You don’t even have to put as much effort into creating a chatbot as you would into developing a website, for example. For that, you need to use basic constructors that will help you get the job done

With the right blend of chatbot lead generation tactics, you can generate leads with ease. 

If your prospective customer hunt is ineffective, we can guide you on how to use chatbots correctly. We’ll show you how to use auto-pilot chatbot tactics for successful lead generation.

Today, innovative marketers use AI-enabled chatbots to engage with prospects 24/7.  They help to automate sales and lead generation procedures even when the staff is offline/ off duty.

— Did you know? 28% of top-performing companies use AI for capturing leads?

So, let’s start with knowing how chatbots can put your lead generation on autopilot.

Five Solutions: Auto Pilot Chatbots and Lead Generation

The following are the top 5 ways through which you can put your lead generation on autopilot.

Comprehend the Target Audience

Knowing the target audience’s preferences is crucial to a successful lead generation campaign. For instance, it is the festive season and you need to give gifts to your neighbor and best friend. Your friend’s gift won’t take much time, as you know the person pretty well. But choosing the neighbor’s gift will be time-consuming, as you are unsure of their preferences. 

For a company, every prospect is like a neighbor. This is where the chatbots converse and get to know what the customer is looking for. 

Chatbots allow you to determine customer product preferences, likes, dislikes, and that creates engagements.

Custom-made chatbots interact with consumers via interesting surveys, quizzes, infographics, and random questions. Using this chatbot data, marketers understand the top products, worst performing products, and even new ideas. These could yield ideas for new marketing and sales techniques, price alterations, and service improvements.

Chatbots Replace Forms

Form filling has become a time-consuming chore. It isn’t intriguing or engaging in the least. Chatbots can replace these forms cost-effectively to generate leads.

Chatbots ask for more information from the user and streamline the data collection process. Even if a consumer does not need to make a purchase, your lead-generating strategy will benefit in the future. 

Users are willing to respond to chatbots. Create a chatbot that can inquire about a user’s name, email, phone number, address, and other information. By providing autofill choices, you can save the consumer time by having them type less and this speeds the filling-up process.

Chatbots Creates Engagement & Trust

Quick responses and answers to a visitor’s query build trust. Chatbots keep users engaged by giving immediate help and being available at all times. This gives users the impression that there is a brand they can trust at all times.

People trust chatbots because they are non-intrusive and always consider the customer’s choices.  For instance, marketers feel that customer service is best experienced when they use chatbots. If customers have any problems with their shopping experience or their account, they seek help from the bot for help.

Hence, we suggest using chatbots to enhance lead generation.  It develops a lasting relationship with clients.

Audience Segmentation for Optimized Lead Generation

Imagine creating a tour package for US travelers that is meant for Indian citizens. It would surely detract from the customer’s experience. In keeping your material current, segmentation is crucial. It also boosts the effectiveness of your lead creation approach.

Instead, when chatbots collect information from customers, lead generation becomes optimized and streamlined. Chatbots collect information based on a variety of characteristics such as demographics, interests, age, and gender. If a customer falls into a specific category, you can interact with him using the solution.

Bounce Rate Reduction Strategy

Have customers left your website since they can’t access correct information in real-time? It happens, and chatbots can make the best of the situation. 

Lead generating chatbots have proven to be the most effective technique for engaging users who are about to leave your site or abandon their online shopping basket.

How can chatbots reduce website bounce rates?

Support: Lead bots give them real-time sales support, and that is exactly what they require.

Reduce bounce rate: Provide customers instant assistance while they are on your website. It allows them to make quick purchasing decisions and reduce the bounce.

Increase conversion rate: Customers are more likely to make a purchase when bots provide them with the right information at the right time. 

Why is Autopilot Chatbot Lead Generation important?

Chatbots can help businesses enhance their sales, customer service, marketing, and customer experience. Bots improve operational efficiency and reduce costs for organizations while increasing customer happiness. 

Forbes says, “80% of marketers plan to start using a chatbot in some way or another by 2021”

This is a major reason why companies are putting money into improving the consumer experience. The following are some of the benefits of using chatbots:

They Automate Sales Conversions

Chatbots pre-qualify prospects through specific question-answer interactions. The sales team uses this data to contact and establish sales conversions. Thus, chatbots automate sales funnels aesthetically.

They Provide better ROI

Chatbot implementation has resulted in an $8 billion cost-saving. Bots generate revenue by providing great chat experiences for your consumers. They are an investment that necessitates a full grasp of their purpose and how they’ll enhance, differentiate, or improve your overall service.

Bots Never Take Rest

Chatbots never get tired because they respond to sales inquiries immediately and 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sales bots ask questions that apply to your business and qualify leads. They help determine the visitors’ intent and decide what to say next, which is the secret sauce of lead nurturing.

Which Chatbot Type Is The Best?

Messenger marketing is the future of market

ng.  The greatest platform for using a chatbot for lead generation is Facebook Messenger. This makes it easier for users to learn about your services and products.

Facebook Messenger Chatbot

Using a Facebook Messenger chatbot to generate leads might be really beneficial. Users get to learn about your services and products, connect with you on Facebook Messenger, and talk to your brand directly from their social media profile. Lead nurturing and chatbot lead-generating methods will be more successful if you have more connections and engaging conversations.

Why Facebook? 

— Because the most prominent feature of Facebook is ads for generating leads on autopilot.

Here are the top benefits of Facebook lead ads:

Native Functionality

With Lead Ads, users can enter their information via an auto-filled form without ever leaving the platform. By maintaining your lead on Facebook with little navigation, you avoid disturbing the user experience.

Highly-Targeted Segments

Facebook Lead Ads enable segmentation based on interests, demographics, and other factors. This way, your Facebook ads can target those who are interested in your product or service.

Responsiveness To Mobile Devices

As the app itself is optimized for multiple gadgets, Facebook Lead Ads are highly mobile-friendly. With its responsive design, your leads will complete your form regardless of whatever device they use to view your adverts.

Data Collection Made Simple

Lead Ads allow advertisers to gain information from potential buyers directly. The platform is technologically smart and equipped to help you get a new lead. Without a landing page or conversion funnel, we can readily integrate the data with your CRM.

In A Nutshell

Chatbots are the future of business. According to Business Insider, by 2020, 80 percent of businesses will use chatbots. You must be a part of that 80% if you want to build your business.

Though traditional lead generation tactics are used, chatbot lead creation tactics pave the way for generating more quality leads. Effective here means having the customers who are ready to pay you.

If you don’t have a lead generation bot yet, you will miss out on valuable lead creation possibilities.

The post How Chatbots Can Put Your Lead Generation On Auto-Pilot? appeared first on Botsify.

The benefits of content marketing are numerous and can positively impact a business’s overall marketing strategy. By creating valuable and informative content, businesses can attract and retain their target audience’s attention, build trust and credibility, improve SEO, increase website traffic, generate leads, and ultimately drive revenue growth

So, if you’re planning a content marketing campaign right now or you want to streamline your existing strategies, it’s time for a primer on how you can improve.

1. Have an FAQ section

No matter what industry you’re in or how simple you think your business’s concept is, your customers will always have questions. You can use these questions to gain your customers’ trust, but it’s also a great SEO opportunity. 

Your Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section can’t just be a random collection of questions. You need to design the section based on what your customers actually ask your support staff or sales reps.

You can also devise your FAQ section based on your competitors’ pages.

Once you’ve compiled the questions, you need to decide how you’re going to organize them. You can have one main page for each concept and have links to specific queries about it. Or split every concept into different pages with related FAQs on the same page.

Nlyte, for example, has a detailed FAQ page that breaks down its highly technical products and services. The FAQ page on Nlyte’s website about edge data centers is a great example of how to do things right. 

The company explains each concept meticulously, and links to relevant studies with a ‘Learn More’ call-to-action (CTA) button. Every section on the page is also clearly divided so that readers can digest the concepts better. 

At the bottom of their page, there’s another CTA, “View all FAQs,” that leads back to the main FAQ page. 

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Inter-linking sections are also a must. Don’t make your readers go back to the start after every question. Instead, you can lead them down a planned route of related queries that tell them more about your products.

Another smart tactic that Nlyte employs is having a form that you can use to download its ebook. The form lets Nlyte gather user information while helping users who are still in the early stages of the buyer’s journey.

You can use forms to allow users access to any informational resource, be it a case study, whitepaper, report, or eBook, in exchange for their email address.

To further step up your game, crop relevant videos available online and add them to the various FAQs. This will grab the attention of the users instantly. Make sure to check your content for plagiarism and grammatical errors as these hamper a brand’s image.

2. Optimize your live chat

Salesforce’s 2020 study revealed that 83% of customers expect to engage with someone immediately when contacting a company.

Customers love live chat because it provides instant resolutions with a human touch.

While most companies offer live chat these days, it’s worth re-examining whether your customers’ live chat experiences are the best they could be.

Design your live chat in a way that helps you address customer needs quickly, keeps them engaged, and at the same time helps you segment your buyer personas.

If you use an intuitive chatbot, then you have another opportunity to link customers to your FAQ page or some other helpful content on your site.

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The idea is to create an interwoven system of links that can lead customers to your content. It provides value to the customer, and they keep coming back more. 

Some businesses are leveraging this by adding 1-2 FAQ links as soon as customers click on the Live Chat button.

3. Use review articles and lists

Review articles and lists combine the best of both worlds. It’s scannable content that’s easy to digest and simultaneously proves your expertise.

SEMrush’s research showed that lists get 80% more traffic than other types of articles.

A “top X” or “ X best” list, such as this review of the top credit repair companies, allows you to build authority. You can establish your experience in the niche with a detailed review for each item on the list. List-based reviews also show that you’re not biased. You’ve included competitors in the article, which goes a long way. 

From a marketing standpoint, review lists create a simple process that converts readers into buyers. A user that is interested in a book summary app, for example, is already showing buying interest in the product. 

When they read a review showing that your app is the best, you can lead them down the sales funnel with the right links and CTAs.

In the top credit repair companies example, they included partner links that send users to a registration form rather than a generic homepage.

4. Nail your keyword research

If your goal is to exponentially grow organic traffic, then you need to pursue the right topics.

Choosing a topic that is high volume but too competitive will likely lead to you never ranking on the first page and generating meaningful traffic. Likewise, choosing a topic that is low volume might be easier to rank for, but the traffic potential might not be high enough to make it worthwhile.

Finding the sweet spot will depend on your own site’s authority, and your resources for promotion and link building. An industry leader will be pursuing very different keywords compared to a brand new personal blog.

Before you start writing, check out the data. Look for search volumes, and look at competition. What’s the maximum potential traffic you could gain by ranking #1? How authoritative are the current ranking domains? How many backlinks do their pages have? Taking the time to include this step in your content planning will prevent you from wasting time on keywords without good potential. You can do this by using a research tool such as Ahrefs or Mangools.

5. Create clickable headlines

With thousands of blogs and social media posts shared every day, you need to find a way to make users stop scrolling and give your content a chance.

This is impossible if your headlines aren’t relatable or engaging. Depending on the topic, you need to create headlines that evoke emotions, make users curious to find out more, or solve user problems.

You should also optimize your headlines and titles for SEO. They need to be close to what users actually search for on Google.

For example, someone looking to start a podcast will do a search looking to figure out how they can profit from it regardless of their niche. The phrase “How to Make Money Podcasting” is a common question, which is why Buzzsprout’s article is titled exactly that. 

On average, list and how-to headlines were the best performers in 2020.
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Other SEO tactics like the length of the headline, keywords, etc., are dependent on the niche. Viral pop or news-based articles, for example, have lengthy, emotion-based titles, while B2B guides and explainers have succinct titles that get straight to the point.

But for most industries, longer headlines perform better than shorter ones.

6.Prove your worth

After years of content marketing campaigns, customers can sniff out short form PR pieces easily. Search engines also have algorithms to flag this kind of content and automatically give them a lower SERP ranking.

You can’t just say you’re the best in your niche. Your content needs to prove it. It must be in-depth and provide more value than your competitors.

In recent years, content that is 5,000+ words in length performs better than shorter articles (500-1,000 words). 

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Longer articles provide in-depth information to users, making them more likely to share either the whole article or parts of it.

For example, monday.com’s guide to project management is a great example of long-form content. Using multiple neatly divided sections and images, the article delves into every aspect of project management.

The article isn’t a pushy sales pitch either, with the CTA to use the platform only appearing at the end. While every user who reads the guide isn’t going to use Monday.com or a Monday.com alternative, they’re likely to share the article, which leads to more exposure and more potential leads.

It’s worth noting that shorter pieces are also valuable for users who just want a quick answer. 

Ideally, your content marketing strategy will involve multiple long-form pieces complemented by shorter articles.

7. Make it mobile-friendly

Mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 54.8% of global website traffic in the first half of 2021.

Mobile usage has become more prominent since 2017, and a majority of users have grown to expect seamless experiences regardless of the device they’re using.

Both your website and content must be mobile-friendly. This might seem obvious, but less than 25% of companies invested in mobile optimization as a top SEO tactic in 2019.

With more and more customers buying products directly from their phones, both B2B and B2C companies need to create mobile-friendly experiences, regardless of organization size. Expanding your content strategy to mobile-friendly apps like infographics for Instagram, video content for Youtube or recording a podcast for Spotify could be a game-changer. 

LFA Capsule Fillers is a B2B business that sells empty capsules. While this may seem like a relatively small niche, its website has a good score on Google’s mobile-friendly test.

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8. Leverage customer reviews

Customer reviews are the best way to gain a new user’s trust. Verified buyer or user reviews vouching for a product or service are perceived to be a fair indicator of the product’s quality and performance.

By leveraging customer reviews and adding them to your landing pages, you can help new customers buy your product or service.

Swagbucks, a coupon and cash-back shopping platform, has reviews and ratings by registered members listed right below its Old Navy coupons. A site giving away coupons might seem a little untrustworthy at first, but reading these reviews adds legitimacy to the platform. 

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Users will know that your brand is not all clever marketing and see that your products are worth the money. 

You can collect customer reviews through email campaigns, incentivized marketing campaigns or even through custom QR codes on product packaging or discount coupons.

9. Improve your website

A poorly made, flashy website with uncoordinated text and images will have users clicking off in seconds. 

Firstly, because it’s hard to read or comprehend anything, and secondly, because many customers liken the quality of your website to your business’s success.

When a user opens your website, a clean looking and personalized landing page with value-based copy and a descriptive CTA should greet them. 

Your homepage should use established brand colors and have relevant information at the top without being cluttered or messy. This way, users will find everything they need to know right off the bat.

You should also avoid generic CTAs like “Download,” “Submit,” or “Buy Now” throughout your website. Instead, focus on a descriptive CTA that isn’t pushy. 

If your landing page is offering a free eBook, your CTA button shouldn’t say “Download.” Use phrases like “Get your Free EBook Now” instead.

10. Look at the bigger picture

When you’re focused on improving your blogs or social media posts, it’s easy to get hyper-focused on that one specific element of your content marketing strategy. 

You’ll be so driven to improve your blog, for example, that you let your email marketing strategy fall behind and likely lose leads in the process.

It’s important for content marketers to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. See how everything is connected and create a strategy accordingly.

You should personalize your strategy for your specific audience. Do market research and competitor analysis to figure out what you’re doing right and where you can improve.

For example, if you’re running a streaming video website, you may want to check what type of content your competitors are publishing to discover content gaps and underserved niches

Most of the tips we’ve given above work regardless of your niche or target audience, but you can always take it a step further and cater to your specific customer base.

Final Thoughts

There’s no specific guide to streamlining your content marketing because every company is different, and their target audiences have particular expectations.

What might drive engagement and sales for most companies might not work for you because your customers are looking for something else.

The tips we’ve given above are just the starting point for your content marketing strategy. Use them and add your personal touch based on research to entice your target audience.

The post 10 Simple Hacks To Improve Your Content Marketing appeared first on Botsify.

The question is: do they really work?

Yes.

And I have proof.

But, before we get into the facts, take a look at this image:

In 2015, Microsoft found that users had an attention span of just 8 seconds, which is less than the average attention span of a goldfish.

An even more surprising (and recent) study suggests that the number is narrowing. 

We live in the age of universal information and customers are growing tired of it. Each day, they’re overloaded with new courses, new ads, new product launches, and new everything. 

What does this mean for you?

In an age where every brand is competing for attention, even if you have a solid marketing strategy for your website, the only way to stand out is to shift your focus from getting attention to earning the trust of your customers.

Here’s where chatbots come in.

Let’s discuss why… 

Why trust is more profitable than attention

It’s easier and cheaper to drive sales from repeat customers than it is to acquire new ones. 

Once existing customers trust your brand, they’re more likely to return.

Take a look at eCommerce retail giants like Amazon, for example. The company spent decades building audience trust, and, as a result, direct traffic to the site makes up 57% of its total traffic — a strong indication that many online shoppers start their purchasing journey on Amazon.

But building long-term relationships with your audience doesn’t happen overnight (if only it were that easy). So how can you increase customer retention?

Improving your customer service is a good place to start.

This is easier said than done, of course, but the reality is customers are unlikely to return if your business delivers poor customer service. Using chatbots can improve the customer experience and drive more sales. Improving customer experience through customer support has proven to increase revenue up to 15% while also boosting customer satisfaction by around 20%.

That said, let’s look at why chatbots are the future of customer retention, as well as a few practical tips you can implement into your online operations.

Why chatbots are key to customer retention

Chatbots are programs powered by artificial intelligence (AI) software, and simulate digital conversations, using natural language processing (NLP), with users through websites and messaging applications. NLP helps chatbots understand customer questions and requests and reply back to messages with the appropriate response (think Siri and Alexa). 

If you’ve ever reached out to a company for help, there’s a good chance you’ve interacted with a chatbot development. The use of bots is accelerating at a rapid pace. Global revenue from the chatbot market is expected to reach an estimated $454.8 million dollars by 2027 (up from $40.9 million in 2018).

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The driving force behind this growth is quite simple — chatbots help companies provide better and faster customer service at scale.

Let’s take a closer look at the major reasons why chatbots are the future of customer retention. 

Faster response times 

We live in a hyper-connected world: Social media platforms like Facebook provide updates in real-time, and eCommerce platforms like Amazon let you choose same- or next-day delivery

The result of this connectivity? Consumers today are increasingly impatient, and even the slightest shipping delay can create unpleasant shopping experiences. 

The same also holds true for customer service. An estimated 90% of consumers rate immediate responses as important when they have a customer service question. 

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But what counts as “immediate”? According to Hubspot’s research, it’s 10 minutes or less.

Faster response times are ideal as two-thirds of consumers say that waiting for customer service is the most frustrating aspect of online shopping.

Customers today want quick answers and they want them now. Fail to meet those expectations and your customers likely won’t come back.

That’s where chatbots come in handy. Visitors on your site can interact with a chatbot and quickly get help with any customer service inquiries they might have. 

Chatbots even help companies get more online bookings. A Facebook chatbot is an ideal example of such a case.

24/7 availability

Customers may not be able to get help if your customer service team only operates during local business hours, and it’s impractical for your customer service team to schedule virtual meetings with every single customer. And if they can’t get help, they’ll likely look for an alternative, causing you to lose a sale. Plus, they are able to operate globally and respond in various languages, think of it as a self-service translation service.

Many companies already offer 24/7 customer support—even provide FAQ pages and create explainer videos, but handling queries around the clock isn’t exactly cheap and requires substantial resources. 

Chatbots are a more cost-effective solution and allow you to respond to customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So whether it’s early in the morning or way past midnight, customers can always get the information they need. In fact, 64% of online users say that 24-hour service is the biggest benefit of chatbots customer services reps. For example, this trial attorney’s office offers a 24/7 chatbot with a real person responding on the other side of the screen.

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Enhanced artificial intelligence

Understanding customer needs is key for growing a successful business, and allows you to deliver even better customer experiences. (Customers are willing to pay up to a 16% premium on products and services just by meeting and understanding their needs.)

Chatbots today are able to understand more complex queries, which allows them to detect intent and engage customers. 

Propel PLM has a chatbot that redirects customers based on their intent. If they are just browsing, the chatbot will recommend other interesting articles and blog posts. While reading this article about value chains on their blog, the chatbot will recommend other relevant articles.

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Personalized shopping experiences

Yet another reason why chatbots are the future of customer retention is their ability to deliver more personalized shopping experiences. A good example of this is the recommendation engine Amazon uses to display products based on customers’ order history.

But you don’t have to be as big as Amazon to take advantage of this technology.  For instance, if you had an educational company that built online courses for a particular niche, having the ability to customize the recommendations your students get based on prior purchases could be extremely beneficial.  

Personalization helps businesses deliver more relevant offers on their landing pages. A survey from McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, found that 80% of consumers want personalized experiences.

Luckily, chatbots aren’t limited to providing just customer support. They can be used to welcome back returning customers and help them make purchasing decisions. And depending on users’ responses, bots can direct customers to the appropriate product page to make a purchase. And if customers are interested in learning more about a topic, your bot can provide links to relevant guides and tutorials on your site.

For example, Breadcrumbs has a chatbot that asks different questions depending on what pages you are visiting on their site. For their email verifier feature, the bot is for example asking if you are “looking for your best leads”. 

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More customer insights

Soliciting customer feedback is always valuable. Not only does it show you value customers’ opinions, but it also lets you know where you can improve.

In addition to customer retention, chatbots are great for garnering user feedback. By understanding your customers, you can anticipate and remove any obstacles that might stand in the way of them completing another purchase.

Roughly 73% of customers expect companies to understand their needs, so use chatbots to get feedback from your customers.

Here’s an example of how IKEA uses its chatbot to gain customer insights.

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IKEA can identify areas of improvement with these insights. In this case, it looks like the furniture brand needs to make it easier for its customers to complete a purchase.

Lower operational costs

Being responsive to your customers is key to increasing retention, but if you’re a growing business, you might not have the resources to bring on and train a team of customer support representatives. And even then, support teams can only handle so many requests at a time. 

Chatbots reduce operational costs by speeding up response times, allowing support teams to focus on more complex issues. 

A study from Juniper Research predicted that chatbots will save businesses $8 billion by 2022. That figure is only expected to grow as more industries use chatbots to streamline customer service. Using one in your own business means lower overhead costs and increased profits.

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So far we’ve looked at the what of chatbots and the value they provide. Now let’s look at the how — how you can use them to increase customer retention.

How to use chatbots to increase customer retention

Customers have more choices than ever before, so if they’re not satisfied with your product or service, they can simply search for other alternatives. The same is equally true if the customer service you provide fails to meet their expectations.

To increase customer loyalty, you need to focus on their needs. Whether you’re an eCommerce business or a service provider, here’s how you can use chatbots to increase customer retention and close more sales.

1. Automate customer support

Chatbots are essentials for customer service and provide relief to your teams because they can be automated. 

Most of the questions going through chatbots are product questions. Answering inquiries like “What is your refund policy?” or “What is the status of my order?” over and over again just isn’t the best use of your support team’s time when they could be focused on other tasks instead.

Instead of having someone from your customer service team answer these questions, program a bot to automatically respond with optimized content. This gives your team more time to handle more complex projects than trying to retain customers who are waiting for an answer. 

Take a look at the following example of how Preply automates customer support.

In Preply’s chat window, customers have the option to search for articles in their extensive knowledge base before contacting support, streamlining the process.

2. Provide helpful resources

Visitors to your site might have additional questions or they may need help with a purchasing decision; this can especially be the case if you offer similar products with different features.

Chatbots can be programmed to provide visitors with helpful resources, including redirect links to tutorials or relevant educational articles on your site.

You can also program them to provide helpful resources to your visitors as Joy Organics does.

Users can click on Joy Organics’ provided resources to get more information on certain topics; and if they have additional questions, they can always start a conversation with the support team. The content shared by the chatbot must be free from grammatical errors. Run down the content through a tool like Grammarly or GrammerCheck

3. Include a photo

Chatbots can be scary when you don’t know who’s answering on the other side. If visitors have questions but think a robot will answer the chat, they might leave.

Adding photos of your customer support team will reduce the apprehension of using a chatbot and receiving automated answers. 

Check out how GoAura adds photos to their chatbot.

Adding a photo gives a more personal touch to your chatbot, which makes customers more likely to use them because they can “see” who’s on the other end.

4. Provide fast responses

As mentioned before, a common customer pet peeve is having to wait for customer support. Customers today simply don’t want to wait to get help, especially if they’re experiencing issues with your products or services.

Therefore, your customer chat function should feature an expected wait time for a response. This lets customers know how long they can expect to wait and if they should return later in the day.

In this example from Reply, the sales platform displays when the next member of the customer support team will be online.

Thanks to this feature, visitors know exactly when they can expect a response from Reply’s team; choosing to wait for a response or returning later for assistance.

If your customer support team isn’t available 24 hours a day, displaying an “away” message and giving customers the option to provide their email and query is a good approach, just like Frevvo does with its workflow automation software.

Thanks to the away message, customers know that someone will get back to them during office hours.

Another idea to integrate with your chatbot is to offer a texting option for direct support via phone, but the operation starts on your website. This treatment center in New York is a great example of that strategy

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This strategy is mostly used in the health industry. Indeed, it is easier to talk via phone to a patient than on a live chat. But starting the conversation on your website will always be the fastest way to get more patients. Here’s another example with BetterAddictionCare which is also using the text approach to get in touch with potential patients. 

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5. Have a backup plan

While chatbots can streamline customer support and increase retention, it’s important to have a backup plan in case visitors are unable to get the help they need. A survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers found that 86% still prefer interacting with a real person. Don’t hesitate to send a welcome email or call them, just to name a few ideas.

It’s perfectly acceptable to have chatbots provide helpful resources and answer frequently asked questions, but you should also give customers the option to reach a customer service representative. 

If a bot doesn’t understand a query, program it to redirect users to a live person, allowing your support team to assist customers with more complex issues or make use of any email management and marketing tools they have in place. 

Conclusion

Customer retention is absolutely essential for every business. Loyal customers are ultimately more profitable as they tend to spend more money on a trusted brand, and more likely to spread the word about your business, which, in turn, means free marketing.

But retaining customers isn’t exactly easy. If you fail to meet their expectations or deliver customer service in a timely manner, your customers are likely to look for other alternatives.

One way to increase customer retention is with chatbots. These AI-powered programs allow you to provide fast response times and can even be programmed to help your customers make purchases or schedule appointments.

If you’re looking for a chatbot to grow your business and engage your customers, then get started today with Botsify. Our platform makes it easy for customers to reach you, and getting started is easy with our drag-and-drop interface and templates.

And should you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team.

The post Why Chatbots Are The Future Of Customer Retention appeared first on Botsify.