As the name suggests, conversational AI is a sophisticated technology that is powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning whose aim is to carry out conversations like a human and, solve customer issues/address their needs. Conversational AI finds applications in many industries, including customer service, retail, finance, banking, and so on. Depending on the strategy you are using, conversational AI may involve chatbots, automated email communications, virtual assistants, or all of these. Conversational AI uses a combination of natural language processing and artificial intelligence to understand human speech and give intelligent responses. Conversational AI is highly useful when there are a large number of customer service requests. It can easily tackle the basic ones and pass the more complicated ones to human agents. Conversational AI automates most customer interactions and is an excellent source for collecting zero-party customer data and sharing it with your company so that you can understand customer behaviors and expectations better. As such, they save a lot of labor time and increase workers’ efficiency.

With engagement rates as high as 80-90%, conversational AI tools increase conversion rates even if you do not have the most optimized website. This is because chatbots enable a two-way conversation, and customers can get their issues resolved or their questions answered on the spot. They can quickly get an answer during an emergency, even at midnight, which makes conversational AI so powerful.

Conversational AI Eliminates Bad Leads

Often, lead conversion from marketing to sales is a matter of charm, luck, or persistence. Good leads have a better chance of conversion, and they require less salesperson time. Conversational AI can respond and sort leads in the order of relevance and chance of conversion in a way conventional scoring cannot. AI can answer questions through chatbots on your website and ask its own questions to conduct lead scoring based on your criteria. The conversational AI will transfer the priority leads to the sales team while keeping the others with AI until they become ready for conversation.

Conversational AI Speeds Lead Engagement

Conversion fails when leads are given up, ignored, or there are just too many for customer service agents to handle. With conversational AI, you do not have this problem, as the natural language AI responds to customer emails and queries in a systematic manner and automatically follows up if there are any bumps. Companies that utilize AI-based chatbots witness substantial savings in the labor time they spend on lead quantification and lead nurturing. With conversational AI, leads can be engaged and informed at every step of the funnel.

Conversational AI Does Not Ignore Leads

The marketing team may be sending many leads, but often the sales may not be able to catch and capitalize on every one of them. This is because the sales team is human, and it can only process a certain number of leads in a limited time frame. As such, the sales team capitalizes on the most qualified leads. But if you are using conversational AI platforms, they can send automated emails and follow up on even the lesser qualified leads. They can ask questions and make contact to get how the lead can be engaged and converted. Once these leads have become more qualified, they can be transferred to real people. In this way, your company does not ignore any kind of leads – more or less qualified.

Conversational AI Prevents Leads from Falling Off

Sometimes, the sales team may just give up on certain leads. They want to use their time in the most productive manner and as such filter better leads and customers that respond consistently. With conversational AI, you can avoid any unresponsive leads falling off. Often, some leads are ignored because they are not ready, but they might turn ripe after a couple of weeks or months. The key is keeping the lead engaged throughout that long time. Conversational AI can help you convert that lead by regularly engaging and following up on the conversation. Unlike sales agents, they do not get tired or discouraged and perform the task consistently.

However, you need to be mindful of what kind of follow-up you want to put out. Sometimes, chatbots just spam customer inboxes which can be a source of frustration. Instead, you want your conversational AI to follow maybe just once a week with a more personalized and naturalized language that gives them new information. Many chatbots have failed to satisfy customers as they spam the same message to all customers without customizing it. The modern customer is expecting personalization more than ever. As such, you cannot ignore this need.

Remember that your conversational AI should talk and feel like a human instead of a robot. For 84% of customers, being treated like a real person instead of a code/number was very important for their customer service experience. Many customers may not even realize that their first point of contact was a bot and not a human agent.

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According to a study by Inc, 42% of people prefer live chat support to other means of support. Real-time chat allows them to answer their questions without waiting on the phone. The average wait time for live chat support is just 46 seconds. This is much less when compared to the hours on hold times when calling. With email customer support, this easily stretches into days.

One of the most significant issues with phone support is the limited efficiency of employees. Phone support means an employee can only talk to one customer at a time. This is also the reason for long wait times, which is a huge inconvenience for customers. According to a Forrester report, 53% of customers will abandon their purchase if their questions are not answered. 73% believed valuing their time is the best customer service a company can give. 

This suggests that traditional customer support methods are increasingly becoming ineffective and redundant, especially with the younger generation. Statistics indicate that 63% of millennials prefer their query to be resolved on a live chat rather than a phone call. This is because millennials use their phones more than their previous generation and prefer to initiate live chat queries from their phones. 

Benefits of Live Chat Support 

There are many advantages of using live chat support. The benefits go beyond speed, efficiency, and convenience. Let’s have a look at the top benefits: 

1. Makes the Customer Support Experience Better 

The most crucial reason people prefer live chat is it answers their questions instantly. Live chat reaches customers the exact moment they have questions or problems. This way is much better than email support or generating a ticket through their online form, as customers don’t know when they will receive a response. It also offers a more personalized experience to the customers by learning from their previous behavior, patterns, and activities. Consumer satisfaction and service ratings increase with immediate response. 

2. Customer Onboarding and Acquisition 

Live chat is a smart way to connect with new potential customers by being available for them. The option of live chat gives confidence to customers in your product and website. According to a Forrester report, customers who use live chat are 2.8 times more like to convert than others who don’t. Being available for the customers helps build trust even though they don’t need customer support immediately. 

3. Live Chat Reduces Repetition

People usually get frustrated if they have to explain their issues repeatedly. Most of us have experienced having to repeat an issue to multiple departments before actually getting help. Research suggests that 72% of customers expect their agent to know the details of their problem, including product information and support history, without even asking. 

Live chat support allows agents to read the customer’s message and review details. By creating a written record of the problem, live chat reduces customer frustration of repeating the same things. All agents and departments will know about the issue and collaborate on a solution. Customers can share their screens with the agent through live chat support. This helps the agent assist customers better. 

4. Improve Productivity 

Live chat support boosts the customer support team’s productivity. While the customer support agents can only manage one customer on a phone call, they can juggle several on live chat. Agents might need one-to-one support for questions requiring research and extensive support, but handling a couple of customers together is quite manageable for simpler questions. There are several live chat software solutions that handle all kinds of support channels, including chat, emails, and forms, within a single tool to improve agents’ productivity. 

Additionally, live chat allows customers to be more productive as they can leave the chat open in the background of their computer and continue carrying on their work. This leads to improved customer experience and satisfaction. 

5. Live Chat Improves Customer Engagement 

Since live chat is readily available, there’s the possibility that your customers will be switching to live chat support instead of phone/email, while there might be some customers who were about to ditch your product but found live chat support instead on time. As such, live chat support improves customer engagement and gives customers a reason to stick with your brand. To make live chat more interactive, you can display agent names with their role and photos (if possible) and use a conversational tone. 

There are many benefits of using live chat over traditional customer support options. With technological developments and improvements in artificial intelligence, live chat support software has advanced to imitate human-like conversations so that customers get the human touch while receiving instant support.

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