Within a decade, chatbot platforms have significantly evolved. From simple interface to contextual AI-based bots, they have grown smarter. Now, bots can interpret, understand, and reply to human queries based on the natural language. But, that’s not it. AI bots can also remember visitors and identify them if they visit again. This skill of chatbots is deeply serviceable in the space of conversational marketing and personalization.
Businesses have always focused on providing a customized space as per the interests of the customers. It’s been seen that personalized and perfectly tailored conversations are the most powerful conversion tool. Based on the concept of one-on-one talks, conversational marketing is the key to get more clients.
The Evolution: Business-centric to Customer-centric Approach
Today business models are thoroughly based on the customers. It has become necessary for an organization to step in the shoe of buyers. Whereas, in the past, customers are bound to accept calls at odd hours, and it was their responsibility to submit the details and get ready to connect with a business.
But at present, this approach has changed significantly, customers today are free from the stress of unknown calls and emails. They can pick a date and schedule the meeting with business to get support at the time they want, in just seconds.
First Thing First, What is Conversational Marketing?
To understand it in short, see it as a mix of digital experience and traditional in-store customer service. It’s the cheapest yet best method to enhance the capacity of the marketing campaigns.
Social media platforms have changed the landscape of marketing. Today companies with successful marketing campaigns are getting more customers, clients, and prospects. As a result, their ROI has boosted significantly, that too at a very cost-effective price.
Conversational marketing isn’t a subset of traditional marketing. Rather, it’s a whole new world. It can be defined as the personalized way of communicating with the website visitors while pitching them relevant products and services.
Modes of conversational marketing:
- Live chats: Humans are much better than bots when it comes to the contextual use of language. But, on the same hand, one-on-one conversations add up the operational cost. Because live chat agents can at max handle 6 clients at the same time. And, it becomes unmanageable when the client count reaches thousands.
- AI chatbots: Machines are no dumber. With the integration of AI into chatbot platforms, they have become capable of handling multiple clients at the same time. Plus, they can interpret if a user is concerned about buying a product. And, route the conversation as per user interest.
What are the Response Time of Live Chats and AI chatbots?
There are two scenarios to take into account, the first one: When a live chat agent is online. In this case, both chatbot and a human agent will almost take the same time to close the query request of a customer. Besides, when it comes to understanding complex queries of the users, a human agent can be a better option than an AI chatbot. But, when live chat agents are either equipped with flooded queries or are away. Then, response time varies from minutes to hours to sometimes days. The same is not the case with chatbots, as they can instantly reply to all queries of the visitors in real-time.
Your 50% of the customers are not happy!
In 2017, Microsoft published a report based on how customer support can affect the customer base. It includes that more than 46% of the consumers chose to switch brands due to bad customer support.
How to Make a Perfect Conversational Marketing Channel?
While some folks may still view chatbots as an alternative to human-to-human communication channels. The reality is companies need both. It’s no longer a matter of “Bots vs. humans.” Instead, the goal of modern businesses should be to make it as easy as possible for people to start conversations and buy on their terms, in real-time, and when it’s most convenient for them. That’s what conversational commerce and marketing are all about.
Personalization can be A Driving Factor
“How to acquire more customers?” There are hundreds of answers to this question, but personalization is the prime factor in building a business relationship with the customers. It’s focused on the concept of remembering and valuing the choices of the buyers.
Personalization in the field of customer support, sales and marketing stand for tailoring the experience as per the input of the users. AI chatbots can make it easier for businesses to connect with their clients on a personal level. They can remember basic user details and preferences. Furthermore, to enhance the buying experience of the customer, a chatbot can pitch relevant products, services, and offers to make a conversation more appealing and exciting.
AI Bots have made personalization a scalable tool. They can remember extensive data of every customer, such as last visit, time spent, preferences, budget, repeated user, UTM details, total sessions, address, etc.
Now, with the help of AI chatbots, businesses can tailor and run personalized campaigns. It can help in enhancing brand value, customer experience, customer satisfaction, engagement rate, and conversion rate.