The early days of the Internet spawned frequently asked questions, or FAQs. These digitized lists aggregated common questions, inquiries and issues, and provided useful information and answers. Organizations posted FAQs on websites to offer an around-the-clock help resource. They also helped offset inbound call volumes enabling live agents to handle more complex marketing, sales and support inquiries.
As FAQs evolved, more sophisticated tools were created, paving the way for knowledge management systems that provided platforms to structure data, index and search it. All of this bring us to chatbots.
Today more and more organizations across industries – are using intelligent chatbots to engage with people and navigate them to the information they seek when perusing a website. Chatbots are powering all types of deployments, from business-to-business and business-to-consumer, to business-to-employee. They are engaging, educating, and even entertaining.
Technologies like Drift make it easy to get started. The first step is figuring out where a chatbot can be inserted to improve your business. The most common are in marketing, sales, or customer care. To help guide you, here are three common use cases for chatbots – which will significantly improve conversation and conversion rates, reduce costs and deliver an impactful, brand experience.
Answer Questions — Chatbots turn FAQs inside out. Through playbooks – pre-determined scripts that ask an array of questions and ultimately drive prospects, customers and employees to specific outcome – organizations can pre-qualify inquiries and point them to the best resource. This can be product information, technical specs, pricing, a video, or perhaps a list of locations where to purchase. All of this can be achieved without requiring a live agent.
Enhance Your Brand — The influx of millennials and technology-savvy consumers are changing how companies connect and interact with customers and prospects. This generation expects to swipe and click and engage via chat sessions. Integrating chatbots offers a familiar medium to deliver an impactful customer experience and help reinforce your brand as a progressive company, much to the delight of tech-minded individuals. Playbooks can embody your company’s brand and unique persona.
Fast-Track Customers — Oftentimes customers have a quick question and seek a fast way to get answers. Chatbots can serve as a concierge, providing an automated way to fast-track inquiries to the most appropriate resource.
Like FAQs and knowledge management systems, chatbots are creating new and innovative ways to engage, interact, connect and deliver a real-time buying experience. Drift offers a cost-effective platform to get started. If you have a project in mind, we welcome the opportunity to help you frame it out.