What’s the secret to retaining customers, increasing profits, and reducing employee turnover? Three words: Great customer service. If you want to find success in business, you must level up your customer service game. The fastest and most affordable way to upgrade your customer service is through chatbot technology.
Simply put, chatbots are the future of online customer service and are the easiest way to connect with your customers. Plus, chatbots are attainable for companies of all sizes, even if you’re running a small business.
In this guide, we’ll explore the benefits of chatbots and how to use them on your WordPress website to assist with your customer service.
What is a Chatbot?
A chatbot is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) software that simulates real human conversations. It uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to understand human language and respond intelligently and accurately.
Chatbots can be used on various platforms, including websites and social media apps. While chatbots have been around since the 1960s, they rose to prominence in 2016 after social media giant Facebook allowed developers to use them on the Facebook Messenger platform. Within one year, 100,000 chatbots were in operation on Facebook Messenger alone.
In the last 10 years, chatbots have also become a common feature on business websites.
In fact, chatbot software is now considered the fastest-growing communication channel, with a rise in use by 92% since 2019.
So why are chatbots gaining popularity?
Thanks to the everywhereness of personal assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, consumers are more comfortable interacting with artificial intelligence. AI is no longer considered an inferior way of communicating with businesses, especially online businesses. With the help of machine learning, AI continues to evolve and adapt to human behavior.
How Chatbots Improve Customer Service
While a chatbot is an interesting piece of technology, does it belong on your website? The answer to that question is “absolutely!”
Let’s discuss the devastating effects of poor customer service. Poor customer service can wreck a company’s reputation and decrease customer lifetime value. This means that even if you win customers, you’ll lose them quickly because you’re unable to handle their needs. Poor customer service can also cause you to lose your employees due to burnout.
The modern customer now expects immediate, personalized service. Companies that provide this type of service will generate more revenue and secure customer loyalty. Customer loyalty matters for two important reasons:
First, it’s a lot easier (and more affordable) to market to your current customers than it is to generate new leads. After they’ve decided to trust you with their initial purchase, a customer is much more likely to continue to buy from your company.
Second, your loyal customers are more likely to tell others about you. They generate word-of-mouth marketing for your business, which can be much more persuasive than your own marketing (and it’s free, too).
Research shows that customers are willing to pay more in order to receive quality customer service. So, if you want to raise your prices in the future, you’ll definitely need to invest more resources and energy into improving your customer service.
12 Ways Chatbots Enhance Customer Service
Answer Questions Quickly
People hate the idea of emailing a customer service department and then waiting for the mandatory 24-48 hours to get an answer. Both current and prospective customers want quick answers to their questions.
With chatbots, you can reduce wait times to zero. Your customer can receive immediate answers to their most pressing questions. This can be especially helpful to prospective customers who need extra guidance with the buying process.
Be Available 24/7
Your human customer service team may have limited hours, especially if you have a small business. However, chatbots can be available 24 hours a day to help your customers. Chatbots don’t take vacations and they don’t need lunch breaks.
If your customers are located around the globe, you definitely need to provide 24/7 customer service. Otherwise, your international customers may need to wait longer to get answers, which can negatively affect your business reputation.
Reduce Operational Costs
Chatbots are an affordable alternative to hiring an additional person for your customer service team. On average, chatbot software costs $50 per month to run. You can not hire a human at that same rate to provide comparable service.
Support Your Human Customer Support Team
Chatbot software isn’t meant to replace human customer support. Instead, the software should function as an extension of your customer support team. For example, your chatbot software can filter and route customers to the right solution, whether that’s a knowledge base or a human customer service agent.
Chatbots can also free up your team from repeatedly answering the same commonly asked questions.
Personalize Your Support
Chatbots can personalize customer experience on your website. When a customer interacts with a chatbot on your site, they can have a one-of-a-kind experience—one that’s catered specifically to their needs.
For example, chatbots can guide customers to a specific product or solution based on the types of questions that your customers ask. Your customers will receive individualized service on your website even though it’s completely handled through software.
Provide Consistent Service
Chatbots don’t have bad days. They are never annoyed when customers ask the same questions over and over again. This means that every interaction with a chatbot can be consistently friendly and professional.
Learn More About Your Customers
You can use chatbots to gather data about your customers. Chatbot conversations can also reveal the questions or frustrations that your customers have about your product. You can then use this information to improve both your product and the way you communicate with your customers through future chats.
Makes It Easier for Your Customers to Get Answers
If a customer can’t immediately find answers on your website, they’ll get frustrated. That frustration will turn nuclear if they can’t reach your team right away.
A chatbot can pop up at just the right time to answer questions and eliminate hesitations. Because it’s convenient to communicate through a chatbot, your customer will actually use this option more than email if your chatbot is presented at the right times.
Offer Personality to Your Website
Chatbots can be programmed to “sound” like your brand. So, if your brand is friendly, quirky, funny, passionate, or professional, your chatbot can sound that way, too, by using the same words and phrases that your human customer team uses. Chatbots are another extension of your brand, and they absolutely interact with your customers in a way that reinforces your brand’s values and personality.
Scale Your Customer Service
Chatbot technology allows you to stretch your resources so you’re able to reach out to more customers at the same time. A chatbot program can be scaled to handle multiple conversations simultaneously.
Your chatbot can also greatly reduce customer frustration during wait times. While a customer is waiting for human support, they can interact with a chatbot that can further identify their needs and route them to the right agent. Interacting with a chatbot can make the wait not feel as long.
Bypass Navigation
Sometimes, navigating around a website can be confusing for your customer. This is especially true if you have a large site with a lot of content. Your customer may want to get to product X but they don’t know how. Searching for that product can reveal a lot of options that overwhelm the customer even more.
By offering a chatbot, you can guide your customer to exactly what they’re looking for without them needing to follow a complex set of directions to get there (i.e. click Home > Menu > Products > Outerwear > Jackets > Light Jackets). Instead, a quick chatbot conversation can end with a link directly to the page your customer is looking for.
Switch Up the Way You Ask for Information
Use a chatbot instead of a form to gather the same information. Why would you do that? Forms can be intimidating, especially long forms that consist of 10 or more questions. However, you can ask the same questions through a chatbot and greatly improve your customer’s experience.
The interactive Q&A format of a chatbot program allows customers to immediately ask questions in-the-moment instead of stopping the process to find those answers elsewhere on your website.
For example, let’s say the customer is in the middle of making a purchase but suddenly wants to know your return policy. Instead of stopping the check-out process to hunt for the answer, your customer can ask the chatbot that’s recording their information. The chatbot can then provide an immediate and customized answer to that question. This can also reduce the customer’s hesitation and improve the likelihood that the customer will complete the purchase.
How to Use Chatbots on Your WordPress Website
Now that we’ve highlighted the major benefits of chatbot software, let’s discuss how to use chatbots effectively on your website to transform your customer service:
Create a Chatbot Strategy
The first step is to decide how you’d like to use chatbots on your website. Chatbots can be used to:
- Answer frequently asked questions
- Help customers learn more about your products, services, and policies
- Guide customers past common roadblocks
- Collect customer information (i.e., replace standard forms)
- Gather customer feedback
You can pick one, several, or all of the above—you’re not limited to how you can use chatbots on your website. However, it’s important that you plan out a strategy to serve your customers. Otherwise, your chatbot service won’t be as effective as it could be.
For example, if gathering customer feedback is important, you can add that request at the end of each chatbot conversation.
Or if you’d like to successfully guide customers past roadblocks, you can program the chatbot to provide more interactive content in the chat instead of simply linking to FAQs. This is especially helpful when customers need to talk through their concerns to ensure that they’re getting the right solution.
Determine Where to Place Chatbots
Here are ideas for where to place chatbots to ensure that your customers have the best site experience.
Your Homepage
A chatbot on a homepage can provide navigation assistance and answer general questions.
Your “Contact Us” Page
This chatbot can answer quick questions that eliminate the need to contact your human support team. For example, you can encourage the customer to start a chat for information about shipping, order status, or any other frequently asked question.
Your FAQs Page
Your frequently asked questions page is the perfect home for a chatbot. It can provide immediate answers to common (and not-so-common) questions that your customers have about your company and your product.
Your Products Pages
Your chatbot can boost sales. Here are the five main reasons to consider placing a chatbot on your products pages:
- It can answer common questions about the product.
- A chatbot can make recommendations and offer special promotions that are individualized for that customer.
- It can customize a product to ensure that it meets the customer’s needs.
- It can reduce hesitation by answering questions about your policies.
- A chatbot can troubleshoot (i.e., helping when an order doesn’t go through, so that the customer isn’t left alone to solve their problem).
Chatbot Best Practices
When you add a chatbot service to your website, be sure to do the following:
- Make it easy for website visitors to see the chatbot (Your chatbot should popup after a set time)
- Offer a customer a starter set of questions to answer (They can click on one of these questions or ask their own)
- Choose a voice that sounds like it was written from a real human that represents your business (Your voice should be consistent with your brand)
- Personalize the interaction (Ask for the customer’s name so that the chatbot can use it naturally throughout the conversation)
- Make it easy for the customer to speak to a “real” human at any time during the conversation (Customers should be able to opt-out of a chatbot interaction easily)
- Ensure that the human agent reads the prior chatbot conversation before interacting with the customer (This can reduce frustration on the customer’s end because they won’t need to restart their conversations, but instead the conversation can carry on from where the chatbot left off)
- End conversations with a survey (Keep the survey very brief to ensure that the customer actually participates)
Top 5 WordPress Chatbots Plugins
There are many chatbot programs to choose from, but if you’re looking for suggestions, here are the most popular:
How to Install a Chatbot on Your WordPress Website
Installing a chatbot on your WordPress site is pain-free! Just follow these simple steps:
- From your WordPress Dashboard menu, click on “Plugins.”
- Click on “Add New.”
- In the Plugins search bar, search for the chatbot plugin you’d like to use.
- When you find the chatbot program, click on “Install Now” then click “Activate.”
- From there, find the plugin on your dashboard. The plugin will either add itself as a new menu item or it can be found on your list of installed plugins that are accessible on the Dashboard menu. You can then configure the plugin.
Click here to learn more information about working with plugins.
Final Thoughts
Chatbots are a great way to connect with your customers and improve the functionality of your website. Use the above tips to integrate chatbots successfully into your WordPress site.
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