Why chatbots are needed
The attention span of a person is rapidly decreasing. Back in 2015, this interval was 8 seconds, which is 4 seconds less than in 2000 (Microsoft study). And now the already modest figure has decreased even more, so the struggle for attention and user retention has reached a new level. Chatbots have become one of the tools.
Ordinary users do not want to understand dozens of complex pages, study site navigation and re-read all the content that you carefully wrote, following all the rules of SEO optimization. We need an answer “here and now” and in all details. The bot perfectly covers this need, it knows the trigger words and is able to orient in the information space of the web resource. He is in touch 24/7, is not silent, does not think for a long time and is always ready to help.
Yes, the chatbot is easy to manage and use, it is a great solution for optimizing communications and identifying demand. But it does not have a universal instruction or a road-map implementation in processing, so it is important to decide on the bank with goal-setting: what specific needs of the company are solved by the chatbot. For example, our goal in the company is to use such a tool as a service that helps to identify demand at the top stage of the funnel and start “warming up” the client. A chatbot can answer general questions, talk about solutions or technology stacks, provide materials, or suggest an alternative. But when the user goes to the next stage of the funnel, we already connect the expert.
Bot or human?
It is important to understand that a chatbot cannot completely close the need for communication with a client. And the more complex and specific the business niche, the more important the presence of a “live” expert increases. For example, in mass e-retail, in certain scenarios, the bot is able to independently guide the user through the entire funnel. But if we talk about B2B, about the project business, here, as a rule, only the part that helps to identify demand is automated.
There are many free and commercial services that allow you to customize the tool for specific scenarios. The most important point is the compilation of mindmap scenarios, the development of the logic and structure of interaction, since the effectiveness and conversion of the tool depends on it. Remember that chatbots do not replace people, but they relieve human resources well: a manager can work on a real request from a client, and not spend time identifying needs. It is more profitable to implement chatbots by directing employee resources to more significant processes.
What's wrong with bots?
Despite the fact that the development of artificial intelligence is progressing by leaps and bounds, bots are still far from ideal. They do not speak the user's natural language, are not capable of empathy, and do not understand slang or abbreviations. Even if they are built on machine learning algorithms, they are still perceived as something “inanimate”. Therefore, we do not use chat bots in the context of personal communication, but we implement the tool on websites and use situational tg bots: each channel has its own vector, its own directions and its own pool of tasks.
Thus, the lack of personalization, superficial data, boilerplate communication, and the cost of writing logic and scripts can be significant disadvantages when implementing chatbots.
