When and Why Chatbots?

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The Bots are taking over.

A chatbot is an automated process that can respond to questions or commands via voice or text. They are useful for simulating a conversation and handling some of the tasks that would ordinarily require a call center staffed with people. Uses include processing orders, checking status, and answering questions. If you can understand the question and figure out the answer, you can probably write a chatbot to handle it.

Advantages of Chatbots

Chatbots have some advantages over human interactions.

Operating Cost. Labor costs tend to be among the highest cost of any business and operators in a call center can be expensive. Once deployed, a chatbot's cost tends to be a fraction of the cost of paying a person.

Availability. Chatbots can scale up to increase demand, so that users, customers, and potential customers do not need to wait for the next available operator. If activity rises unexpectedly, it is far easier and faster to deploy new resources to support a chatbot than it is to bring in more people to answer calls.

Speed. A computer can often look up information much faster than a human can.

Flexibility. A chatbot can be wired up to a variety of communication channels, allowing you to use the same code base to connect to different clients in different ways. For example, you can write a chatbot and connect to users via Facebook, SMS, a web page, or any number of other platforms.

Disadvantages of Chatbots

Of course, chatbots will not solve all your problems. Here are some disadvantages.

Startup cost. There tends to be a larger startup costs for chatbots. They must be programmed, tested, and deployed. This cost is only justified if they will yield sufficient savings over the lifetime the chatbot is deployed. Tools like the Microsoft Bot Framework can reduce development time; but that early cost still exists.

Impersonal. Chatbots are not people and some customers prefer talking to a human being over talking to a machine. The cost of human interaction is worth it when you wish to cultivate a personal relationship with your customer or partner. 

Too human. With advances in natural language processing, it can be difficult for people to determine whether they are interacting with a person or a computer. Some people are turned off by this ambiguity. They feel cheated when a computer represents itself as a person.

Real-time flexibility. For many interactions, it is impossible to anticipate every potential question or command from your customers. Humans can react to these very well. Generally, you need to program a chatbot to anticipate each question or command.

Finally

There is no question that chatbots are becoming more and more important as companies interact with their customers. But how your company uses them can determine how successful your chatbot strategy is.

Some scenarios call for starting an interaction with a chatbot; then bringing in a person only if the chatbot cannot adequately help the customer.

Understanding the needs of your customer and the problem you are trying to solve is a key to effective use of chatbots.