We have already established that chatbot is an integral part of live chats, which is taking the business world by storm.  This, coupled by the desire of every business owner to always be up to date with trends, has resulted to a huge market in the chatbot industry.

So what is the real score for this technology? Are your expectations aligned with its reality?

More importantly, how can we approach this in order for it to help us reach our business goals?

The Chatbot Drawback

Chatbots are an amazing piece of technology. No doubt that it is timely and works for many applications. The fact that it can be deployed to perform multiple functions for your business makes it a smart investment. The problem is, chatbots are so hyped up that it would likely disappoint than impress today.

Due to its popularity, many companies are now developing chat robots and every single one of them are claiming to be the best technology in the business. But the truth is, although chatbot is an advanced technology for this age, it is still a form of technology that has several flaws.

For starters, plenty of bots are manufactured simply to cater to the growing needs of the industry. While there are several great bots, there are also many poorly made ones that cannot even perform the most basic functions. The great ones are simply not that advanced yet to replace your whole support and sales functions either.

For example, while chatbots can answer questions and enquiries, they have to operate on context. What does this mean? This means that you have to be very clear and provide the complete details for your every question or instructions, or else the bot won’t be able to supply the specific information that you need. This can result in multiple repeated inquiries which can get very frustrating for your customers.

Which begs the question, how can you utilize this platform without risking customer dissatisfaction?

How Can You Make It Work

Despite the mentioned drawbacks, you can still take advantage of this trend. You simply have to be very clear with your chatbot’s purpose, properly gauge the capabilities of the chatbot technology, and test your bot before deployment.

Be very clear with your chatbot’s purpose – before you design or acquire a bot, you need to be sure of its purpose. It would be hard for you to determine if your bot is doing great if you haven’t clarified what it should actually do for your business. For example, if your bot’s purpose is to reply quickly to enquiries and then escalate to human support, then don’t expect it to maintain conversations with your customers. Similarly, do not try to trick your customers. Don’t make your customers believe that they are talking to an actual human when they are in fact conversing with a bot. Be honest with your customers, it will save you extra effort in the long run.

Gauge the capabilities of the chatbot technology – make sure that the technology you’re acquiring actually delivers. Many developers boasted that chat robots can move people towards actions (including purchases) and even profile customers really well. Turned out it can’t do these things. Many companies hope that AI can finally replace human interaction, but that is years away!

Test your chatbots – don’t just roll out chatbots without even testing them to the hilt. If you just deploy your chat bot without even making sure that it is functional, then it is most likely to fail.  Most importantly, before you even think of executing a huge marketing campaign, you must have the capability to manage the inquiries or issues that you will receive.

The AI technology and chatbots are not a failure. They can deliver results and depending on how you want to deploy them, it can be a powerful addition to your workforce.  However, it is important to align your expectations with the reality – while chatbots have a bright future ahead we are not quite there yet. And until then, humans will still need to assists with our customer service functions.