ChatBOTs & Live Chat in Tandem – A Perfect World

One big question in today’s world is whether to choose chatBOTs or live-chat. There are plenty of articles that will lay out the pros and cons, tell you why you need one over the other, or why you need both. We’re going to skip all that and be blunt:

You NEED both.

Here’s why:

We live in a world that loves the digital space and convenience. 63% of Millennials prefer live-chat to other types of contact. These factors have created a world that is always online, meaning your customers, users, patients, and prospects need to reach you at any time and from anywhere in a way that’s convenient for them.

Why ChatBOTs?

ChatBOTs are powerful tools. Their use goes beyond a trend. They give your customers another avenue to engage with you on their terms. An effective ChatBOT strategy gives your customers a convenient avenue to solve their simple requests. This offsets the Pareto Principle from taking hold, freeing up your agents to take care of complex problems, and quickly resolving FAQs and other simple issues for your customers.

ChatBOTs are also always available, you late-night customers have a way to interact with you, and to solve any simple or common queries regardless of time.

What happens when a customer has a complex issue at 3 am? 

Instead of filling out a contact form and waiting to hear back from a rep, you can train your bot to collect key contextual information on the issue. Training your bot to do so makes gives the agent key information to solve your customer’s issue quickly and more effectively  forewarning and forearming your agents.

Why Live-Chat?

After reading about what ChatBOTs can do, you might be thinking the best way to bring them together is having your bot contextualize your interactions to make your agents more effective. While that is a valid strategy, you are losing one key element of any successful brand, customer relationships.

ChatBOTs can do a lot, but they can’t empathize, give personal recommendations, nor give nuanced advice to your customers. Building this kind of relationship is what allows agents to not only effectively tackle nuanced issues, but guide customers to the perfect solution for them.

Bringing ChatBOTs & Live-Chat Together

How do you effectively combine these two involved solutions with the rest of your tech stack and implemented systems?

For starters – whatever system you choose needs to integrate with your tech stack, specifically, your CRM & what you’re using to manage your agents(although a complete solution will also manage your agents for you). Each interaction, whether bot or agent, needs to be automatically logged into your CRM so that you can

Software that integrates with your tech stack will make your agents more effective while creating a better customer experience. Agents who can pull up a customer’s CRM profile when they contact them are able to use that information to better serve them and find a solution that works for the customers.

With a fully integrated omnichannel solution, if a customer logs in at 3 am, and you have no reps available, they’re able to reach you through your chatBOT. If the bot is unable to solve your customer’s problem, then it can escalate to an agent – and if an agent isn’t available, or it is past business hours, the bot will contextualize the issue for the agent. Creating an omnichannel solution and improving your customer experience.