Here’s how businesses are unleashing the power of chatbots for better sales and conversations

The customer support landscape has evolved dramatically over the last few years, with one function emerging right at the centre - chatbots. There is no denying the role of chatbots, or automated conversation systems, in today’s world. They provide 24*7 support and automatically resolve queries without any human intervention, which is perfect for customer 2.0 - millennials and Gen Zs - who want instant, digital connections to keep them up to date. To ensure that these businesses get to maintain their connections with the new generation of customers, brands like CM.com are enhancing their customer experience through automated and scalable Conversational AI solutions.

But the demand is only set to grow. As per a Gartner study, by 2022, 70 percent of white-collar workers will interact with conversational platforms on a daily basis. From a business lens, a study claimed that while 2021 was the year of recovery, 2022 is going to see more chatbots empowering customer support services in order to enhance customer engagement.

Improving customer relationships on preferred channels

Needless to say, chatbots add value and increase user engagement by addressing queries immediately, providing real-time answers to queries, helping brands keep in touch with customers through regular updates and notifications, and customising products as per the customer’s behaviour pattern. More and more organisations are leveraging chatbots to ensure seamless communication with customers.

To ensure that brands form a personal connection with their customers, CM.com offers Conversational AI solutions for all major communication channels – be it WhatsApp, Instagram, Google’s Business Messages. CM.com’s Conversational AI Cloud enables brands to easily build and launch their own intelligent conversations and Conversational User Interfaces.

CM.com leverages WhatsApp Business and lets businesses start conversations on it, while providing world-class mobile customer experiences on the popular messaging channel. While it is great for small businesses, once the business gets higher volume messages which cannot be handled by one person, businesses must opt for WhatsApp Business API. It sends useful notifications and delivers superior customer support, automates customer support and handles more queries with bots, processes requests, orders and payment in real-time, transfers issues to a human agent for a high impact conversation and delivers an omnichannel customer experience.

Instagram Messaging helps businesses connect and engage with the Instagram community, have meaningful conversations, increase customer satisfaction, and drive sales. Messenger API allows businesses to manage and scale the conversations with their audience on Instagram. By using CM.com as the Instagram Messaging Provider, businesses can get an array of benefits such as access to all messaging channels, one common dashboard, one API, built-in features and channel fallback.

And Google’s Business Messages enable brands to engage with customers where and when they need it. It provides a conversational experience directly from Google Search and Maps. It helps businesses meet customers in their time of need, utilise Google's powerful search engine and its rich media, offer seamless high-value service via integrations, and optimise customer service time with fast and personal conversations.

Succeeding with the power of AI

CM.com allows customers to automate conversations with their Conversational AI Cloud. It lets brands build their own bot and create beautiful customer experiences, without the requirement of any coding skills. The unique solution gives brands access to not just a chatbot, but also a voicebot, virtual assistant, or a knowledge base.

Arman van Lieshout, Senior Product Owner, CM.com explained, “Our platform focuses on making concepts like natural language processing accessible, understandable, and scalable without sacrificing quality or power. Ensuring that our customers can focus on the experience of their customers, instead of worrying about their Conversational AI environment is something we focus on heavily, both as a product and as an organisation. The most important aspect is making sure that customers get that first contact moment just right through our Conversational AI Cloud. It reduces live agent load, increases overall customer satisfaction, and overall handling time. The end result is a happier customer, better leads, and more sales conversions.”

Apart from enabling brands to create an intelligent, personalised conversational bot without a single line of code, the product offers seamless integration with other smart systems in the front- and backend, and it analyses conversational performance with AI technologies so that brands can keep learning and improving. The success of Conversational AI Cloud can be seen in its stories - leading fashion brand Missguided managed to decrease live contacts and save 14 percent of the customer service costs with the help of Conversational AI Cloud. They created an extra smooth return process and improved the customer experience.

Understanding why chatbots are inevitable

The dependence on chatbots are expected to continue rising as businesses rethink their strategies in the new normal. According to Drift’s 2020 State of Conversational Marketing report, the usage of chatbots as a brand communication channel increased by a whopping 92 percent since 2019, and most people who interacted with one had a positive or neutral experience.

Apart from industries like e-commerce and retail, chatbots are increasingly gaining popularity in sectors like travel, healthcare, human resources, BSFI, real estate, edtech, and many more. Here are some examples of its uses in some major industries:

E-commerce and retail: Right from sending alerts and notifications, maintaining in-app booking, scheduling and order status, having automated loyalty programs, streamlining customer service, helping in lead generation and many more, the uses of chatbot are innumerable.

Finance: By leveraging chatbots in the sector, companies can automate payments, get alerts and seamless money transfers, and also get instant answers to their queries.

Travel: Companies can offer their customers 24x7 support, personalised conversations and an answer to each of their queries. A customer doesn't want to have to go through any trouble to reach you as a travel agent, airline, or hotel. So businesses can reach them through all channels – from phone and email to Live Chat and WhatsApp.

Healthcare: Once patients book appointments, hospitals can send an SMS or a WhatsApp notification with the doctor’s profile. They can customise their appointments on the chat or messaging app.

Human Resources: Companies can improve employee engagement by letting them share their feedback through chatbots.

Chatbots are a necessity across industries, helping companies increase revenue, save time, shorten sales cycles, boost conversion, and also ensuring that customers return to the brand. And for all of these industries, CM.com’s Conversational AI solutions can truly make a difference.

If you want to find out more about how CM.com’s Conversational AI solutions can revolutionise your business,