Chatbots and live chat are growing in popularity.

There is a good reason. Modern businesses are constantly looking for new ways to improve the customer experience, while simultaneously searching for answers in real time.

Some prefer live chat while others prefer a bot. The goal is to improve customer service.

Which option is best suited to your business? Each has its pros and cons.

Chatbots are gaining popularity, even though live support software that is human-powered and can be used to assist customers is an integral part of most websites. According to Gartner, chatbot software are expected to help with 85 percent of customer engagement by 2020.

Is this the end of the live chat? Not quite. Chatbots are going to make a huge impact on customer service, but the live chat will be around for the foreseeable future.

To quote TalShnall, Customer Service Trainer and Speaker:

AI Chatbots have the potential to revolutionize how customers interact with brands and companies today. Companies are using this technology to connect with customers. Technology is an important part of any business’s success. However, it is not enough to lose the human touch that creates emotional connections with customers. Can chatbots create human emotions? Chatbots can build trusting relationships. Can chatbots exceed customer expectations? These questions provide entrepreneurs with opportunities to invent and exceed customer expectations.

Let’s take a look at each application.

Live Chat Benefits

Live chat software allows customers, prospects, and others to chat in real time on the company’s site with a human agent. This is a great tool that can improve customer support and lower support costs.

Live well-designed chat systems include features such as proactive chat invitations, the possibility to see what customers are typing before they send the chat, and the ability to animate the chat button for better visibility.

A live chat is the best way to provide support for your website visitors. A live chat system, when implemented correctly, can help you move visitors further down your sales funnel.

A study by Econsultancy found that 73 percent prefer live chat to email and 61 percent to phone. 79% of those who prefer live chat said that they receive faster answers.

Is it important if a customer gets an answer quickly to a question? Perhaps yes, maybe not.

Chatbots Benefits

Chatbots are apps that interact with customers through a chat interface. They follow pre-programmed rules.

A recent report by Acquire.io shows that 80 percent of customers’ questions were answered by chatbots, without the need for human intervention.

There are currently two types of chatbots available: regular chatbots or intelligent chatbots powered by machine learning (AI) and artificial intelligence (ML).

These chatbots integrate seamlessly with popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp Messenger, Slack, and Telegram.

“Chatbots are a new trend in the way people access information and make decisions, and communicate,” says Christie Pitts Manager, of Ventures Development at Verizon Ventures.

“We believe that chatbots will be the start of a new type of digital access. It centers around messaging. The way we use our devices and communicate with others is changing. Messaging is a major component of how we interact and how we keep connected to people, businesses, and daily life. Chatbots will bring commerce into our lives and open up new possibilities.

The latest intelligent chatbots are more sophisticated and responsive but their functionality is limited.

Most people can’t answer questions beyond those that have been programmed into their computers.

Is this a sign that chatbots will eventually be outnumbered by live chat? We need to look at the customer’s needs and how easy it is to satisfy them.

Chatbots Software: Where Chatbots Scores Above Live Chat

Chatbots can have an advantage in certain areas over humans. Let’s take a look at some.

1. Available

Businesses want support available 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. This means that support agents must be available to work shifts or they will have to renege on their promise and offer offline support via email.

Chatbots are here to beat live chat.

Chatbots can be online 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Chatbots can be contacted from anywhere in the world.

It is a sad fact that your business will be unavailable at all hours. You could lose at most a portion of your customers to your competitors.

Customers will feel cared for if you are available at all times to help them.

This will encourage them to stay with your company. Kapow reports that 68 percent of customers will switch to a competitor if they don’t care about them.

2. No Human Intervention is Required

Businesses can cut costs by having a chatbot that can talk for as long as they like, and at any hour of the day, without the need to be assisted by a human agent.

You can save time and money by using your support agents to attend to other support channels such as phone or email.

Aside from the fact that humans get tired of answering the same questions repeatedly, bots can deal with the same queries.

3. Multitasking ability

Chatbots can handle unlimited chats at once, unlike their human counterparts.

Imagine that you have to deal with 50 customers simultaneously and only one live chat operator is available.

You’ll end up with a lot of unhappy customers who are fed up with waiting on hold and may be considering switching to your competitor.

According to Kapow, a satisfied customer will tell nine people about their experience, while a dissatisfied one will tell 22 people.

4. You will receive a faster response time

Chatbots respond faster to chat requests than live chat agents. Chatbots can be distracted by other chats, which could lead to a delay in their response. Chatbots can solve this problem.

Chatbots improve customer service by allowing customers to get immediate attention and answer their questions.

5. Multilingualism

What about if your business is global? It might be expensive or difficult to hire chat agents in every language your customers speak.

Chatbots can however be programmed in multiple languages to communicate with customers.

6. Cost-effective

Autodesk, a multinational software company that creates software for 3D engineering, construction, and manufacturing, has a chatbot called AVA (Autodesk virtual assistant).

AVA is available to answer customer questions 24 hours a day. Customers can contact AVA for Level 1 (routine), questions such as change of address, login issues, or payment problems. 

Autodesk was able to create a virtual chatbot using AVA, an IBM Watson Conversation platform-enabled Tool. This allows for greater productivity and efficiency.

• A decrease in response times of up to 99 percent: From 38 hours to just 5.4 minutes for most Level 1 query, the average response time is only 38 hours.
• The per-query costs of human agents are $15-$200, whereas AVA is a dollar.
• AVA can respond to an average of 30,000+ customer service queries per month.
• AVA can recognize over 40+ use cases and resolve simple requests quickly.

Chatbots could help businesses save money on customer service expenses. They can speed up resolution times, relieve agents of more difficult tasks, and answer up to 80 percent of routine questions.

This can all help businesses to reduce customer service costs by up to 30%

Live Chat: Where live chat is better than a chatbot

Chatbots may not be the best customer service tool. There are some limitations to chatbots.

1. Chatbots are best suited to answer simple Tier 1 questions

One of the main limitations of pre-programmed AI chatbots is their inability to adapt to difficult situations where customers might require an outside-of-the-box solution.

A chatbot must be able to answer questions in a clear context and be simple to understand. A chatbot cannot answer questions outside the predetermined scope of machine learning.

It can take weeks, or even months, to train your chatbot fully.

A live agent is available to answer any questions related to your business and adapt to customer needs.

To help customers succeed, a human agent can assist them. This feature is often overlooked by chatbots.

2. Chatbots lack empathy

Chatting with a bot can be frustrating and even downright irritating. Chatbots can be frustrating because they lack the human touch.

Many customers miss the human agent’s emotional response.

Customers sometimes need customer service agents to help them solve a problem. Chatbots that fail to understand and respond to customer needs may make your brand seem cold and impersonal.

3. Chatbots can be thrown off by spelling and other errors

Chatbots can respond to keywords and are very sensitive to spelling.

An incorrect spelling mistake can confuse the bot. The bot can be confused by spelling mistakes made by customers. Human agents can help you understand and adapt to your context.

Not to be overlooked, sophisticated chatbots with AI capabilities have become more resistant to spelling and grammar errors.

Conclusion

Chatbots are meant to assist customer service agents and not replace them.

Customer service is all about accuracy, speed, and equability. However, the human touch is just as important. Intelligent chatbots can perform faster, but they can’t communicate with customers.

Customer queries in the real world often require real people to answer them.

A chatbot might be installed on your website to engage clients, get their attention and close the deal.

“While chatbots are efficient in offering customers solutions to their problems,” states Kristopher Arkand, a data analyst at Forrester. “After all, delivering a great customer experience depends on it.”

Businesses should inform customers when they are dealing directly with bots to ensure a positive user experience. Human agents can then take over when there is a danger of the conversation getting lost.

Chatbots and live chat are growing in popularity.

There is a good reason. Modern businesses are constantly looking for new ways to improve the customer experience, while simultaneously searching for answers in real time.

Some prefer live chat while others prefer a bot. The goal is to improve customer service.

Which option is best suited to your business? Each has its pros and cons.

Chatbots are gaining popularity, even though live support software that is human-powered and can be used to assist customers is an integral part of most websites. According to Gartner, chatbot softwares are expected to help with 85 percent of customer engagement by 2020.

Is this the end of the live chat? Not quite. Chatbots are going to make a huge impact on customer service, but the live chat will be around for the foreseeable future.

To quote TalShnall, Customer Service Trainer and Speaker:

AI Chatbots have the potential to revolutionize how customers interact with brands and companies today. Companies are using this technology to connect with customers. Technology is an important part of any business’s success. However, it is not enough to lose the human touch that creates emotional connections with customers. Can chatbots create human emotions? Chatbots can build trusting relationships. Can chatbots exceed customer expectations? These questions provide entrepreneurs with opportunities to invent and exceed customer expectations.

Let’s take a look at each application.

Live Chat Benefits

Live chat software allows customers, prospects, and others to chat in real time on the company’s site with a human agent. This is a great tool that can improve customer support and lower support costs.

Live well-designed chat systems include features such as proactive chat invitations, the possibility to see what customers are typing before they send the chat, and the ability to animate the chat button for better visibility.

A live chat is the best way to provide support for your website visitors. A live chat system, when implemented correctly, can help you move visitors further down your sales funnel.

A study by Econsultancy found that 73 percent prefer live chat to email and 61 percent to phone. 79% of those who prefer live chat said that they receive faster answers.

Is it important if a customer gets an answer quickly to a question? Perhaps yes, maybe not.

Chatbots Benefits

Chatbots are apps that interact with customers through a chat interface. They follow pre-programmed rules.

A recent report by Acquire.io shows that 80 percent of customers’ questions were answered by chatbots, without the need for human intervention.

There are currently two types of chatbots available: regular chatbots or intelligent chatbots powered by machine learning (AI) and artificial intelligence (ML).

These chatbots integrate seamlessly with popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp Messenger, Slack, and Telegram.

“Chatbots are a new trend in the way people access information and make decisions, and communicate,” says Christie Pitts Manager, of Ventures Development at Verizon Ventures.

“We believe that chatbots will be the start of a new type of digital access. It centers around messaging. The way we use our devices and communicate with others is changing. Messaging is a major component of how we interact and how we keep connected to people, businesses, and daily life. Chatbots will bring commerce into our lives and open up new possibilities.

The latest intelligent chatbots are more sophisticated and responsive but their functionality is limited.

Most people can’t answer questions beyond those that have been programmed into their computers.

Is this a sign that chatbots will eventually be outnumbered by live chat? We need to look at the customer’s needs and how easy it is to satisfy them.

Chatbots Software: Where Chatbots Scores Above Live Chat

Chatbots can have an advantage in certain areas over humans. Let’s take a look at some.

1. Available

Businesses want support available 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. This means that support agents must be available to work shifts or they will have to renege on their promise and offer offline support via email.

Chatbots are here to beat live chat.

Chatbots can be online 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Chatbots can be contacted from anywhere in the world.

It is a sad fact that your business will be unavailable at all hours. You could lose at most a portion of your customers to your competitors.

Customers will feel cared for if you are available at all times to help them.

This will encourage them to stay with your company. Kapow reports that 68 percent of customers will switch to a competitor if they don’t care about them.

2. No Human Intervention is Required

Businesses can cut costs by having a chatbot that can talk for as long as they like, and at any hour of the day, without the need to be assisted by a human agent.

You can save time and money by using your support agents to attend to other support channels such as phone or email.

Aside from the fact that humans get tired of answering the same questions repeatedly, bots can deal with the same queries.

3. Multitasking ability

Chatbots can handle unlimited chats at once, unlike their human counterparts.

Imagine that you have to deal with 50 customers simultaneously and only one live chat operator is available.

You’ll end up with a lot of unhappy customers who are fed up with waiting on hold and may be considering switching to your competitor.

According to Kapow, a satisfied customer will tell nine people about their experience, while a dissatisfied one will tell 22 people.

4. You will receive a faster response time

Chatbots respond faster to chat requests than live chat agents. Chatbots can be distracted by other chats, which could lead to a delay in their response. Chatbots can solve this problem.

Chatbots improve customer service by allowing customers to get immediate attention and answer their questions.

5. Multilingualism

What about if your business is global? It might be expensive or difficult to hire chat agents in every language your customers speak.

Chatbots can however be programmed in multiple languages to communicate with customers.

6. Cost-effective

Autodesk, a multinational software company that creates software for 3D engineering, construction, and manufacturing, has a chatbot called AVA (Autodesk virtual assistant).

AVA is available to answer customer questions 24 hours a day. Customers can contact AVA for Level 1 (routine), questions such as change of address, login issues, or payment problems. 

Autodesk was able to create a virtual chatbot using AVA, an IBM Watson Conversation platform-enabled Tool. This allows for greater productivity and efficiency.

• A decrease in response times of up to 99 percent: From 38 hours to just 5.4 minutes for most Level 1 query, the average response time is only 38 hours.
• The per-query costs of human agents are $15-$200, whereas AVA is a dollar.
• AVA can respond to an average of 30,000+ customer service queries per month.
• AVA can recognize over 40+ use cases and resolve simple requests quickly.

Chatbots could help businesses save money on customer service expenses. They can speed up resolution times, relieve agents of more difficult tasks, and answer up to 80 percent of routine questions.

This can all help businesses to reduce customer service costs by up to 30%

Live Chat: Where live chat is better than a chatbot

Chatbots may not be the best customer service tool. There are some limitations to chatbots.

1. Chatbots are best suited to answer simple Tier 1 questions

One of the main limitations of pre-programmed AI chatbots is their inability to adapt to difficult situations where customers might require an outside-of-the-box solution.

A chatbot must be able to answer questions in a clear context and be simple to understand. A chatbot cannot answer questions outside the predetermined scope of machine learning.

It can take weeks, or even months, to train your chatbot fully.

A live agent is available to answer any questions related to your business and adapt to customer needs.

To help customers succeed, a human agent can assist them. This feature is often overlooked by chatbots.

2. Chatbots lack empathy

Chatting with a bot can be frustrating and even downright irritating. Chatbots can be frustrating because they lack the human touch.

Many customers miss the human agent’s emotional response.

Customers sometimes need customer service agents to help them solve a problem. Chatbots that fail to understand and respond to customer needs may make your brand seem cold and impersonal.

3. Chatbots can be thrown off by spelling and other errors

Chatbots can respond to keywords and are very sensitive to spelling.

An incorrect spelling mistake can confuse the bot. The bot can be confused by spelling mistakes made by customers. Human agents can help you understand and adapt to your context.

Not to be overlooked, sophisticated chatbots with AI capabilities have become more resistant to spelling and grammar errors.

Conclusion

Chatbots are meant to assist customer service agents and not replace them.

Customer service is all about accuracy, speed, and equability. However, the human touch is just as important. Intelligent chatbots can perform faster, but they can’t communicate with customers.

Customer queries in the real world often require real people to answer them.

A chatbot might be installed on your website to engage clients, get their attention and close the deal.

“While chatbots are efficient in offering customers solutions to their problems,” states Kristopher Arkand, a data analyst at Forrester. “After all, delivering a great customer experience depends on it.”

Businesses should inform customers when they are dealing directly with bots to ensure a positive user experience. Human agents can then take over when there is a danger of the conversation getting lost.

Chatbots and live chat are growing in popularity.

There is a good reason. Modern businesses are constantly looking for new ways to improve the customer experience, while simultaneously searching for answers in real time.

Some prefer live chat while others prefer a bot. The goal is to improve customer service.

Which option is best suited to your business? Each has its pros and cons.

Chatbots are gaining popularity, even though live support software that is human-powered and can be used to assist customers is an integral part of most websites. According to Gartner, chatbot softwares are expected to help with 85 percent of customer engagement by 2020.

Is this the end of the live chat? Not quite. Chatbots are going to make a huge impact on customer service, but the live chat will be around for the foreseeable future.

To quote TalShnall, Customer Service Trainer and Speaker:

AI Chatbots have the potential to revolutionize how customers interact with brands and companies today. Companies are using this technology to connect with customers. Technology is an important part of any business’s success. However, it is not enough to lose the human touch that creates emotional connections with customers. Can chatbots create human emotions? Chatbots can build trusting relationships. Can chatbots exceed customer expectations? These questions provide entrepreneurs with opportunities to invent and exceed customer expectations.

Let’s take a look at each application.

Live Chat Benefits

Live chat software allows customers, prospects, and others to chat in real time on the company’s site with a human agent. This is a great tool that can improve customer support and lower support costs.

Live well-designed chat systems include features such as proactive chat invitations, the possibility to see what customers are typing before they send the chat, and the ability to animate the chat button for better visibility.

A live chat is the best way to provide support for your website visitors. A live chat system, when implemented correctly, can help you move visitors further down your sales funnel.

A study by Econsultancy found that 73 percent prefer live chat to email and 61 percent to phone. 79% of those who prefer live chat said that they receive faster answers.

Is it important if a customer gets an answer quickly to a question? Perhaps yes, maybe not.

Chatbots Benefits

Chatbots are apps that interact with customers through a chat interface. They follow pre-programmed rules.

A recent report by Acquire.io shows that 80 percent of customers’ questions were answered by chatbots, without the need for human intervention.

There are currently two types of chatbots available: regular chatbots or intelligent chatbots powered by machine learning (AI) and artificial intelligence (ML).

These chatbots integrate seamlessly with popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp Messenger, Slack, and Telegram.

“Chatbots are a new trend in the way people access information and make decisions, and communicate,” says Christie Pitts Manager, of Ventures Development at Verizon Ventures.

“We believe that chatbots will be the start of a new type of digital access. It centers around messaging. The way we use our devices and communicate with others is changing. Messaging is a major component of how we interact and how we keep connected to people, businesses, and daily life. Chatbots will bring commerce into our lives and open up new possibilities.

The latest intelligent chatbots are more sophisticated and responsive but their functionality is limited.

Most people can’t answer questions beyond those that have been programmed into their computers.

Is this a sign that chatbots will eventually be outnumbered by live chat? We need to look at the customer’s needs and how easy it is to satisfy them.

Chatbots Software: Where Chatbots Scores Above Live Chat

Chatbots can have an advantage in certain areas over humans. Let’s take a look at some.

1. Available

Businesses want support available 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. This means that support agents must be available to work shifts or they will have to renege on their promise and offer offline support via email.

Chatbots are here to beat live chat.

Chatbots can be online 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Chatbots can be contacted from anywhere in the world.

It is a sad fact that your business will be unavailable at all hours. You could lose at most a portion of your customers to your competitors.

Customers will feel cared for if you are available at all times to help them.

This will encourage them to stay with your company. Kapow reports that 68 percent of customers will switch to a competitor if they don’t care about them.

2. No Human Intervention is Required

Businesses can cut costs by having a chatbot that can talk for as long as they like, and at any hour of the day, without the need to be assisted by a human agent.

You can save time and money by using your support agents to attend to other support channels such as phone or email.

Aside from the fact that humans get tired of answering the same questions repeatedly, bots can deal with the same queries.

3. Multitasking ability

Chatbots can handle unlimited chats at once, unlike their human counterparts.

Imagine that you have to deal with 50 customers simultaneously and only one live chat operator is available.

You’ll end up with a lot of unhappy customers who are fed up with waiting on hold and may be considering switching to your competitor.

According to Kapow, a satisfied customer will tell nine people about their experience, while a dissatisfied one will tell 22 people.

4. You will receive a faster response time

Chatbots respond faster to chat requests than live chat agents. Chatbots can be distracted by other chats, which could lead to a delay in their response. Chatbots can solve this problem.

Chatbots improve customer service by allowing customers to get immediate attention and answer their questions.

5. Multilingualism

What about if your business is global? It might be expensive or difficult to hire chat agents in every language your customers speak.

Chatbots can however be programmed in multiple languages to communicate with customers.

6. Cost-effective

Autodesk, a multinational software company that creates software for 3D engineering, construction, and manufacturing, has a chatbot called AVA (Autodesk virtual assistant).

AVA is available to answer customer questions 24 hours a day. Customers can contact AVA for Level 1 (routine), questions such as change of address, login issues, or payment problems. 

Autodesk was able to create a virtual chatbot using AVA, an IBM Watson Conversation platform-enabled Tool. This allows for greater productivity and efficiency.

• A decrease in response times of up to 99 percent: From 38 hours to just 5.4 minutes for most Level 1 query, the average response time is only 38 hours.

• The per-query costs of human agents are $15-$200, whereas AVA is a dollar.

• AVA can respond to an average of 30,000+ customer service queries per month.

• AVA can recognize over 40+ use cases and resolve simple requests quickly.

Chatbots could help businesses save money on customer service expenses. They can speed up resolution times, relieve agents of more difficult tasks, and answer up to 80 percent of routine questions.

This can all help businesses to reduce customer service costs by up to 30%

Live Chat: Where live chat is better than a chatbot

Chatbots may not be the best customer service tool. There are some limitations to chatbots.

1. Chatbots are best suited to answer simple Tier 1 questions

One of the main limitations of pre-programmed AI chatbots is their inability to adapt to difficult situations where customers might require an outside-of-the-box solution.

A chatbot must be able to answer questions in a clear context and be simple to understand. A chatbot cannot answer questions outside the predetermined scope of machine learning.

It can take weeks, or even months, to train your chatbot fully.

A live agent is available to answer any questions related to your business and adapt to customer needs.

To help customers succeed, a human agent can assist them. This feature is often overlooked by chatbots.

2. Chatbots lack empathy

Chatting with a bot can be frustrating and even downright irritating. Chatbots can be frustrating because they lack the human touch.

Many customers miss the human agent’s emotional response.

Customers sometimes need customer service agents to help them solve a problem. Chatbots that fail to understand and respond to customer needs may make your brand seem cold and impersonal.

3. Chatbots can be thrown off by spelling and other errors

Chatbots can respond to keywords and are very sensitive to spelling.

An incorrect spelling mistake can confuse the bot. The bot can be confused by spelling mistakes made by customers. Human agents can help you understand and adapt to your context.

Not to be overlooked, sophisticated chatbots with AI capabilities have become more resistant to spelling and grammar errors.

Conclusion

Chatbots are meant to assist customer service agents and not replace them.

Customer service is all about accuracy, speed, and equability. However, the human touch is just as important. Intelligent chatbots can perform faster, but they can’t communicate with customers.

Customer queries in the real world often require real people to answer them.

A chatbot might be installed on your website to engage clients, get their attention and close the deal.

“While chatbots are efficient in offering customers solutions to their problems,” states Kristopher Arkand, a data analyst at Forrester. “After all, delivering a great customer experience depends on it.”

Businesses should inform customers when they are dealing directly with bots to ensure a positive user experience. Human agents can then take over when there is a danger of the conversation getting lost.