As of 2020, more than 85% of customer service interactions will be handled by chatbots from companies such as Convertobot. However, there are strategic reasons to use live chat agents despite the numerous benefits of using virtual ones.
Deciding which one to use will depend on the nature of your business and what the particular situation requires. The following article will discuss when to use chatbots versus when to use live agents.
Chatbots
Despite the advancements in Artificial Intelligence, chatbots still require large amounts of training and programming. You not only need to train them to comprehend human intent but you also need to input a significant number of queries and responses for dialogue to seem organic.
Unless your chatbot is powered by self-learning Artificial Intelligence which is still very rare, you will still have to constantly feed the artificial intelligence with novel phrases so that it can identify user intent and respond accurately to user queries. Without the training, your bot will likely have a poor performance which will have the opposite effect of losing potential and existing customers.
Why Do Users Use Chatbots?
Most chatbot users prefer to use it for simple tasks such as getting simple answers to simple questions. However, for queries that require empathy and those that are complicated, most people prefer live agents.
Currently, chatbots cannot handle complex emotions and certain human elements such as syntax. For such issues, a human agent will be of more assistance.
There are several scenarios where using a chatbot on your website makes sense. If you have a large customer information database to train your bot if you want to provide customer service 24/7 when live agents cannot work if you only want it to respond to straightforward queries and when you want to help customers pay their bill.
When your customer requests are about lead generation if your customer information database is insufficient and when your sales processes are complicated, most chatbots simply will not do.
Chatbots should not be used for every business. Find out what your business needs and goals are then making a decision based on the answers.
Live Agents
The majority of consumers online have stated that they prefer human agents to automated bots or companies that use live agents instead of chatbots. It is best to choose live agents if your customer queries tend to be complex and multi-layered.
On the other hand, even when you choose live agents, you still have to choose between choosing local agents or choosing overseas agents.
Outsourcing
Many companies preferred outsourcing simple tasks to overseas agents because it was cheap. However, the same firms are now opting to train chatbots instead of training foreign agents.
Bots can do the same thing but at a lower cost. Therefore, the decision to outsource to overseas agents will depend on a cost-benefit analysis of your business.
Local Agents
If a chatbot is not enough and outsourcing does not give you the desired results, you have the choice to hire highly trained local agents. Communication is paramount in customer service and local agents have an edge as far as offering personalized help is concerned.
Local agents can also be used for advertising and other tasks such as scheduling appointments. The decision will ultimately be decided by the return on investment of hiring local agents.
The decision to use live agents vs chatbots depends on performance, lower costs and increased profitability. It will ultimately be determined by your business needs.
