“Consumers and businesses are increasingly using chatbot technology.
Here’s how chatbots are changing customer service, powered by artificial intelligence.”
What is a Chatbot? 
➥ Computer programs that simulate human communication (from the term “chatbot”) are known as chatbots. Customer service channels such as phone, email, and social media are combined with chatbots.
➥ It is possible to customize these programs and use them in a variety of ways. Customer service bots, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat are all part of our consumer lives.
How do chatbots work? 
Our daily lives are becoming increasingly influenced by technology, whether we realize it or not. Chatbots will be used more than spouses, according to Gartner.
In addition to the now classic channels of phone, email, and social media, more companies are using them to provide intelligent round-the-clock digital support. According to a recent study, 53% of service organizations expect to use chatbots within 18 months, with a growth rate of 136%.
Chatbots parse customer input to find articles containing certain words and phrases, then scan their database for relevant articles. A keyword-driven system retrieves documents based on keywords. It is possible, for example, for a cosmetics company to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can engage users by asking them about their makeup preferences, then recommend products and offers based on their answers.
This is because the chatbot is programmed to follow rigid rules and is unable to recognize how people speak naturally. You may have asked a question on a website and received an answer that wasn’t clear. That’s likely because the chatbot program recognized keywords in your request, but not the context in which they were used.
Chatbots And Automation: What’s More Effective For Business?
Chatbots can be used in both B2C and B2B scenarios. Chatbots have been found to have a wide range of uses, with 38% of decision-makers saying that they use these types of bots. These include finding products online (35%), customer service (24%), and lead generation (22%).
Call Center Support – Customers can assist themselves without speaking to an agent by interacting with an AI chatbot through a call center application. Their tasks include changing passwords, requesting account balances, and scheduling appointments.
Enterprise Support – A chatbot can integrate with a company’s back-end systems, such as inventory management or customer relationship management (CRM). The use of artificial intelligence bots makes it easier for sales reps to access phone numbers, and human resources teams to onboard new employees more quickly.
Digital Personal Assistants – Consumers can use chatbots to order groceries and book vacations on their mobile devices or computers. Chatbots play the role of personal assistants in apps like Siri and Cortana, or products like Amazon Echo with Alexa, or Google Home.
⤳ The benefits of chatbots include reducing costs by enabling self-service in simple scenarios, delivering relevant information faster, and improving customer satisfaction.
According to most service professionals, the following activities are mostly automated:
- Basic information gathering
- Case classification and routing
- Recommendation of next-best actions
- Transcription of customer interactions
- Soliciting customer feedback
The following are some specific ways AI chatbots help companies provide good customer service 
➜ Improve customer service by reducing wait times – Customer wait times are reduced by chatbots. A chat window provides instant answers to common questions instead of waiting for an email, phone call, or response from another channel.
➜ Solve support cases – Companies use chatbots to resolve support cases quickly. To make customers happier, they can answer straightforward questions immediately, and this can be done repeatedly. Support agents have to handle fewer cases as a result.
➜ Serve up resources that customers need – With chatbots, for instance, customers can be greeted instantly with a branded greeting and directed to the resources they need.
➜ Identify leads for the business – AI-powered chatbots help service agents follow up with customers and prospects by handling initial support interactions. A chatbot might ask relevant questions and collect an email address, thus providing a more qualified lead to a sales rep. This information can be used to personalize future interactions with the customer.
