonly held myths about chatbots used in customer service that inhibit the effective deployment of highly beneficial chatbot technology.
1. A chatbot is not a plug-and-play solution.
Implementing a chatbot in your customer service delivery requires much more than a software download. We wrote a blog post on the entire implementation process of an advanced customer service chatbot.
2. A Chatbot is not a one-size-fits-all.
There is a broad range of chatbots, each built on a different set of technology, offering different functionality and differing deployment procedures. The seemingly intuitive chatbots often used in customer service are based on advanced technology like deep learning.
We created a blog post explaining the differences between simple chatbots and machine learning and deep learning chatbots.
3. Choosing the right chatbot isn’t a quick task.
There are more than 50 chatbot providers on the market with varying chatbot offerings, each supporting your customer service or sales department in a different way. Before committing to a chatbot offering, it’s important to understand how a chatbot will optimise your service delivery, holistically, over years to come.
Learn more about how our cost-effective chatbot offering delivers both instant chatbot and instant human support to your customers.
4. Chatbots cannot replace human support.
While current-day customers demand immediate, 24 / 7 support, studies show, they simultaneously prefer authentic human interaction. We wrote a blog post about the data highlighting the importance of authentic human support in customer service.
Chatbots should save customer service agents time and energy, by offering simple questions, instant and accurate answers. Here is a blog post which shows that chatbots, when integrated effectively with human support, improve NPS.
5. Chatbots are not automatically integrated into a customer service department.
It is important to consider if there is a strategy in place should the chatbot fail. How will your customer transition from chatbot to human to minimise your customer’s frustration?
It takes time to define smart routing strategies between customer service agents and chatbot. This process requires thoughtful internal coordination between many different people.
6. Chatbot cannot autonomously understand human language.
Many businesses believe artificial intelligence, like chatbots, have the ability to understand humans and interact with them automatically. Actually, any form of artificial intelligence requires human programming and large data input in order to learn how to interpret human language and also, how to offer relevant responses.
7. The data required to train a Chatbot is not automatically included in the chatbot offering.
Chatbots Chatbot software generally does not come with data, and if it does, then it tends to be generic data. This means that you either need to build the data yourself or outsource this task. Either way, it entails the ongoing human tagging of conversations.
The necessity of having conversations tagged by humans comprises a hidden but significant maintenance cost that many companies are not aware of.
8. A chatbot is not an instant cost-saver.
Businesses often fail to take into account the time, effort and resources needed to teach a chatbot to interpret and generate language contextually. However, once you have an integrated system in place, chatbots can lower long-term customer service costs, offering instant, always-on support.
Read part 3 – How to implement a deep learning chatbot in customer service »
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