The rise of chatbots is a technological milestone that will impact health businesses rollout their sales and support activities in the coming years.  However, as we have discussed in our previous article, the chatbot technology has not been perfected yet. While it is indeed efficient in some tasks, it lacks the ability to fully replace humans, resulting in a disappointing, and most of the time, frustrating user experience for the customers.

With that said, how can you make use of this technology?

4 Ways to Maximise AI

Chatbots may not be perfect, but keep in mind that it is still relatively new and is continuously evolving.  In fact, many AI experts believe that it is not a matter of if but when for the AI to be fully autonomous. Given time, these robots will be able to learn faster and communicate with people better.

However, that doesn’t mean that we cannot use the technology now. Although still in its formative years, there are already ways for us to make use of the AI version currently available to us, flaws and all.

1. Pass the conversations from bots to humans. Chatbots can be deployed in messaging platforms to take care of the bulk of enquiries coming in, but if the exchange becomes too much to handle by the bots, humans can take over. Some bots already have this escalating feature that will allow you to identify which issues need to be addressed by humans. This way, your customers will not waste time trying to get answers to questions your bot can’t solve.
2. Move for half bot half human. Depending on the type of information needed by customers, bots and humans can provide quick and appropriate responses. If it can easily be managed by AI, customers can be directed to bots, but if the nature of the enquiry is more complicated, then humans can come in.
3. Switch between bots and humans. Companies like SnapTravel describes itself as a “half-bot half-human service.” They solely depend on bots to converse with a huge amount of customers enquiries. But when bots are faced with more vague questions, human support is there for back up. You can do this strategy for your business too. For example, bots can do the primary assessment for customers. If you own a shipping company, your bot can answer queries about FAQs such as shipping fee, the exact time of arrival of parcels, etc. It can also be used to redirect your customer to payment methods or shipping forms. However, customers who have complaints or more complicated questions about the shipping process will be directly escalated to human counterparts. This way, your team won’t waste time answering simple questions and can focus on more crucial enquiries.
4. Humans run the show. Another means of maximising chatbots is to use the bots just to enhance the workflow of human agents. Through this method, humans can provide for faster response times and more accurate, uniformed answers to enquiries.

Messaging platforms are the new face of tomorrow and chatbots is a very powerful tool that will help you keep up with this new trend. It offers a very promising future where artificial intelligence and human-to-human interaction work together to allow businesses to automate personalized interaction with customers.  But at present, in order for your business to truly cope with the transition, you simply need a mixture of both artificial and human intelligence.