It seems like every other proposal we do requires our touch on chatbots. This might even increase with 80% of brands wanting to introduce some level of artificial intelligence or chatbots by 2020. Even though I strongly belief that a proper Customer Experience Management (CEM) system should be agnostic of IT and technology solutions, businesses often push certain due to trends or hot topics. Chatbots are no different.
I completely get that chatbots can probably save companies heaps of money because of the automation; but what I struggle to grasp is whether this is really what the customers want. I will have to see your customers research to belief that this is really a customer facing strategy. I guess it’s ok if your strategic intent is to save money; but if it doesn’t add value to your customer’s experience you’ll possibly lose sight of what your customers’ need.
I would strongly recommend that executives put themselves in the shoes of their customers and walk through the proposed customer chatbot journey before rolling out an end to end chatbot solution, while also considering their different customer personas.
Some research has shown that banks’ customer satisfaction scores are down due to the implementation of chatbots. The reason being that these companies are already dealing with trust related issues, now wish to replace their human facing interaction with artificial intelligence. Another interesting discovery is that 70% of chatbot failure is due to customer frustration.
Technology on its own will never be able to improve your customers’ engagement. It’s how well you manage the relationship between your technology, people and process that will improve your customer engagement and increase your customer experience.
This article was originally posted on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/customer-experience-chatbots-michelle-badenhorst/
