Chatbots have emerged as a powerful tool for enterprises both large and small. Initially, these bots were used to respond to customer care conversations, but, in practice, their use was limited to answering simple questions and other routine tasks. Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence and integration with the intelligent cloud, however, have enabled developers to create more powerful and responsive chatbots.
As these bots evolve, their use evolves as well. Now, chatbots are being used as part of larger and more advanced strategies, allowing companies to automate various business processes. They can also be used to crunch vast amounts of data, and, with natural language processing (NLP), they are becoming more and more responsive. Along the way, many companies are cutting expenses and allowing human workers to focus on higher value-added tasks.
Streamline Tedious Business Processes
Human talent is expensive but valuable. In the past, companies had to spend large sums to pay for human beings to do relatively mundane tasks. The first image that comes to mind might be someone on an assembly line. In practice, however, many offices were only slightly ahead of these types of practices. Workers in an office interacting with basic data have essentially become modern-day assembly-line workers.
Today, however, chatbots can be used to automate many simple and mundane tasks. For example, chatbots can be set up to answer internal questions or to compile search engine reports and many other tasks. A marketing manager no longer needs to carry out tedious tasks like basic keyword research. Instead, he or she can focus on higher-value tasks, such as building a content strategy.
Give EVERYONE a Personal Assistant
Arguably, the biggest sign that you’ve reached a high-level within an organization is being given a personal assistant. At this stage in your career, it no longer makes sense for you to handle mundane tasks. Someone else should be there to lend a hand.
Can you imagine how productive your staff would be if everyone had a personal assistant to handle tedious tasks? With powerful chatbots, you can make this happen. Your chatbot can act as a virtual assistant by scheduling meetings, sending out reminders, and even booking business trips. This means your staff can focus on more important concerns.
Make Sure In-Depth Product Knowledge is Easy to Access
In crowded markets, in-depth product knowledge is incredibly valuable. Many consumers want to know the ins and outs of the products they might buy. The members of your marketing team need to know the details of your products as well so that they can craft compelling advertisements.
Instead of bogging down the people on your product and technical teams, these parties can first interact with a chatbot. Often, the information is already out there; people just don’t know where to find it. A chatbot can hunt down the information and pass it along. With modern NLP, chatbots have become increasingly responsive. Plugged into the intelligent cloud, they also have access to vast amounts of data.
As a result, customers will be guided through the sales funnel, and the market staff itself will be developing more compelling funnels. There are many other benefits to providing high-level product knowledge on demand.
Always On, Always Available Customer Service
Obtaining customers and consumers is hard. Retaining them can be just as hard. If customers don’t enjoy their customer service experience, they will punish your company with lost sales and bad reviews.
Chatbot solutions allow you to reply immediately to concerns. NLP can be used to respond to customers quickly. By connecting to the intelligent cloud, vast amounts of data are always on hand.
Simple questions, concerns, and complaints can often be resolved by a chatbot. This means your human customer service representatives can focus on addressing bigger challenges and working with the biggest clients.
Empowering Your HR And IT Department
In many ways, HR and IT Departments function like internal customer service departments. They have to field countless questions and deal with numerous complaints. A chatbot can help ease this burden.
If you’ve spent any time around an IT or HR department, you know that many of the questions are basic. “How do I log into X platform?” “How many vacation days can I take in a row?” And on and on they go.
You can set your chatbot to serve as the front line with regard to answering basic questions. Fortunately, NLP makes modern bots far more responsive to human language and answer many questions. Whether for your CEO or someone from the manufacturing floor, a chatbot can help.
This means your HR and IT department members can focus on solving more difficult and pressing issues.
Helping With Business-To-Business Applications
Managing business-to-business relationships can be difficult. Everyone is busy, and B2B often involves a lot of tasks that are all going on at once. This is especially true for manufacturing.
Simply managing relationships and basic data can be very time-consuming. Again, however, chatbots can help. They can place orders, provide invoices, pay for supplies and services, and even request information for external services.
Do you need to find a new ink and paper supplier? Instead of doing it yourself, set your chatbot to work.
Work With Data With Ease
Many companies now strive to be data-driven. This is especially true for technology and manufacturing companies. Data is life. These companies use as much data as possible to inform decisions to the greatest extent possible. Unfortunately, working with data can be both time-consuming and tedious.
Chatbots can reduce much of the tedious work. This means you can use the chatbots to sort through and analyze data. Chatbots can even keep a constant watch on data as it comes in. This way, you’ll always have access to up-to-date data and can focus on making decisions and crafting strategies.
All The While You Can Reduce Expenses
By now it should be obvious: chatbots can do a lot. As they are accomplishing all of the above (and more!), they will also be reducing costs. Chatbots are cheaper than your average employee, won’t call in sick, and won’t suffer from low morale. They work hard, and they work 24/7, never needing any overtime pay.
The Master of All Trades
Enterprise chatbot solutions will allow you to increase productivity by allowing your staff to focus on higher value-added tasks, such as sales. Employee morale will rise as people focus on more exciting work that requires a higher level of thought. All the while, your chatbots will be reducing costs even as they increase output.
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