It has happened to all of us that we enter the customer service of a company, an app, a program, or anything else and we do not talk to a real person, but we express our doubts or inconveniences to a bot, and this bot, if it is in its possibilities, solves our problems. But how do these bots work? Well, in this article we will answer this and other questions you may have about this modality.

What is a bot?

Before we know how a bot works in customer service, we need to understand what a bot is. So, a bot is a computer program developed that uses artificial intelligence to automate processes and resemble a real person, so that when you’re interacting with it, it doesn’t feel like you’re talking to a robot. These bots are also regularly referred to as “chatbots”.

The origin of bots dates back to 1950, where Alan Turing created a machine developed with different algorithms and conducted a test where a person asked a series of questions to this machine, and got a series of answers mimicking human reasoning.

Well, from this innovation of the mathematician Alan Turing, was born what is considered as the first bot in the world, called Eliza, which was created in 1964 by Joseph Weizenbaum. This bot managed for the first time to establish a conversation with a person by analyzing keywords and thus, respond with previously created answers.

After these events, new bots emerged that are currently very well known such as Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and many other softwares based on virtual reality: Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and many other software based on virtual reality with which we interact every day.

We also have to mention that, according to ChatBots Life, among the top five countries in the world using these softwares are: United States, India, Germany, United Kingdom and Brazil. As you can see, the world powers are very clear that chatbots are the future of customer service, and these bots generate a lot of benefits that can make the customer’s day to day life easier when contacting customer service.

But, are all chatbots the same? The answer is no, chatbots can be configured in such a way that you can define what questions it can answer, in what way, with what tone, you can even define the personality of the bot, which is why, for example, talking to Siri, is not the same as talking to Alexa, they may look alike, but each one is different and gives different types of answers in many ways.

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Advantages of bots in customer service

While bots can be configured in such a way that they resemble the personality of the brand, or that they have different voices, personalized responses, etc. They all have a common good, which is to perform a quick and guided attention to customers, these bots, as mentioned above, generate a lot of advantages that will help your company to improve the quality of customer service. Here are some of these advantages:

Cost Reduction

A very important fact provided by ChatBot Life is that chatbots allow a reduction in operating costs by up to 30%. But let’s analyze, What costs can reduce a chatbot? Well, these bots could reduce the cost of personnel, since you will not need so many staff in customer service, even, you could completely reduce the customer service staff depending on what economic activity your company performs. This is because chatbots allow you to answer the questions posed by customers due to artificial intelligence.

Ability to answer questions quickly at any time

Another great advantage of bots is that they work 24 hours a day. That is, they are configured to be able to answer your questions at any time, with clear and concise answers. It’s understandable that chatbots can’t answer 100% of your questions, since they are developing and improving little by little, but they are capable of answering those simple questions you may have.

One of the environments where chatbots are most used is in digital sales, and is that, according to Tidio, 48.78% of women surveyed use chatbots to make online purchases.

High level of efficiency

Obviously, the fact of reducing costs, of carrying out quick processes such as answering customer queries, etc., produces a greater degree of efficiency that benefits companies. Produce a higher degree of efficiency that benefits companies.

Language is not an impediment

Well, chatbots can be customized to have all the necessary languages integrated. This means that if you are talking to a customer service chatbot in a country where your language is not spoken, chances are that you will be able to configure this bot, or it can even be automatically configured to adapt to your language, thanks to this you will not have problems communicating with customer service of any company in the world.

Better customer experience

By being able to customize the bots in such a broad way, it is possible to create a bot that has a personality that suits the company, giving personalized responses and that can create a higher quality customer experience. By having a higher degree of satisfaction, the company will have a better image and will be able to create a very nice community that will benefit the company in different ways.

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Disadvantages of bots in customer support

While the advantages offered by the use of bots in customer service are very favorable, chatbots are not perfect, so they have some disadvantages as they are:

Not answering complex questions

Let’s not forget that chatbots are created to answer the most frequently asked questions, those questions that are easy to answer and that help the customer to solve a minor problem or an unknown that they have. Well, if the customer has a bigger problem, a problem that is not in the specific questions that were created for the bot to answer, it will have to proceed to human intervention, which is why almost never a chatbot can replace all human staff in customer service.

No empathy

Well, as much as it can be customized and a series of responses can be adapted to make it seem that the bot has a personality, the reality is that they do not, this can create a disadvantage and is that the lack of empathy can mean a hard blow in the use of chatbots for customer service. Because of this problem, many people prefer that customer service is with a real person, since they can better understand what you are saying, show affection and empathy, and may, although it takes a little more time, generate a greater degree of satisfaction.

Maintenance

The bots need a lot of maintenance and many updates, they have to have a group of people to check that everything is working properly so that there is no inconvenience to customers when interacting with the bot. To this we must also add that you need to update the answers, check what are the questions that have been asked, check the problems that have occurred previously, etc.. This is why chatbots need constant maintenance, which can sometimes be a bit cumbersome for companies.

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How to have a bot in your company?

Many people believe that to implement a bot in their company, they need to hire a group of developers to create all the bot software, however, there are platforms that create simple bots that can meet your needs, such as answering customer questions automatically and easily.

This is why, while you can hire developers to create a more focused and personalized bot, if what you need is something simpler, you can turn to different platforms that create different chatbots quickly and easily.

After this step, the only thing left to do is to implement it on your website and from here on, you will have to take into account trial and error, you will have to update the bot, as we mentioned before, and you will also have to pay a lot of attention to it so that it works optimally.

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Conclusion

Well, as we have observed, chatbots can present many advantages that will improve the customer experience with your company. This can mean that your company creates a good image with potential customers and can benefit you in many ways. Chatbots are here to stay and implementing them in your company is gradually becoming more of a necessity than an option, whether it is for cost reduction, process automation, etc. Do not forget to follow us on our social networks and if you liked this article, do not hesitate to visit our different articles that we have published on our blog.