6 economic advantages of chatbots for companies

A report by Gartner from 2019 confirms the commitment to virtual assistants with some examples: it is expected that the use of chatbots will increase in percentages of three figures in companies from sectors such as financial services (116%), tourism (241%) or health, for example (167%).

For customers or end users, the rates of adoption of chatbots are also notable: according to some sources, almost ¾ of all users will prefer to use them at any time of day instead of being limited to receiving an in-person or telephone service which is very busy at certain time periods.

With the development of cloud applications like Google Cloud Platform and tools like Dialogflow, companies can even take just a few minutes in developing chatbots and implementing them into their service strategy.

6 economic advantages of chatbots for companies

It has been proven that companies who offer an agile, efficient customer service which is available 24/7, such as that of companies who rely on chatbots, increase their volume of business and the percentage of loyal customers.

Along with the increase in business, an obvious reduction in costs is also produced that some experts state will reach 8,000 million dollars in 2022.

Next we are going to see different ways in which virtual assistants or chatbots can help a company to save on costs:

1. 24/7 availability at a very low cost

The cost of a chatbot does not vary according to its availability, whether it is 24x7x365 or another option. It represents a fixed and much lower cost compared to the overtime labour costs of having to have staff on night shifts or at weekends.

Furthermore, it enables enquiries to be managed outside of standard working hours and even offer responses to customers’ most basic needs.

2. Increased value in customer satisfaction

Customer service handled by people can be influenced by the personal situation of the agents or changes in their temperament. And a bad day for one of these agents (in terms of inadequate responses or incorrect dealings) can turn out to be extremely expensive for companies. At the other extreme, chatbots or virtual assistants offer a guarantee of reliability and level of care that ensures a high quality service.

Some studies indicate that 74% of managers of support centres found that technology like chatbots reduces error rates and improves the customer experience. This improvement in the experience leads to an increase in loyalty along with a significant increase in the spending made by these satisfied customers.

If we specialise the chatbots to answer basic enquiries, customers with complex cases can see their issue dealt with extremely quickly. For their part, agents gain more experience and satisfaction by managing issues that enable them to apply all of their knowledge.

3. Increase in satisfaction of the agents and improvement in resource allocation

Allowing a Chatbot to manage simple and repetitive enquiries removes this burden from agents and helps them to develop their skills by only accepting enquiries that truly provide an added value. This way, the agent gains a better and more satisfactory experience, which contributes to:

• Reducing the staff turnover rate (and all of the costs associated with new employees)
• Increasing the productivity of the agents, who reach targets and metrics more easily.
• Improving the working environment, a significant boost for improving the quality of the service.

4. Reduction in operational costs

Chatbots are tools that enable the customer to find the information they need easily to resolve their queries and launch processes. Thanks to this, companies significantly reduce the number of:

• Calls, both incoming and outgoing
• Emails received and sent
• Enquiries on social networks and responses from technicians

This way, the costs of each enquiry are reduced (in the case of telephone enquiries, this is already 33%). Some of the elements that contribute most to this reduction are the shortening of resolution times and the optimisation of the time paid to agents since they have detailed information about each customer when it comes to responding to them.

5. Reduction in labour costs

The labour costs of a telephone support centre can represent almost ¾ of operational costs. A way of reducing this cost is by automating numerous processes using chatbots, that also have the ability to handle various enquiries at the same time and even in different languages.

The profitability of chatbots, whose cost is lower than an employee’s pay, is more than proven, even when we take into account the acquisition, implementation and set up costs.

6. Boosting revenue

Beyond the habitual use in the areas of customer services, chatbots can be used for marketing and sales purposes, which represents a beneficial contribution to the income statement.

In this sense, chatbots or virtual assistants are a more than ideal tool for:

• Generating potential customers
• Making sales
• Informing customers of opportunities and discounts
• Cross-selling
• Directing traffic to the company’s website
• Personalising communications with customers, even adopting a less formal tone (for example, on some social networks)

Google Cloud Platform, the environment to create and generate profitable chatbots for your business

As we have seen, chatbots provide numerous economic advantages for companies. At Intelligence partner, we know this only too well and we want this technology to be accessible to more and more companies.

For this reason, we offer you Agile Chatbots, a package of services that includes both the initial analysis of the requirements of the business and the subsequent development and implementation of a customised solution using Dialogflow, the natural language understanding platform of Google Cloud Platform.

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