Know it all with a chatbot for customer service

Chatbots are a great way for companies to keep up with growing customer expectations. As AI-powered solutions get more sophisticated, customers are more open to chatting with a bot. Indeed, Zendesk’s CX Trends 2022 Report found that 69 per cent of customers are willing to interact with a bot on simple issues.

And with good reason. Bots are fast and responsive. Plus, it’s a lot easier to be there for your customers with a chatbot on your team. When implemented correctly, they can bring benefits for both customers and companies. So let’s cover the nuts and bolts of how chatbots improve customer service.

Benefits for customers

Quick and convenient answers.

24/7 availability and quick responses are key to great customer service. But these demands can put a huge strain on your customer service teams. Fortunately, chatbots are great at searching large knowledge bases and picking out the right answers to customer questions. What’s more, they’re also available day and night. So you can respond to customers even when you’re sound asleep.

More personalised experience.

Like elephants, chatbots never forget. They remember information about customer preferences and previous interactions, which allows you to create more personalised experiences. Impress customers by recalling small details and tailoring solutions to suit their individual needs—all with an automated chatbot.

Benefits for companies

Fewer customer service queries.

Chatbots help deflect customer service calls and live-chat interactions by providing quick and simple answers from a knowledge base. This frees up your customer service agents to focus on more complicated issues. What’s more, chatbots are typically faster at providing simple answers than human agents. This means happier customers thanks to shorter wait times.

More efficient support process.

Even when things get a little too complicated, your chatbot can hand over seamlessly to your customer service team—complete with conversation history so your agents are already fully up to speed. No need to ask customers to repeat themselves or go back to the start of the support process.

Get chatting with Zendesk

Despite all the benefits, few businesses are using automated chatbots to their fullest. Not only are their customers missing out on better experiences, but these companies are missing an opportunity—because a majority of customers expect automation in future service interactions.

But fear not, Zendesk is here to help you integrate a chatbot and improve your customer service. Implement Answer Bot in minutes or build and connect your own custom chatbot solution with flexible APIs. Whichever route you choose, Zendesk makes it easy to impress your customers with fast and accurate answers to FAQs. But don’t just take our word for it, check out what two Zendesk customers have to say about their chatbot integrations.

The Boston Globe

As Boston’s oldest newspaper, The Boston Globe is one of America’s largest and most influential newspapers. And although the company has been printing physical newspapers since 1872, it now also offers readers digital subscriptions for all their daily news.

But digital subscriptions require digital customer service. And paying customers expect both 24/7 availability and a personalised service. That’s one tall task when you have more than 220,000 digital subscribers.

Undeterred, the newspaper decided to implement a chatbot so that it could continue providing award-winning customer service. The team chose to pair Zendesk with Ada’s no-code brand interaction platform, which helped deflect call centre traffic and improve the customer experience.

Now equipped with an automation-first approach, the company has posted some impressive stats:

• The chatbot has reduced live-chat volumes by 65 per cent.

• It also handles around 90 per cent of customer queries.

• Email first response time has improved 50 per cent—going from 24 to just 12 hours.

“We can now offer personalised, 24-hour support because the Ada chatbot, which we call GloBot, partners well with the Zendesk help centre. Customers are calling less and chatting with GloBot more. In fact, we’ve seen a 25 per cent increase in customer interactions with GloBot since the initial launch.” – Eric Witman, Lead CX Systems Specialist

Read the full customer story

ShopBack

ShopBack is the leading cashback reward platform in the Asia Pacific region, helping customers find great offers and earn cashback. Founded in 2014, the company’s service almost sounds too good to be true: offering people money for shopping.

That’s why ShopBack has always focused on providing a great customer experience, including partnering with Zendesk in 2015 to take advantage of both Zendesk Talk and Support. And after recognising how much a chatbot could improve customer support, the company took its next big step: implementing AI.

ShopBack’s chatbot (powered by Ada) now resolves 70 per cent of tickets automatically, intercepting more than a third of the 170,000+ queries ShopBack receives every month. In total, the chatbot now resolves 41 per cent of customer queries, and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores have gone through the roof for this channel.

“Although the chatbot instantly lifted a significant workload off our agent team, it’s a technology that adds more value with time. As our business and ticket volumes grow, the chatbot is continuously fed new information — it helps the algorithms understand new types of enquiries and ensure our customers get served with the most relevant answers. It’s also learning when to hand off to a human agent. We’re essentially implementing the chatbot to deliver a seamless experience where our customer is understood and feels supported.” – Phoebe Hoang, Regional Chatbot Lead at ShopBack

Read the full customer story