Top 5 Benefits of Chatbots in Customer Service

March 21st, 2024 | Kate Rogerson | Chatbot | Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

You might already know that you can automate a high portion of common support questions with chatbot software, but it can do so much more. Just like any new technology that disrupts an established industry, the benefits of chatbots are far-reaching. With unlimited capacity and availability, chatbot benefits go well beyond adding a little automation.

In this blog, we’ll look at the top 5 benefits of chatbots in customer service with case studies and data to back it up.

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Solution

1. Devote agent time to higher-value inquiries

The promise of AI has always been the ability to move humans away from repetitive work, and this is one of the key chatbot benefits. With a bot in place, customer service teams can reduce repetitive, low-value work that consumes agent time. Canadian Blood Services introduced Comm100 AI Chatbot with this goal in mind:

“For us, the chatbot wasn’t launched to reduce agent headcount. It was launched so our agents can spend less time on simple queries, and more on the complicated and high-value queries.”
– Denny Michaud, Customer Relations Manager, Canadian Blood Services

With a chatbot handling the basic requests, Canadian Blood Services saw that chat lengths increased as human agents could devote more of their attention to complex questions that needed more care and attention.

Similarly, many organizations adopt chatbots to handle the basic, low-value queries. This makes sure that agents are always available when high-value, sales inquiries come in that are more likely to drive revenue. HSS Hire adopted Comm100 Chatbot for this exact chatbot benefit and now see 30% of all live chats convert into a sale as their agents can provide fast and attentive support that helps drive conversion.

2. Provide 24/7 availability

When someone asks, ‘what are the benefits of chatbots?’, 24/7 availability often jumps to mind – and for good reason. Today’s customers expect fast support at any time of day. In fact, 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important in customer service. One of the most important benefits of chatbots in customer service is the ability of chatbots to provide consistent support around the clock.

While many organizations are initially hesitant to hand the reigns of support to a bot, in practice a well-trained bot can handle as high as 91% of incoming chats with no human involvement. With overnight support offered, organizations not only satisfy their existing customers, but open the possibility of reaching new markets in other time zones.

Take Thompson Rivers University as a great chatbot example. While live chat was being extremely well received by its students, they couldn’t afford to offer this support outside of business hours. To solve this, they introduced Comm100 AI Chatbot, allowing them to offer 24/7 support and removing a significant barrier to engagement as a result. Their bot now handles 83% of all incoming chats.

3. Provide support to agents during peak volumes

Live chat is still the best customer engagement channel, but support agents can easily hit a limit during peak periods. Introducing a chatbot can provide unlimited additional capacity when chat volumes increase. This is one of the key advantages of chatbots in customer service for cyclical industries. HSS Hire Group, handling specialized equipment rental in the UK and Ireland, found a chatbot provided great support for agents during these times:

“When we have busy periods, our support volumes can rocket up to the point that our agents can’t physically handle the demand. Comm100 Chatbot is vital here as it steps in to answer common questions, taking the pressure off our agents and making sure our customers still get the immediate attention they want. I honestly don’t know how we managed before our chatbot!”
– Nicola Lomas, Live Chat Manager, HSS Hire

4. Increase support speed

Nearly 80% of American consumers surveyed say that speed is one of the most important elements of a positive customer experience. Because chatbots respond immediately, a bot completely eliminates wait times and makes sure that every customer receives the fast support that today’s consumers expect.

Better yet, customers waiting to speak with a human agent indirectly experience the benefits of chatbots too. With shorter queues for agent attention, customers with complex questions will see their questions answered faster, and with more attention given by agents with less chats to multitask. Faster service also has a positive improvement to CX, with 71% of Millennials agreeing that customer experience is drastically improved by a quick response.

5. Reduce support costs without damaging CX

With intelligent AI chatbots handling the majority of inquiries, organizations can easily scale up operations without ballooning support costs. Cost savings are just one of many chatbot benefits for growing teams, and because as much of 45% of customers actually prefer chatbot communications, organizations don’t see a decline in customer satisfaction. Tangerine Telecom in Australia saw significant savings after introducing their chatbot:

“The bot has allowed us to not only effectively manage the increase in chat volume, but it’s also saved us a considerable amount of money by not having to hire a lot more agents.”
– Richard Branson, COO of Tangerine

With so much opportunity for savings, Comm100 has created a chatbot ROI calculator for you to discover how much your team could save. Just fill in your team’s details to get a complete price savings breakdown.

Wrap Up

We hope now that when someone asks you, ‘what are the benefits of chatbots’, you can now list a stream of points. However, although bots can benefit any industry, every use case is unique to that organization. To see how your company could introduce a chatbot, contact Comm100 today to book a personalized demo.

Note: This blog post was originally published in August 2022. Because it is one of our most popular posts, we have updated it to include the latest research, up-to-date statistics and best practices in this topic.

About Kate Rogerson

Kate is the Content Marketing Manager at Comm100. She has extensive experience in content creation for technology companies across the world, including the UK, Australia and Canada. She specializes in B2B messaging, branding and soccer trivia.

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