Have you ever faced a chatbot while visiting a website or making a conversation with a business page? The instant automated answers you usually get are generated by the technology that people call chatbots. These chatbots are like artificial intelligence software that can talk to you like a real human. They can perform a vast range of tasks and assist users in various areas, including customer service, e-commerce, education, finance, and more.
So, it will take longer to answer if one asks what a chatbot can do. The area this artificial bot has covered is more than one can usually imagine. Though it has a devastating impact to reduce the working area for humans, it has become a great support for businesses to improve their support and utilize their employees for more critical and essential jobs.
However, to learn about the operations of a chatbot in its covered area, it is essential to have a better idea of this technology and to know how it works. Let’s start the discussion with a brief introduction to the technology, chatbots.
What Is a Chatbot?
Chatbots are basically computer programs that use artificial intelligence to make a conversation with people just like we do. And the conversation can be through a text or in a speech. This type of automatic conversational technology initially uses natural language processing that people shortly call NLP to understand human command or context.
That’s how when we need help with something, we can just ask the chatbot and it will do its best to help us find what we are looking for. Not just making conversations, chatbots can do all sorts of things as well.
They can answer questions, give recommendations, and even assist you to buy things online. Software engineers make this technology globally versatile, and that makes them more and more popular. As a consequence, people are using chatbots in all sorts of industries like customer service, e-commerce, healthcare, finance, and education.
How Does a Chatbot Work?
At this point, some of you might wonder about how chatbot technology works. To make things clear, this section will clarify the operating system of a chatbot briefly.
Usually, Chatbot technology is a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). When a business site is using a chatbot and a user sends a message or question to it, this technology instantly uses NLP to analyze and interpret the text.
To understand the meaning and the context of the user’s command, the bot breaks down the sentence into several parts and analyzes the inputs properly. It indeed uses its personalized algorithms to determine the best response for the user’s input.
The company must set a pre-programmed response or generate a dynamic response that the chatbot shows as soon as it determines the input of the user. If it doesn’t find the specific responsibility for the user’s input, it instantly refers them to contact the company in real-time.
So, this is how a chatbot usually works. But the accuracy rate of the responses of a chatbot is not always very satisfying, Chatbots don’t have emotional intelligence and they have lots of limitations to understand the context of the user’s input. So, a business never relies on a chatbot completely and supervises it properly to get the best outcome from it.
What Can a Chatbot Do?
Whether it’s a b2b company, personal operation, or even education, chatbots have covered all the sections of our daily life with their incomparable support. People are using chatbots to make their tasks easier and more convenient. So, if the question is what can a chatbot do, it’s better to answer it with a discussion on the basic uses of a chatbot.
Use of a Chatbot in the Field of Customer Service
When it comes to the field of universal customer service, it is hard to replace a chatbot. Indeed, the biggest area of the use of a chatbot is in this section. Businesses both leading and growing are using chatbots nowadays for a quick response rate and also to improve customer engagement rate.
According to Insider’s report, around 67% of businesses around the world used a chatbot for customer support. A chatbot can help a business in several ways by improving its customer service system.
24/7 Availability: The most common reason business owners use a chatbot is for its being always available for the customers. Usually, a chatbot provides round-the-clock customer support to business sites. It simply offers services to customers with immediate assistance even outside of regular business hours.
It helps businesses to improve customer satisfaction by ensuring that support is available whenever needed. At the same time, they don’t need to hire an employee to be available all the time to ensure quick responses.
Improved Response Times and Customer Engagement: It doesn’t matter how many customers are using websites and ask answers at the same time, a chatbot can assist them all instantly. It can respond to customer queries and requests almost instantly, and thus, it ensures a much faster response time than human agents.
As a consequence, the business will have almost no customer frustration and increase satisfaction. As a result, customers are more likely to take their next step to make an engagement with the business.
According to a Travel Chatbot Case Study by Kevit.io, a chatbot is able to increase by around 30% more revenue for a business. So, a chatbot is the best solution to increase the customer experience and improve response time.
Reduce Cost and Human Workload: A chatbot usually provides customer support at a fraction of the cost of employing a team of human agents. So, it helps them reduce their customer service expenses. To be responsive like a chatbot, a business must have several customer service employees and a chatbot alone can replace them.
In the same way, chatbots can handle many of the routine and repetitive tasks that the business can handle only with the support of human customer service agents. Thus, it works for freeing up their time to focus on more complex and specialized tasks.
Offers Voice Assistance and FAQ Answers: There are some improvised chatbots that can offer voice assistance to customers. It can receive calls and help users find their desired answers within a few seconds. Thus, it can ensure better voice assistance for the customers of a business.
Also, many users like to hit the FAQ to get the solutions to common issues. And a chatbot can lead them to get their specific answers instantly. Some of them indeed suggest relevant questions to the users so they can reach their desired solution.
Use of a Chatbot in The Internal Operation for a Business
Leading businesses ain’t using chatbots not just for customer support but also for their company’s internal needs. A chatbot can help the employees of a company by making their tasks easier and more convenient. As a result, it leads them to be more productive and encouraged. Here’s how a chatbot usually helps businesses in their internal operations.
Data Analysis: While helping the customers with instant support a chatbot can collect customers’ feedback and analyze the data for the business. Usually, a business needs to analyze data on customers’ feedback to improve its service and to get a better outcome. And a chatbot can help them in such cases instantly.
Order Confirmation and Tracking: Whether it’s a b2b company or service provider, a chatbot can confirm orders from customers and help them manage their sales. It will send the company all necessary data by collecting them from the customers after confirming the orders.
At the same time, it will track the shipping and ensure that the customers are getting their products on time. It also notifies the sales unit as soon as it detects an issue in the shipping. Thus, it reduces the load of the sales unit of a company.
Helps in Lead Generation: Chatbots can provide instant responses to potential leads, which helps in keeping the engagement level high. When a user visits a website, a chatbot can initiate a conversation, and gather basic information about the user. Thus, it helps to generate leads by identifying potential customers.
Also, it helps in lead qualification, by asking relevant questions and gathering information about the user’s needs. It can be essential to identify potential leads and provide a better understanding of their requirements. A chatbot also integrates with the company’s CRM system to optimize lead generation strategies.
Use of Chatbots in Marketing
Chatbots can be very useful in marketing for businesses of all sizes. It can work better to let people know about the business in many different ways. Also, it helps them to improvise the CRM system and make the customers engaged in their service.
Customer Engagement: Chatbots can keep customers engaged by providing helpful information and assistance. It simply leads to repeat business and positive reviews. In turn, it helps generate more leads naturally.
When new customers visit the site and get tangled with the system, a chatbot can lead them to get rid of their issues and be engaged or make an order. It works perfectly to introduce the business to a customer in a more effective way.
Personalized Recommendation: A customer can search for a product on a site and it doesn’t mean that he will like that exact product. It is more likely that he is looking for something else if he is not making the order. In this case, a chatbot can suggest to the customer some relevant products and make them aware of the company’s product.
Bring New Customers: Many businesses use a chatbot to send personalized mail, and messages to new customers to let them know about their business existence. It is the most effective way to get new customers with the lowest possible effort. Also, a chatbot can send messages and emails to customers to inform them about the new company’s offers.
Use of Chatbots In Conversational Apps
As we know, not all customers love to visit the site and they often try the conversational app to make an order. To reply to them instantly, businesses use chatbots and it can lead them to have a better CRM system. So, it can be a valuable addition to a conversational app, as it can help users quickly and easily get the information or assistance they need.
As we have already learned, chatbots are a type of automated conversational systems that use natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to simulate human conversation. So, it can easily help the users of a messaging or a conversational app with all the essential solutions they need.
Use of Chatbots to Maintain Social Media
Almost all businesses both leading and growing have their own social media pages. And chatbots can help them manage their business pages as well. It can help maintain social media by automating repetitive tasks, engaging with users, and providing personalized experiences.
Chatbots can automatically respond to messages and comments on social media platforms. Thus, it helps in saving time for social media managers and ensures that users receive instant responses. Also, it uses data from user interactions to provide tailored recommendations and content, improving user engagement and satisfaction.
Eventually, it helps automate the scheduling of social media posts and makes sure that content is published at optimal times for maximum engagement. Thus, it lets businesses maintain an active and engaged presence on social media. As a result, they can increase brand loyalty, improve customer satisfaction, and ultimately, higher sales and revenue.
Usage of Chatbots for Different Personal Services
Nowadays, chatbots are used to maintain different personal services and in some cases, they can act as personal assistance. Whether it’s in the section of education or a person’s fitness track, a chatbot can help them in many different ways.
Chatbot as a Fitness Coach: Some personalized chatbots are programmed to provide personalized training, nutrition plans, and motivational support to people trying to achieve their fitness goals. It usually provides personalized workout plans based on a person’s fitness level, goals, and preferences.
Additionally, this type of chatbot offers nutrition plans based on a person’s goals and dietary restrictions. They are used for motivational support and to track progress too.
Chatbots as a Task Manager: Chatbots have emerged as a powerful tool in task management by providing individuals and businesses with a simple and efficient way to manage their tasks. They show users a better way to stay organized, prioritize tasks, and streamline their workflow.
This type of bot usually reminds users of upcoming tasks and deadlines. They also send notifications via chat, email, or text message to ensure that tasks are completed on time. Some of them also track the progress of tasks and provide metrics such as completion rates and time spent on each task.
There are also many different sections where a chatbot can work can a person’s very own support. Whether he is a doctor or an educator, a chatbot can help him manage his work, life, fitness, study, and goals in a more convenient way.
Uses of Chatbots in the Field of Education
No doubt that chatbots are revolutionizing the education industry by providing personalized, accessible, and cost-effective solutions to many educational challenges. Here are some of the most significant uses of chatbots in the field of education.
Virtual Teaching Assistants: Some of the high-end chatbots can be used as virtual teaching assistants to provide students with immediate and personalized support. They can answer students’ questions, provide feedback on assignments, and help students stay on track with their learning goals. This is definitely very helpful in large classes where it can be difficult for teachers to provide individualized attention to every student.
Personalized Learning: Another specialty of Chatbots is their contribution to personalized learning experiences. It usually adapts to the learning style and pace of individual students with advanced AI systems. As a result, it assesses a student’s knowledge and skill level to provide tailored feedback and recommendations.
Admissions and Enrollment: In many institutions, chatbots are used to assist students in the admissions and enrollment process by answering questions about the application process. They also provide information about admission requirements and guide students through the enrollment process. These bots simply reduce the workload on administrative staff and improve the overall experience for students.
Student Support: Chatbots also provide support to students beyond the classroom by providing information about campus resources and advising students on course selection. Some of them indeed help the students with proper academic and career guidance. In this way, these bots help students to feel supported and engaged throughout their educational journey.
Language Learning: Some especially programmed chatbots can help students learn a new language by providing conversational practice and vocabulary exercises. They can also provide immediate feedback and correction, helping students to improve their language skills more quickly.
Uses of Chatbots in Other Sections
Finding a section where chatbots are not used persistently is truly difficult. Because of its many supports and fast operations, almost all sections of today’s world are using these bots to help their users and improve their service. Here are some significant sections where chatbots are used widely.
Healthcare: Different sections in the field of global healthcare providers are using chatbots to provide triage services, answer questions about symptoms, and provide general health advice. They can also help patients schedule appointments, refill prescriptions, and access medical records. Indeed, most hospital websites use these types of bots to support their patients in the best possible way.
Travel and Hospitality: Hotels, airlines, and travel agencies also use chatbots to provide customers with travel information and answer questions about bookings. These types of bots also provide recommendations for restaurants and attractions. They can also help customers find the best deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars.
Human Resources: Chatbots are used widely by HR departments to provide employees with information about company policies, answer questions about benefits, and provide support with HR-related tasks. They can also help employees schedule time off, access payroll information, and provide information about career development opportunities.
Entertainment: In the section of entertainment, companies widely use chatbots to provide personalized recommendations for movies, TV shows, and music. They can also provide information about upcoming events and help customers purchase tickets.
Gaming Section: Almost all gaming companies are using chatbots to help gamers find necessary support in no time. These types of chatbots also help them find new users by helping people learn more about their production.
Real Estate Section: Chatbots can also help clients of a real estate company to find suitable properties based on their preferences and criteria. By using NLP and machine learning algorithms, chatbots can understand clients’ needs and provide relevant options. Also, it provides real estate companies with valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences.
Banking and Finance: Chatbots are also used by banks and financial institutions to help customers with transactions, provide information about account balances, and answer questions about banking services. They can provide personalized financial advice and help customers create and manage budgets.
Not just the following sections business, chatbots are used in almost all sections possible. Scientists, educators, finances, and all others are using chatbots both for their personal assistance and also to offer better support to others.
Wrapping Up
Undoubtedly, chatbots offer a wide range of benefits for both businesses and customers. They provide 24/7 support, improve customer engagement, reduce response times, and help businesses save money. With advancements in NLP and ML systems, chatbots have become more intelligent and capable of handling complex tasks.
But it has its own limitations and disadvantages too. It doesn’t have any emotional intelligence and it can not be completely secure for some reason. So, businesses should reply to a chatbot completely and use human action to supervise it. Once the companies will have complete control over their chatbots, they can utilize them in the best possible way.