Businesses of all sizes are increasingly using chatbots to address customer queries.
That makes sense, says Clevva co-CEO Ryan Falkenberg, adding: “Used effectively, chatbots can be a valuable addition to any customer service offering. All too often, however, chatbots have limited functionality, leaving customers frustrated and desperate to talk to an actual human.”
If you are looking to deploy a chatbot to offer your customers an improved self-service experience, here are four basic things you should insist it can do.
Engage with a person using natural language
Even if your customers know they’re speaking to a chatbot, they most likely don’t want to feel like they’re speaking to one. It’s therefore imperative that your chatbot is capable of having human-like conversations, and accurately identifying customer intent.
Offer expert-level advice, not simply digital assistance
Most chatbots work like digital assistants or librarians, not digital experts. They are designed to predict what it is you want and to then give it to you. They are ideal question answer machines (QAMs) – you ask a question and they find you the answer.
This works when there is a clear answer to a specific question. It does not work when the answer depends on the customer’s context. Or when the customer is not that clear on what the cause of their issue really is. Or what it is they really need. In this case they are looking for advice, not assistance.
Advice is very different from assistance. I go to my pharmacist for assistance. I go to my doctor for advice. Increasingly customers that engage with chatbots are looking for expert advice and very few are getting it.
Get to the right solution, and then get it actioned
There is nothing more frustrating than engaging with a chatbot that diagnoses your problem and then offers you a link to some information you need to read in order to solve your own problem. That’s not customer service; that’s service abdication.
Very few chatbots are currently able to diagnose your need or issue, and to then resolve it. This requires the ability to work seamlessly with relevant back office systems.
Ensure that if customers need to be transferred, they don’t need to repeat themselves
There is nothing more frustrating than having an engagement with a chatbot that leads to a dead end. Or where they simply hand you off to an agent who has no knowledge of what you have already told the chatbot.
You should insist that your chatbot is able to work in sync with other channels, and can hand over the customer journey to others so they can continue, in context, from where the chatbot left off.
The exciting thing is that we are now able to offer customers chatbots that deliver these basic four requirements with ease. You no longer have to tolerate a chatbot that struggles to understand what customers are trying to say or is incapable of understanding every customer’s context and solving their specific query immediately. In short, a chatbot that performs like an expert, not an assistant.
So be more demanding when it comes to your chatbot provider. There really are no more excuses for not being able to deliver these four basic chatbot requirements.