Chatbots. They’re one of the many tools that can revolutionise your customer service, and crucially are the fastest growing brand communication channel in the last 3 years, with a 92% increase since 2019. They’ve started infiltrating many consumer markets, and are becoming a very popular medium of communication in areas like online booking, online banking, and e-commerce/retail.
From a B2B perspective though, the uptake of chatbots has been a fair bit slower than other industries, but not without good reason. To understand why we need to understand what a Chatbot is, and how they differ.
What is a Chatbot?
A chatbot is simply a piece of software that is designed to behave like a human. Whenever a visitor arrives on your site or social media profile a chatbot might greet and support that visitor by answering queries, sharing information, redirecting inquiries, and much more.
The complexity of which a chatbot can behave is always dependent on the available technology. In the past, chatbots have typically followed a strict set of rules, with a certain number of preset answers. This naturally limits their capability only being able to choose a set number of answers. Nowadays however, some chatbots will use machine learning and AI to understand and engage in natural conversation a lot better. The flexibility this extra AI ability provides is what might propel chatbots into ever more complex sectors and environments.
The Legal Market
Chatbots historically might have been great for booking a restaurant because there is generally a pretty fixed route, and a fixed set of commands/responses to that inquiry. It’s not overly complex. The legal sector however is probably perceived as one of the most complex, and therefore needs a greater degree of intelligence (from the chatbots) to participate in the industry.
With the implementation of AI and machine learning, chatbots are now able to be far more reactive than a bunch of preset responses, and therefore can provide a far greater service. It’s a brand new ball game.
So what exactly are the advantages then for utilising chatbots in the legal sector.
Use Chatbots To Understand Your Potential Clients
With the implementation of chatbots you can understand your potential clients needs and wants far easier. Individuals using your website can ask any and all questions via a chatbot, with all this information becoming available to you either immediately, or stored for later use. Knowing what visitors are looking or searching for is imperative to providing great customer service.
Use Chatbots To Elevate Your Customer Service
On the subject of customer service, chatbots as a tool allow you to have round the clock 24/7 customer service. The smarter they become, the better they’ll be at solving problems. They’re also alive 24/7 around the clock. Sleep is for the weak, I’ve heard them say. Whilst you don’t want to wholly rely on chatbots to run your entire customer service, they can do a fantastic job troubleshooting simple problems, and can provide much needed assistance to an actual CS team.
Use Chatbots To Enhance Your Customer Satisfaction
Variety is the spice of life. People are different, and thereby so is the way they’ll choose to communicate. Having multiple different channels of communication is key, especially if your chatbots can offer intelligent, empathetic, or appropriate responses to any given query.
Use Chatbots To Increase Your Sales Engagement
Chatbots are critical for keeping users engaged as part of your website or social media. All of a sudden visitors have actual stimulation from visiting your site, which can be incredibly targeted depending on which page users find themselves on. For that reason, chatbots can significantly aid your lead generation by encouraging visitors to take certain actions, like asking broader informative questions, or by directly contacting you via a CTA.
Use Chatbots To Reduce Costs & Errors
Chatbots are robots, and unless you’ve watched too many Hollywood films, you’ll know that robots don’t make mistakes. They can cut out the human error element with any problem solving, research, and dialogue. They’re also cheap. Some chatbots can be expensive in their initial phase to buy, set-up, and teach. However, once up and running, chatbots are not only cheap to operate, but can also entertain multiple different conversations at any 1 time. People on the other hand are far more expensive, and with all the best will in the world, can’t entertain more than 1 conversation at any given time. Fine, 2 if you’re a fantastic multi-tasker.
Final Thoughts
Chatbots in the current year are not perfect. They are fantastic at doing certain jobs, and can do those jobs very well. They do however always need support from a human being.
Put simply, rule based simple chatbots will always need someone to monitor and follow up the next stage of the conversation. AI, machine learning chatbots on the other hand will improve over time, sure, because that’s what machine learning is designed to do, but they’ll never understand context or emotion.
People need to be at the heart of your brand, and that applies to your sales funnel or your customer service. What chatbots can and will do, is support and streamline those processes.
If you’re looking for more information about chatbots, or digital marketing for the legal sector, contact Boss Digital here for a free consultation.
