Whether it’s a company offering a tried-and-tested product or the most innovative service, it is in their best interest to have a healthy and highly visible social media presence – especially since social media now play an important role in the decision-making process of consumers. A survey from We Are Social revealed that the total number of active social media users has increased to over 3.4 billion people worldwide, and at least 84% of their respondents participate in e-commerce activities.
It is not enough anymore to just create social media pages; companies must also ensure that they remain relevant and active in interacting with their customers in order to maintain a good relationship with them especially when it comes to customer service efforts and initiatives.
From only a decade ago when the only mode of contact was a toll-free number, social media is now the predominant method of consumers in engaging with companies, even considering it as the most convenient mode of communication.
According to IBM, businesses spend over US$ 1.3 trillion on 265 billion customer service calls each year while Aspect Software estimates that one customer service transaction can cost up to US$ 50. However, staffing a 24/7/365 contact center is impractical, especially since an Ovum survey showed that majority of customers actually prefer communicating with a company through chat or through their social media platforms.
“A poor online customer experience will prevent 3 out of 5 customers from making future purchases from a brand,” and only 2% of those dissatisfied customers will actually reach out to the contact center to complain. Majority of them will definitely tell their friends and family while some will go out of their way to post a negative review on forums or the company’s social media pages to be seen by the whole world; but all of these may be avoided with the right social media strategy in place.
Chatbots
One effective strategy a company should choose in response to these are chatbots, a quick way to automate human interaction for basic support services that can easily filter out more urgent inquiries and reroute customer concerns to a live agent when necessary.
This solution is just one component of companies' digital transformation journey and its implementation is easy since it can be seamlessly integrated into any platform from websites, apps, email, and especially on social media.
Chatbots have made their mark across social media platforms, most especially on Facebook Messenger which has over 1.3 billion actively sending around 8 billion messages between businesses and people every month. Over 300,000 chatbots are now being used on Messenger, making it one of the most important platforms for effective customer service.
Chatbots are effective, and they also bring many benefits.
Chatbots boost response rates. Integrating a chatbot into a company’s system will effectively cut the resolution time from 38 hours to just 5.4 minutes when it comes to Tier 1 inquiries. This 99% improvement in response times is a critical asset in maintaining a company’s brand as well as retaining customer loyalty.
Chatbots are also cost-effective. Using this solution leads to a drop in per-query cost from the US$15-US$200 used on human agents to just US$1 that is going to be used on the virtual agents. The opportunity cost that was lost every time a customer drops a call due to long waiting times is also reduced with this solution.
Chatbots are the customers’ choice. 55% of consumers have expressed their preference of talking to businesses using chatbots, and a survey by Userlike revealed that chatbots are also making a good impression as proven by consumer’s willingness to chat with a bot for simple inquiries such as product specifications, order status, and shipping; some would even trust it to pay their bills.
Human Interaction
Choosing to use chatbots does not mean completely eliminating human agents in customer service. Based on the Voxpro CX Index, some consumers still want human-to-human interactions when they engage with brands for a variety of needs. Customers want to talk to chatbots as if they were people too, but knows when it is time to escalate an inquiry to an actual human agent. Due to the decrease in customer service cost, which can be reduced by up to 30%, companies can now make their communication lines more effective by allowing their human agents to respond to the more complex inquiries – maximizing their resources both online and offline.
There are companies who are still using their social media page as a blog page with customers posting issues on the same and company representatives replying back to amicably resolve the queries. Not only does this take valuable man-hours from company representatives, it also makes the comments visible to the network of people who visit the social media page. Effectively using Chatbots could resolve the same to quite an extent- with automated responses to frequent questions and a one-on-one conversation with the customer, chatbots are increasingly forming the very core of a company’s social media strategy. People love to talk, and providing them with an effective platform to communicate with the company that is always available and responds to their inquiries as soon as possible may just be what saves a company’s reputation – and budget – in the long run.
We in QuickReach understand these fundamental shifts in the industry. With our pre-built Self-Service Customer Support Solutions and Digital Transformation Consulting offerings, we can definitely assist you on your digital transformation no matter what phase of the journey you're in.
Should you want to discover more about our offerings or if you have questions or opinions to offer on the article above, feel free to connect with us at team@quickreach.co!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
We Are Social. (2019). Digital in 2019. Retrieved from https://wearesocial.com/global-digital-report-2019
Reddy, T. (2017). How chatbots can help reduce customer service costs by 30%. Retrieved from https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson/2017/10/how-chatbots-reduce-customer-service-costs-by-30-percent/
Galert, A. (2018). Chatbot Report 2018: Global Trends and Analysis. Retrieved from https://chatbotsmagazine.com/chatbot-report-2018-global-trends-and-analysis-4d8bbe4d924b
Cooper, P. (2018). 41 Facebook Stats That Matter to Marketers in 2019. Retrieved from https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-statistics/#business
Leah. (2019). What Do Your Customers Actually Think About Chatbots? Retrieved from https://www.userlike.com/en/blog/consumer-chatbot-perceptions
Voxpro. (2018). Voxpro Survey Reveals Consumer Preferences for Engaging with Chatbots for Customer Experience. Retrieved from https://info.voxprogroup.com/success-voxpro-cx-index?submissionGuid=0fcd422f-7e36-4e37-8bb2-c34d4de7f934
Maruti Techlabs. (2017). Can Chatbots Help Reduce Customer Service Costs by 30%? Retrieved from https://chatbotsmagazine.com/how-with-the-help-of-chatbots-customer-service-costs-could-be-reduced-up-to-30-b9266a369945