Customer Service Virtual Agent

In recent years we are witnessing a new trend. The trend where businesses have been using chatbots as customer service agents. And there is a good reason for that too. Evolving technology and changing times has made it easier, for businesses to engage their customers, make short of the workload and proactively tackle minor customer service issues from turning into major problems.

We have pulled in some best practices and tips for creating chatbots for your reading pleasure.

Related: ONPASSIVE Chatbots: A new wave of success

Identify Tasks for a Virtual Agent:

The most important thing is to know what you want from your virtual agent or chatbot. Determine how much you want to empower the chatbot and plan accordingly.

  • Would you want to prepare your customer service agents to dedicate more time to resolving more complicated customer issues?
  • Would you provide faster 24/7 feedback for common customer questions?
  • Would you want to cut down on the emails that your business receives?

Some niggling thoughts need to be answered and for that, you need to narrow down the tasks that the virtual agent can be trusted with. It helps clarify the steps you need to take to derive the results you need.

Decide Work Delegation to Chatbot:

Using chatbots in business can save a lot of human work hours that can be channelized for different productive purposes. But identifying tasks to hand over to chatbots is indeed challenging.

Core areas of the business should be handled by a real person while those jobs or tasks that you wish to outsource (Such as customer support) can be effectively delegated to a chatbot. Mundane and repetitive tasks and jobs are ideal for virtual agents.

Related: Design a Personality for Your Chatbot

Give Voice to your Chatbot:

Chatbots need to have a personality and that should match to that of the company or business chatbots are deployed in. If customers realize that they are not dealing with a real person, they might drift away and this is not a great customer service experience (CX).

Take your brand into consideration. What sort of tone does it best represent? Is it polished and professional? Witty? Warm and inspiring?  Utilize this as knowledge to create your bot’s voice.

Now that the tone is in place, avoid making your virtual assistant too wordy. Yes, the chatbot is minimizing the workloads of other employees in similar functions, and you want to stuff in as much information in it as possible. Customers might find borning to engage with it and feel unsatisfied. Break messages that are long and present in front of the customer in short sentences for them to comprehend and be engaged with the chatbots.  

Related: ONPASSIVE Chatbots: A new wave of success

Knowing When to Bring in the Human-Agent:

The chatbots might be capable of solving the majority of your customer support and service issues. But there will be instances where individuals or customers would want to speak to a live customer service agent. Knowing when to cut the conversation and hand the call to the human agent is a challenge that businesses face and they have deployed AI, ML and deep learning to study and analyze a pattern here.

Invest in a Chatbot Pilot:

Now that businesses are convinced of the need for chatbots or virtual assistants, they need to set aside a budget to acquire and run a chatbot pilot. Building a chatbot from the ground up would cost anywhere between $30,000 and $150,000. Building a basic chatbot through available apps would cost much lesser at $3,000 to $5,000. All this comes down to what sort of information the chatbot will need to access.

Having a chatbot in the business is one of the best investments for sure as it improves the productivity of your employees and also determines the success of your business. As per a survey, 44% of customers prefer to interact with a virtual agent than the human agent.

Final thought: The most important thing about having a chatbot in the business is using the chatbot correctly. The ultimate objective is to create a better experience for your customers by providing them efficient and high-quality service. Investing in a virtual agent can maximize the productivity of your business while providing a better customer experience.

Related: Improve Your Customer Experience With Artificial Intelligence: How AI is Transforming Customer Experience