Chatbot technology can do a lot. It’s not just for answering questions anymore (though that’s certainly still helpful).
Today’s chatbots can offer support in multiple languages, instantly route conversations to human representatives, score and enrich leads, and supercharge your go-to-market strategy.
For those reasons, the benefits of chatbots are endless. With chatbots, businesses can save time, grow revenue, and increase customer satisfaction — all at once.
Below, we cover the biggest chatbot benefits for businesses and customers alike, and how you can realize them for yourself.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
- The Benefits of Chatbots for Business
- The Benefits of Chatbots for Customers
- How You Can Set Up Your Chatbot for Success
Benefits of Chatbots for Business
Today’s businesses aren’t just using their chatbots to automate responses. Instead, chatbots are helping enhance the entire customer experience. Here are the exciting benefits that businesses can reap from chatbots 👇
Convert Website Traffic
The average conversion rate on a website generally sits between 2-5% according to Wordstream. That means marketers put a lot of effort into driving traffic that largely goes to waste.
One of the most effective ways we see chatbots being used is to help nudge leads into taking action through conversation. Sometimes a quick question or a proactive offer to help can be the difference between an average conversion rate and a pipeline full of qualified leads.
Gong’s Brunbot is always ready to greet site visitors, providing them with a variety of options to help them get to what they need faster. If a site visitor selects the option to learn more about Gong’s platform, the chatbot instantly provides them with information about their revenue intelligence solution and then resources to help them assess if they’re a good fit for Gong — all in the same conversation.
Chatbots can help convert website traffic no matter the conversion goal. For top-of-the-funnel content, like webinar landing pages, chatbots can guide leads through the registration process in a single conversation — no forms required. And on high-intent pages, like pricing and request a demo pages, chatbots can answer any lingering questions so that leads will be ready to start the sales conversation.
Generate More Qualified Leads
Having chatbots means you’ve got a new channel for buyers to interact with — one that’s a lot more enjoyable than filling out a form. As a result, chatbots can drive more (and more qualified) leads from your website.
Here’s an example: PTC uses their chatbot to collect high-intent leads that are browsing their product pages. The chatbot collects basic information, like the person’s name and email address, along with conversational data that gives insight into their leads. This includes the options they chose in the chatbot sequence, the questions they asked, and the products they demonstrated interest in.
Like PTC, you can set up your own chatbot to gain insight into what your leads need help with or why they’re interested in your company — and then you can grab their name and email. This not only enables you to capture leads in a personable way, but chatbots can also zero in on what your leads need which allows you to qualify them more quickly.
Score and Enrich Leads
Chatbots not only help you drive leads. They also help you manage those leads so you can nurture them and close deals faster.
Conversation Qualified Leads (CQLs) are leads that are qualified based on the conversations they’ve had with your chatbot. Because CQLs use information provided directly by your leads, it takes the guesswork out of the qualification process, making them more reliable than marketing qualified leads.
CQLs can be automatically scored by your chatbot — this way, sellers know which leads are the most likely to buy soon and can spend their time on deals with an excellent chance of closing.
But it gets even better for your sales team. Chatbots offer a 360-degree view of your leads so that you can gain insight into their intent and enrich them using that information. With chatbots, sales reps will know the content and products their leads care most about, and they can use that information to personalize their emails and LinkedIn messages. Plus, when the time comes to have a person-to-person conversation, sales reps will be able to dive straight into the topics that matter, leading to more meaningful interactions.
Automate the Customer Journey
If you’re looking to scale your marketing, chatbots can be a major help. By using chatbots to automate the customer journey and bring customers deeper down your funnel, you can cultivate relationships hands-free — only interacting human-to-human when the customer is ready.
One way you can do this is by setting up chatbot sequences based on the number of times someone has visited your website and the pages they’ve viewed. Here at Drift, we use a “Hey there! You’re back 👋” message to welcome returning site visitors, which offers them a different experience than someone on our site for the first time.
We call these retargeting sequences — and they’re some of the most effective because they acknowledge that the site visitor is already further along in the buying journey, which helps to move the conversation along faster. As a result, these chatbots help retain potential buyers and generate more pipeline from the middle of your funnel.
Seamlessly Pivot Between Bots and Humans
At the end of the day, chatbots aren’t out to replace your human representatives. They’re there to work with your team to deliver a better customer experience.
With conversation routing rules, your chatbots will pull in your team — be it a sales development rep, account executive, or customer success manager — when it’s time for a human to join the conversation. That means you’ll get the benefit of instantly and effortlessly managing as many conversations as possible, while automatically routing conversations to human reps as needed.
Routing rules also allow you to offer customized experiences to your site visitors. You can set up rules for specific target accounts or customers (so that special folks are automatically given the human treatment) and for specific sequences (so that, for example, when a person answers a question a certain way, they’re routed to a human). The routing rules are easy to set up and manage, so you never have to worry about any operational nightmares behind-the-scenes.
Save Time for Sales Reps
As mentioned above, chatbots empower your human teams to focus on what matters most without having to deal with repetitive, distracting tasks. This makes a big difference, especially when it comes to your sales team.
Sales teams are responsible for a large portion of the revenue that every company generates. That means the more efficient they are, the more revenue growth you can achieve. And even incremental improvements can make a big difference.
For example, State Street Global Advisors ramped up sales efficiency by 10% — to the tune of an additional $65 million in revenue. The secret to their success was:
- Accelerating time to revenue by connecting sales reps with leads faster
- Instantly getting sales reps up to speed with each lead’s needs
- Deflect traffic by automating responses to frequently asked questions
With chatbots ready to answer questions and engage with site visitors at all times, you will be able to give your sales reps back their time and boost their efficiency in the process. And if you want to further supercharge your sales efficiency, AI chatbots can provide flexible responses based on your site visitors’ input, which means you can deliver a personalized experience with minimal human intervention.
Make Your Customer Service More Efficient
Chatbots are also excellent at saving time for your customer service team. Since customer service is easier to automate than consultative buying experiences, you can use chatbots to reduce the time spent on manual tasks so that your team can focus on high-priority tickets.
For example, data protection company 1Password implemented chatbots on their website to respond to support inquiries in real time. With chatbots, their customer service team has been able to instantly serve up solutions to common issues while also routing to live conversations when a customer needs more advanced support. As a result, they saved 16,000 support hours in their first six months with chatbots.
Like 1Password, to scale your customer service successfully, your chatbot needs to be trained with pre-written responses for common customer queries. With the addition of AI chatbots, you will also be able to respond accurately to a larger variety of customer questions and deflect more traffic away from your team — exactly as 1Password has done with 75% of their support inquiries.
With your chatbot, you can instantly direct customers to FAQs, return portals, sizing charts, tutorial videos, live webinar registrations, and more. Plus, by offering a way for customers to contact your customer service team, you can ensure your customers still get five-star service in case the chatbot can’t handle their issue.
Benefits of Chatbots for Customers
There’s plenty of good news for customers too. With chatbot technology, you can deliver these benefits to anyone who visits your website.
Self-Serve Experiences
We’ve all witnessed the rise of self-service experiences — everything from easily generating an Amazon return label to upgrading a Netflix account to ordering a milkshake on a touchscreen kiosk.
Because of this demand, the self-service technology market is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.7% between 2020 and 2027.
Chatbots respond to site visitors 24/7/365, which means they are always available to interact with visitors — regardless of whether a representative is online or not. This makes for a faster, always-on experience that meets the expectations of your modern customers. So, by rolling out well-trained chatbots on your website, you can cater to your site visitors’ not-so-secret desire to take care of things themselves.
Instant Personalization
When you have a chatbot on your website, all your customers get the benefit of receiving a personalized experience that is unique to them and their needs.
For example, Mitsubishi Electric offers numerous solutions to a range of customers across different industries. That’s why the first thing their chatbot does when a site visitor expresses interest in their solutions is allow them to self-select the description that best fits them.
From there, with just one click of a button, the site visitor gets a personalized experience. For instance, if someone picks the “printing/converting” option, the chatbot serves up the relevant solutions page and then offers to introduce them to their sales team.
Without a chatbot like the one Mitsubishi uses, website visitors would have to work much harder to receive personalized help — they would have to click through multiple web pages and hunt for resources. But, with chatbots, you can serve up that personalization instantly, ensuring that all your site visitors are getting the help they need.
Faster Response Times
Your sales and customer support teams aren’t the only ones who are looking to make the most efficient use of their time. Customers love saving time too. In fact, 83% of customers now expect to interact with someone immediately when they get in touch with a company.
By crafting efficient, always-on chatbots, you can instantly respond to customers and give their time back to them. Not only will this make your customers happy in the moment, but it will also reinforce their desire to do business with your brand in the long term. But, if you fail to deliver quick responses, your customers may decide to take their business elsewhere.
The best way to boost response times with chatbots is to start by coming up with playbooks that answer common questions and queries. Then, to take your experience to the next level, you can roll out AI chatbots so that you can accurately respond to a broader range of customer needs.
Multilingual Support
When you expand your business to a new geographical market, you want to be delivering a high-quality experience that rivals your original market — and that’s why multilingual experiences are crucial.
With chatbots, you can provide support, resources, and personalized buying experiences in the languages that your customers would most like to use. By offering support in the languages your customers prefer (rather than forcing them to converse in English), you can accelerate your deal cycles while also wowing your customers and making your brand more empathetic and human.
Connect Quickly with Human Reps
While it’s true that chatbots are extraordinarily helpful, sometimes you just need to talk with a human. For customers, chatbots offer a fast track to a real human — and with less frustration than arranging phone calls, sending emails, or scouring through help centers.
Depending on the nature of your company and how you structure your customer-facing teams, you can give all website visitors the opportunity to chat with sales or limit it to just contacts from target accounts.
Plus, if you have an account-based marketing strategy, you can give your ideal buyers a fast track to their specific sales representatives. You can also do the same with existing customers by connecting them to their dedicated service reps. By connecting the right reps with the right customers, you can ensure that you’re simultaneously delivering a human-first and digital-first experience.
Setting Up Your Chatbot for Success
Something with all of these benefits can take a good amount of work to set up. If your chatbot is obnoxious, repetitive, or just plain useless, you certainly won’t experience these benefits.
But don’t fear. We at Drift have developed very clear guidelines that you can follow to set up your chatbot for maximum success 👇
Ultimately, no matter how you choose to use it, your chatbots should serve up a better experience for your customers. So, make sure these bot flows are engaging, helpful, and informative — including not asking too many qualifying questions, offering multiple CTAs, and clearly communicating the value of your business.
Don’t forget: Just because they’re bots doesn’t mean they have to be robotic. Let your chatbots be a mouthpiece for your brand, so that all your buyers and customers can have a memorable experience that will ensure your brand stands out from the crowd.
Want to learn how you can use conversations to deliver a unified customer experience across all your go-to-market teams? Check out our book, The Go-to-Market Guide to Drift.
Experience the Benefits of Chatbots with Drift
Altogether, chatbots offer a better and more conversational experience, which leads to a wealth of benefits for both businesses and customers. So, in short, if you’re not using chatbots, you’re missing out.
Drift is designed for go-to-market teams who want to drive more leads, cater to their target accounts, and serve their customers faster. Drift’s Conversation Cloud unifies all your revenue teams so that you can deliver more engaging and personalized experiences with the power of real-time conversations.
Take Drift out for a test drive to see what a chatbot would look like on your own website. Or, request a demo today to find out everything that your business can achieve with Drift.