Business communication can be defined as the various mediums through which your business can connect with its target audience. This can be through voice, audio or textual messages.

But, every brand is unique. You may have tried and tested several different means of bridging the communication gap between you and your customers. However, AI or Artificial Intelligence empowered means of communication is the buzzword that does it perfectly!

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence is a compendium of technologies that includes natural language processing, machine language, and predictive analytics. This technology has played a pivotal role in revolutionising the way businesses communicate. One such medium is through AI-powered chatbots.

What are chatbots and how do they help in business communication? Check out right away!  

A chatbot is a program based on artificial intelligence. It uses natural language processing to simulate conversations with your customers. These chatbots can be used through messaging applications, websites, mobile phones or mobile applications.

One major advantage of chatbots is that they needn’t be downloaded and do not occupy any space on your device. Chatbots can initiate contextual conversations with the users, thereby paving way for seamless customer experiences. 

How do chatbots work?

Chatbots learn from experiences. They are trained to identify the right answers from a knowledge base. This best suitable answer is based on keywords present in the query presented by the customer. 

If not, the chat is automatically escalated to a live agent. This enables business owners to have a better hold on the conversation and avoids scenarios where the customer may become agitated. 

What are the benefits of chatbots for business communication?

Chatbots can offer a myriad of benefits for your business. Here are a few among others.

1. Easy scalability of manpower

According to reports, businesses spend nearly $1.3 trillion to meet customer requests. Chatbots save up to 30% of this.

The first concern any business owner may have is the way their brand communicates with the world. Chatbots give you a chance to completely control this. If you, say, expect a spike in customer queries, your chatbots will be able to handle several conversations simultaneously when compared to live agents. 

This capability to scale up can spare you a huge amount of expense on workforce scheduling and management. 

2. Ensures boosted team productivity

Though chatbots cannot take charge of the entire business communication ecosystem, they can effectively handle and deliver primary support to customers. 

For example, if a customer contacts you to get simple information about accessing your homepage, the chatbot can easily provide the necessary URL and close the chat. A live agent need not dedicate their time to simple queries. Instead, these simple queries about verifying order status, obtaining information about company policies, and expected delivery time can be filtered and attended to by chatbots. 

Complicated queries that need human intervention can be escalated to live agents. This approach not only saves cost on the unnecessary deployment of resources but also time and effort of the live agents. 

3. Improves customer engagement 

Customer engagement is the key to the success of every organization. Chatbots enable this by delivering personalised customer experiences based on the history of the customer’s interaction with your brand. They use the customer’s name during the interaction and provide recommendations based on the customer’s buying persona. 

Moreover, chatbots are spontaneous and provide real-time responses. Customers dread to wait and chatbots understand this. These immediate one-to-one responses leave the customers happy after every interaction. 

4. Enables 24/7 customer support

Availability to serve customers is important to earn a positive reputation amongst your customer base. Offering 24×7 customer support is one of them. When you deploy live agents to be available round-the-clock, it involves tedious workforce management schedules and shifts management. 

Employee availability and hiring a workforce just for 24×7 customer support can be expensive too. 

However, when it comes to chatbots, they can simply be made available irrespective of the time and shift hours. This helps save costs for business owners along with enabling them to strike the right chord amongst the target audience. 

It is time to enhance chatbot conversations!

With this understanding of chatbots and how they help improve customer experiences, let us elaborate on a few icebreakers to enhance chatbot conversations. 

Engagement and personalisation play an important role in improving the quality of interactions with your chatbot.

Consider the scenario where the customer has come back for clarification with your bot. The bot finds that the customer has purchased a pair of sports shoes from your online store. Your bot can probably initiate a conversation like this:

“Hello, Jim. 

Good Morning! It is nice to hear from you again.

We hope your shopping experience with us was satisfactory. Do you have any feedback on your purchase of the sports shoes?”

This icebreaker not just indicates that your bot has referred to the history of transactions but also shows that every customer is being noticed. Furthermore, revealing these purchase details will provide a personal touch to the whole conversation. 

The customer will be more open to sharing their experiences. Also, this will be a great opportunity to note feedback from the customer. Any loopholes in the product delivery will be indicated and duly corrected. 

Consider a second scenario where the customer is new to your brand. Here’s what the bot can do: 

“Hello, Kate!

Hope you are enjoying your day. 

We value our first-time customers and look forward to serving you to the best of our ability. 

Let me see how I can help you today.”

This opening will encourage the customer to speak up and make them feel comfortable. This approach will nurture business relationships, thereby attracting customers.

In the third scenario, let us consider a returning customer who is agitated. The customer has been constantly trying to reach out to a live agent for a refund. However, the refund policies do not favour the customer’s request. In this case, the chatbot may begin the conversation in the following way.

“Hello, Jane.

We hope you are having a great day. I saw your previous interactions with our brand and see that you have requested a refund. I assume you are waiting for the refund at the earliest. 

Feel free to ask any queries.”

If the chatbot isn’t able to convince the customer, the best way to deal with the customer will be to escalate the chat and connect to a live agent. 

Wrap up

Artificial Intelligence is the trending technology in the current market scenario. Chatbots functioning on artificial intelligence and natural language processing is ruling the communication ecosystem. Adopting these technologies through chatbots is a great idea to enhance your medium of business communication. 

Chatbots help personalise every customer interaction and deliver contextual experiences. This results in satisfied customers along with savings on budget. This post details a few points on the importance of chatbots in the business communication space along with a few icebreakers to initiate these conversations effectively.