Social Blue has successfully created and incorporated live chat and chatbots into client campaigns to produce higher lead quality. We’ll draw from our experience in sharing some insights.
1. Response time
Chatbots are more useful when a quick response is required. Delayed response time is one of the top 3 reasons why customers leave your website. 59% of customers are more likely to buy when brands answer their questions in just under a minute. Chatbots are preferable for FAQs – to automatically answer repetitive questions – and other straightforward questions.
An example of a chatbot that does this is GWYN, the IBM bot designed to help 1-800 Flowers, a floral and gourmet foods gift retailer. GWYN helps consumers search for and place their gift orders online. GWYN has a straightforward function – “she” helps you find the perfect gift and this gives 1-800-Flowers an edge over other companies selling gifts in terms of user experience.
2. Product necessity
The only time it is probable that a customer would be willing to wait for a response is in the case of a comprehensive answer in relation to a product that’s necessary to the extent that it could be life-impacting. You might want to get all your facts straight before purchasing an oxygen concentrator (a compact version of medical oxygen tanks) for instance. Chatbots might not be your best bet to get comprehensive, personalized responses to a very specific question. “A series of progressively simpler questions for the 1-800 Flowers chatbot yielded increasingly disappointing answers,” says one source.
Given that it is likely that a chatbot might be inaccurate at times or answer ambiguously, you wouldn’t want to take a gamble by purchasing a product that could potentially affect your health without understanding its intricacies. What if the bot misunderstood your question relating to the severity of your hearing loss/the operation of the oxygen concentrator? In this case, live chat would be more useful to address complex personal questions and detailed product specifications.
A live chat agent might take more than a few minutes to answer a question, but this is likely to provide greater customer satisfaction than a frustrating cryptic response from a chatbot. Research indicates that one live chat agent is enough for every unique 5000 views on your website. While it is true that new AI-driven bots can be trained to handle complex queries, most companies are still stuck with command-based chatbots.
A chatbot is preferable to live chat in case of products that aren’t necessary/products that are superfluous. A customer won’t wait around too long for a gift recommendation from an agent. A chatbot prevents users from getting impatient since it can generate answers in seconds, and simultaneously it is likely to engage them more. Customers are more likely to spend time on a website with a chatbot.
