Chatbot AI: How they help improve your organization's customer service

A chatbot AI is a type of Artificial Intelligence (AI) software designed to learn from human conversational behaviours. They are autonomous programmes that interact with users as if they were real people and whose general objective is to perform tasks without human supervision.

The main functionalities of the chatbot are related to:

• Time taken to solve a problem.
• The chatbot’s learning capacity from each conversation.
• The low maintenance costs.
• Their capacity to exist within other applications.
• Their low requirement for training.
• The possibility of self-service.

It is a technology that has become very popular in recent years among customer service departments in companies. According to a prediction by Gartner, by the end of 2020, 85% of customer interactions with businesses will be carried out via chatbot AI.

How does a chatbot AI work?

The chatbot AI is a programme that is constantly being updated, capable of learning from every conversation experience with people. It processes the data that is entered, with the aim of learning about users’ behaviours, tastes and, ultimately, anticipating their needs.

Regarding the use of this system, 61% of agents maintain that the chatbot AI saved the support team time because they could answer questions that didn’t require the involvement of a human agent.

The chatbot’s functions attempt to process language as a person would. It not only focuses on the meanings of words but can also learn new definitions from the contexts in which they are used. For example, a chatbot might not know what “building” means but can infer its meaning from the rest of the words in the sentence and capitalise on this learning in the future.

Machine learning: How does a Chatbot learn?

The term machine learning refers to the way in which the chatbot’s functions organise the new data it receives and that allow it to generate new knowledge for future actions. It is the software’s ability to progressively improve its performance as it gains more experiences from the conversations and the growth in the flow of information about customers.

Machine learning is also complemented by deep learning. Deep learning is a form of artificial intelligence inspired by the way any human brain works.

This type of artificial intelligence recognises speech, data and specific patterns. This information is then used to make decisions. But unlike us, humans, a chatbot AI can process much more data in much less time to find patterns and irregularities.

Advantages of the chatbot in the customer service system

The chatbot functions provide much faster responses to customers. 20% of agents’ working time is spent looking for information about customer problems, according to research by Zendesk.

Chatbots can link a company’s different service channels and respond efficiently every day of the week, regardless of the means used to enter the query or the time of day it was made. And this possibility is highly valued by customers. 66% of millennials say that the biggest benefit they enjoy from chatbots is the 24-hour service, according to a study by Statista.

To illustrate with an example, we can use Zendesk’s chatbot and the experience carried out by Spartan Race. Aja Varney (Director of Global Customer Engagement) said:

“The Answer Bot in the Web Widget has allowed our customers to resolve their questions themselves more easily and immediately, giving agents more time to deal with the more complicated issues. Thanks to the time savings of our agents, we’ve added 3 hours of chat coverage to the day”.

The chatbot AI works more efficiently with tickets that require less intervention from agents and yet are very frequent so that agents can concentrate on those incidents that do require human interaction.

According to research by American Express, 40% of US customers prefer to speak to an actual customer service agent on the phone when the problem is highly complex. With the implementation of the chatbot, customer service agents can save time to deal with the most complex issues and provide a quick response to these situations.

Apps vs chatbots

In recent times, company apps have begun to multiply but, due to the costs of maintenance, updates and the memory they occupy on customer devices, they have been losing their usefulness.

The chatbot AI, on the other hand, can be compatible with any of today’s most widely used instant messaging applications, thus avoiding the costs of maintaining our applications in both the Google Play Store and the Apple Store.

On the other hand, we will avoid competing with the large flow of apps uploaded to these platforms on a daily basis, which often means that customers cannot find our apps easily.

Tools designed to provide you with solutions

For customers, it is becoming more and more important every year that they are guaranteed good customer service after they make their purchase. One of the surveys carried out by Zendesk revealed that approximately half of the customers say that they would go to a competitor after having only one bad experience. In the case of more than one bad experience, this figure rises to 80%.

To improve your conversations with customers, Zendesk designed a super useful tool, Zendesk Chat, which is a live chat software. With it, you can be present in the customer’s life 24 hours a day, automatically providing possible solutions to problems that might otherwise cause unnecessary delays.

Jorge Vernetta, foodpanda’s global operations manager, highlighted the benefits of this tool and said that “with live chat, agents can handle multiple chats at once: waiting time is reduced and customers enjoy a better experience”.

Now that you’ve learned what a chatbot is all about and how it can help your business, we invite you to try out Zendesk’s chatbots, which will help you to organise the conversations with your customer. Explore it and learn how to save time and optimise user interactions in a single step!