12 Jun
Amazing Things Enterprise Chatbots Can Do For Users
A report by Markets and Markets reveals that the chatbots market is set to be worth 3,172.0 Million USD by 2021. It isn’t too far fetched, at this point, to claim that bots just may be one of the most popular AI technologies today.
However, despite their popularity and increasing awareness around the incredible benefits that chatbots can bring to businesses, there hasn’t been nearly as much discussion around what chatbots can actually do for users. So while chatbots are touted as the next big thing across a variety of industries, businesses still do not know them for much beyond their ability to answer their customer’s most basic FAQs.
Before we delve into incredible new benefits that chatbots can bring to your users, let’s first take a step back to understand chatbots and their functionality.
A chatbot is essentially a computer program that enables conversation with an end user via auditory and textual methods. There are currently two types of chatbots- rule-based and AI-powered chatbots, and unsurprisingly, the former is rapidly becoming less and less relevant.
As we experience brand new advancements in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, we are starting to see chatbots that are smarter than ever and provide intelligent, highly relevant answers. Typically, chatbots reside as a contact in messaging apps used by the organization, such as Slack, Skype, Skype for Business and so on.
Enterprise chatbots today are built by leveraging powerful enterprise chatbot building platforms that can both enable organizations to build and deploy chatbots. It would be interesting to note that before chatbot platforms were introduced into the market, building a bot was complicated, time-consuming, and required a specific set of sophisticated skills. As robust chatbot building platforms enter the market, it’s become easier than ever for businesses to get started with minimum deployment time and zero coding skills.
Enterprise chatbots are a trending technology and are in fact, easy to build. Therefore it is imperative that business leaders take the time to understand ways in which chatbots can impact their organizations and its operations.
Before making the decision to build bots, it is critical to evaluate specific challenges that the business may be facing and identify ways in which a chatbot can address and resolve them. Therefore, the chatbot development process begins by first strategizing and assigning specific tasks you want your bot to do.
In this blog, we’re going to explore five top tasks your chatbots can perform. Read on to see which one of these use cases would be most relevant to your business and its functions:
4 AMAZING THINGS ENTERPRISE CHATBOTS CAN DO FOR USERS
THEY CAN PUSH PERSONALIZED ALERTS
Just like a mobile app, chatbots have the capability to deliver personalized notifications and alerts to customers and employees directly from your enterprise systems. This serves to ensure that your business users are kept updated about various changes and news in the organization.
Users also have the option to decide the frequency, timing and type of alerts they’d prefer to receive – chatbots can deliver alerts in multimedia formats- and schedule accordingly.
Chatbot administrators can also schedule specific type of alerts that are meant to be delivered to a desired set of users.
Alerts can be both simple text-based notifications or ones which require users to perform an action.
Here are examples of how notifications and alerts can help across a variety of organizations and departments:
An intranet chatbot can send notifications to relevant employees when there is a new document added to the intranet knowledge base.
A sales chatbot can keep users notified about changes in important metrics, included but not limited to MSL, leads, OTIF, payment terms and so on. These alerts can also be customized based on the location of the sales personnel and the specific customer they are about to meet, so they have access to the most relevant information required to make a sale. Chatbots can notify users about a dip in revenue from specific regions or brands etc. As a result, the sales personnel will be able to immediately dive into why it’s happening and take appropriate measures to fix.
A banking chatbot can send alerts to customers reminding them to make payments or to advise them that they have exceeded the credit limit, so they do not attract unforeseen fees.
An e-commerce chatbot can send alerts on incomplete orders. If a customer has items that have been left in the cart, he is reminded to complete the transaction to secure the items he wanted to purchase.
Chatbots can alert users about upcoming ERP downtimes.
THEY CAN COMPLETE TASKS
There are a variety of repetitive tasks that have to be performed across organizations for a variety of reasons. These routine tasks can be time-consuming and hamper productivity.
A chatbot can easily be introduced to address these tasks and complete them without glitches. These tasks can involve collecting, modifying, posting information in systems of record or making form-based data entries that employees and customers need to perform commonly. Using a chatbot not only saves time but also eliminates repetitions, that may be caused by human error.
Chatbots also eliminate the need to switch across multiple applications, go through various mundane procedures or depend on personnel to get tasks done. By automating the process, you are saving time for both customers and employees. Users can get all their simple, yet repetitive tasks are done, simply by “conversing” with the chatbot via their actively used organization wide messaging app.
Examples:
Employees can request an IT helpdesk chatbot to generate an IT ticket for any issues they may be encountering
Using an HR chatbot, employees can apply for leaves or generate payslips
Employees can request a Business Intelligence chatbot to update or make changes to a report.
Customers can place a product order
With Healthcare chatbots, patients can schedule appointments with doctors
FETCH INFORMATION
Chatbots provide users with an easy way to look data up or generate reports and facilitate better decision making for both your customers and employees.
Users can specify parameters and filters they require for the information they need and chatbots can share required information with users in a way that’s easy for users to scan, understand and send along for further processing.
Enabling users with chatbots allows them to easily request for information they require through voice commands and basic keystrokes.
Chatbots can easily answer questions via text or any multimedia format, including but not limited to images, graphs, pie charts and so on.
Decision makers can easily obtain granular business insights and key metrics right within the actively used messaging app. This eliminates the need for them to log into applications or scan through multiple dashboards or filter data to access the information they require. Instead, relevant information is made available to them right at their fingertips, saving time and greatly increasing efficiency.
Examples:
Employee to a BI chatbot: What is the marketing ROI for 2016 and 2017?
Employee to a BI chatbot: Get me the sales report for Antwerp from Jan to April
Customer to a banking chatbot: Generate a report of my FICO score
THEY CAN ANSWER QUESTIONS
This is a functionality that most people who’ve ever heard of a chatbot are already familiar with.
Most websites are equipped with chatbots that proactively ask visitors questions that enable them to provide a personalized experience and help the user reach exactly the information or page they are looking for.
This same functionality also applies within businesses – from the most simple FAQs to more complex questions, chatbots can be designed to address a wide range of queries from employees across the organization. Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) enable bots to understand the query and the intent and therefore, provide highly accurate answers. Well-designed chatbots can also quickly adapt to the office jargon, offering users the most relevant and informed answers to their queries.
Using an enterprise chatbot platform, administrators can detect the most commonly asked questions by users to the bot. Thereby you can constantly update the FAQ database of the bot and consistently enhance user experience and adoption
Developers
For more complex questions, chatbots can search for answers from pre-defined websites or databases, which can be in a variety of formats – word, PDF and others.
Examples:
Employee to HR bot: How many leaves do I have left?
Employee to IT helpdesk bot: How do I reset my password
Customer to tech support: Can you tell me more about a product or service
CONCLUSION
Enterprise chatbot technology is evolving at an incredibly rapid rate and chatbots are quickly replacing traditional apps, whose functionalities are not adept at answering customers queries effectively.
Chatbots that drive enterprise productivity perform a variety of functions – much more than simply answering basic FAQs – they have the power to quickly become the backbone of enterprise search.
We recommend that business leaders work closely to define a robust enterprise bot strategy before embarking on the journey of building one. This strategy should address specific organizational challenges and how they plan to leverage chatbots to address these.
A workplace chatbot should be built to handle a variety of requests rather than having individual chatbots for each department or type of function. The idea is to have a go-to bot that employees and customers can rely on to find the information they require.
If you’re interested to learn more about chatbots or how you can integrate them into your business, get in touch with one of our experts who will help you explore the right use case of a chatbot for your organization.
Abhishek is the AI & Automation Practice Head at Acuvate and brings with him 17+ years of strong expertise across the Microsoft stack. He has consulted with clients globally to provide solutions on technologies such as Cognitive Services, Azure, RPA, SharePoint & Office 365. He has worked with clients across multiple industry domains including Retail & FMCG, Government, BFSI, Manufacturing and Telecom.
Abhishek Shanbhag