3 Ways You Can Leverage Chatbots to Boost Traffic and Drive Conversions
Customers, especially those in the more tech-savvy generations, overwhelmingly desire to purchase goods, research services and interact with businesses through apps, texts and messaging platforms. However, for many small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) and startups, maintaining an agile and responsive 24/7 online presence requires an extensive resource investment. Fortunately, recent advancements in artificial intelligence-fueled chatbot technology help deliver flexible customer care around the clock and may even offer businesses the opportunity to automate and streamline processes to fuel growth.
What Are Chatbots?
The number of customers willing to invest valuable time on the phone to connect with you, learn about your services, ask questions or place an order decreases each day. The average consumer in today’s digital marketplace demands immediate assistance and information. They may be unwilling to wade through cumbersome customer service processes or play phone tag to reach you. This demand helped drive the creation of chatbots.
In simple terms, chatbots are intelligent, automated, computer programs designed specifically to interact with users in online messaging forums and apps including:
- Facebook Messenger
- Skype
- SMS messaging and more
How Do They Work?
In essence, a basic chatbot functions by honing in on specific keywords contained in a customer’s question or response to a question. The bot then pours through its databases to locate the most appropriate response to address the user’s inquiry. However, as bot technology progresses, new, more sophisticated versions can leverage the full horsepower of artificial technology to help anticipate customer concerns and provide a more interactive and predictive experience.
Despite the complexity of the algorithms involved in the process, chatbots are becoming increasingly easy to install, customize and integrate into your business’s online marketing portfolio. Facebook even offers a quick and easy chatbot tutorial to help your business get started.
Chatbot Benefits for Startups and SMBs
These interactive and automated representatives help your business reach, connect with and deliver satisfying experiences to your customers to boost traffic and, potentially, drive conversions. Through rapid, automated support, a chatbot helps your startup engage with users, boost your reputation and address customers’ concerns around the clock by providing three key benefits:
1. Responsive and Agile Customer Service
Although chatbots are currently in use to deliver a wide range of automated services for SMBs, they are most often employed to enhance the customer service experience. Specifically, chatbots provide immediate solutions for a wide range of commonly encountered users’ concerns including, but not limited to:
- Your business’s location and hours of operation
- Price quotes and order inquiries
- Assistance with placing orders or learning more about services
- Delivery tracking services and more
By placing immediate answers at your customers’ fingertips via the services of a chatbot, you are free to engage directly with higher value clients or deal with more complex situations which require a personal touch. Additionally, today, many startups sink or swim based on customer feedback and formal online reviews. Having a rapid, flexible and friendly chatbot on your side to deliver 100 percent user response rates may be a game changer to help you dominate the competition.
2. Personalized Product Recommendations
Chatbots may even make recommendations for specific products and services based on previous user interactions or information contained in a customer’s account profile. These recommendations could include:
- Accessories to match articles of clothing purchased
- Gift ideas
- Hotel deals or services offered near user’s travel destination
- Other products or services which may be of value to a user
As the technology becomes more sophisticated, chatbots will likely hone in on a user’s desires more accurately.
3. Help Boost Organic Traffic and Drive Targeted Engagements
With a chatbot, your startup can engage directly with thousands of users simultaneously. This feature helps your business keep pace with consumer interest and could help drive more traffic to your site. For example, a chatbot could be set up to engage directly with users who comment on links or other actionable content posted to your social media pages. With this direct and rapid interaction via messaging platforms, you can facilitate conversation with potential clients and engage with them during future targeted advertising campaigns.