Is AI chatbot helpful in acquiring customers for companies?

As a business, acquiring new customers is essential to growth. This task is only becoming more difficult as companies vie for market share in an increasingly competitive landscape. This is where AI chatbots can help. By automating the process of customer acquisition, businesses can free up resources that would otherwise be used to manually contact potential leads. AI chatbots can do this by interfacing with potential customers through social media and other online channels and answering any questions they may have about the product or service. 

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AI chatbot technology is not a new invention, but its potential for customer acquisition is still largely untapped. Chatbots are computer programs that can mimic human conversation by understanding natural language and responding accordingly. They are designed to help customers with their product or service queries, gathering important information about the customer in the process.

Before we get into more about chatbots, we need to understand what are the steps preceding a customer acquisition. A potential lead doesn’t automatically turn into a customer. They visit your website, or visit your social media, they scout your products, they look for answers and eventually they decide. A chatbot will fill in the gaps between these by proactively reaching out to them and providing assistance. For example, when you visit a product page on Facebook, much later the same company’s chatbot will initiate a conversation on your Messenger. If the chatbot clears all the doubts that the prospect has, the prospect is likely to place the order. 

A chatbot has the potential to make a customer purchase-ready. It helps them come to a buying decision with consistent assistance. Here are a few things it helps with:

• Arranging a product demo
• Offer pricing or a quote
• Answering product-based questions
• Sharing catalogue of similar kinds of products
• Sharing product or service-related information for better guidance
• Scheduling callbacks with live agents

All these steps can be successfully fulfilled by a chatbot which can eventually lead to customer acquisition. 

1. Versatility:

Chatbots are software and therefore are capable of being used in any online center or communication hub. Small pop-ups on the screen can be used to initiate chatbot conversations. Mobile apps, websites, and social media channels are all easily accessible by chatbots. Any channel which exists online and is used for communication or interacting with people is practically accessible to be approached by chatbots enhancing reach and space of reach for any business. This also means that you are no longer hiring more people for these channels. Your live agents can be backed by these chatbots and secure your revenue from being shed. 

2. Availability 24x7:

Chatbots do not get tired or need breaks. They work tirelessly and constantly without any deterioration of work effort or output. Based on the pretext of information provided, they will work constantly and therefore provide customers the freedom of approach at any given time. Make your brand always available to the customer in any given language at any instance of time, making it the perfect customer-centric solution for service.
This is an essential function because prospects can browse your product at any given time. However, your sales team is only human and is available for limited hours every day. The chatbot picks up the remaining work and makes sure not to lose a prospect when your business is on snooze. 

3. All-In-One Solution:

Your chatbot can perform multiple tasks that are imperative to customer acquisition. A prospect desires the freedom to access information, browse products, read company policies, schedule a callback, place an order or even make payments. The chatbot is capable of performing all these tasks at different instances of engagement. The purchasing cycle is different for different industries. For example, for an E-commerce, the acquisition process is short, whereas for FMCG products, the process is lengthy. Based on that, you can embed chatbots at specific points in a customer journey or should I say lead journey. 
Chatbots provide a one-stop solution for every single level of engagement a customer has with the business and can be used in accordance with the brands’ time and need.

4. The Effective Handling and Automation of Data:

Chatbots store data of their previous interactions with each specific prospect. They are AI-driven and therefore have the capability of making the interactions with prospects more personal based on their already existing data. The data stored help understand the behavioral patterns and help assess when a prospect is most approachable. Such intentional data can also be used to ascertain a person’s thoughts on your given business helping you understand its scalability, pain points for customers, solutions tried by them, their ideal interactions, and preferred type of content. Proactive chatbots also make customer re-engagement far easier with the only simplistic task of telling a chatbot when to reach out after a set condition is met. This helps in understanding when to reach out to a customer for a repeat purchase as well. 

5. Customer-Centric:

Customers in today's day and age prefer to interact, instead of waiting. Customers prefer using chatbots for a lot of simplistic tasks such as making reservations, raising complaint tickets, product ideas, buying items, or even paying bills. Customers even prefer using chatbots instead of human agents as they fear waiting over an IVR or chat queue. The chatbot also helps ascertain the level of intensity of a customer's issue and agents manage more complex tasks at hand.

6. Investment Return:

While this is a familiar question related to all investments, we know the concern of ROI is typically in the top of the mind for the implementation of Chatbots. While I have a dedicated blog on ROI for Chatbots, it is important to know that the ROI is not limited to the deployment of chatbots but when compared to attrition of agents and training needs, the effect of ROI gets amplified. Overall a properly trained Chabot can bring over 3X in terms of ROI.

There is no doubt that a chatbot can do more than a live agent. It can without expecting extra resources from your business. It is a perfect solution to compliment your agents and passively engage customers for acquisition. Chatbots can always be fine-tuned to curate the ultimate experience for your customers. So the next time you think of customer acquisition, remember chatbot is your digital assistant and you should explore it. Contact our experts for a demo of the CZ-Bot.