2019 has been the year of the chatbot. Businesses who have adopted the chatbot trend have been able to support and scale their business operations by offering convenient and efficient communication to their customers. Implementing chatbots has also helped businesses increase their sales, by providing 24/7 chat support to customers who need questions answered before they buy. So, what is a chatbot and how can your business benefit from one? Sit tight! We’re about to unpack everything you need to know.
What is a chatbot?
A chatbot is an automated messaging system or computer program that interacts with your customers on your behalf. Chatbots are integrated into the back end of your website and pop up as a chatbox on the front when a visitor reaches your website.
Welcome to the future!
In 2001, A.I. might have spurred images of a young Haley Joel Osment. Jump forward 18 years and A.I. (artificial intelligence) is at the heart of modern-day advertising and marketing. In marketing, the role of artificial intelligence is to anticipate the customers’ needs and provide the information or resources they need to make a purchase decision.
If you’re trying to get your head around how artificial intelligence is used in marketing today and how you can leverage it in your business, start with understanding and using your own chatbot.
How does A Chatbot know what to say?
Your chatbot is prepopulated with a series of questions, answers and resources to help your customers through their purchase journey. Think of it like a smarter, more engaging FAQ channel. The prepopulated list of questions and answers is meticulously mapped out and tells your chatbot how to behave or respond when certain actions are taken, or questions are asked.
More advanced chatbots and virtual assistants can be customized to do a lot more than handle customer queries. They can be integrated with booking systems and other communication platforms enabling people to make reservations and purchases.
Chatbots for the insurance industry
The customer experience is extremely important in every industry, and this is no less true for the insurance sector. With so many companies to choose from, differentiating yourself with a more interactive initial conversation through a chatbot gives you a great first impression. Great first impressions increase the chance of turning a cold prospect into an eventual conversion.
Benefits of chatbots for the insurance industry:
Implementing a chatbot on your insurance website or social media page helps:
- Customer awareness & education. Taking into consideration a customer’s profile, and sifting through multiple carriers, chatbots can suggest the ideal policy.
- Claim processing & payment assistance. Factoring in the customer’s preferred payment channel, and following up with existing claims, they minimize these types of calls coming across your office line.
- Lead profiling & conversion. Customers expect to hear from somebody within 5 minutes of their query, if not the odds of their conversion decreases by 400%. Instant response from the bot increases the chance of working with them. They also use segmentation based on the customer’s inputs to make it easier on your sales team. They will know exactly what a customer needs before they reach out.
- Customer feedback & review. Since few websites have active engagement as a top priority, interacting with a bot delivers a more quality customer experience. And research has shown 56% of users prefer to send a message over picking up the phone and making a call.
- Rich database is created for later use in newsletters, social media, and emails. It’s an efficient way to grow an email contact list.
- Reduce the workload for your sales and marketing teams, narrowing the focus to their real talent, converting leads into sales for your business.
- Pre-sales & sales. Leads that are more advanced along the purchase funnel can be assigned scores based off of previous interactions with the bot. This brings only the warmest leads to your sales team.
