What do you think of when I say, ‘artificial intelligence’?

If Google Home, Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, the ATO’s ‘Alex’,or even Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey came to mind, you’d be right on every count. All of these assistants are driven by the powerful motor of artificial intelligence.

Far from malevolent forces in sci-fi movies, artificial intelligence is part of our lives today in the form of intelligent chatbots at the B2B and B2C level.

Chatbots are the driving force behind the success of businesses and organizations. Business Insider predicted in 2016 that by the end of this year, more than 80% of companies planned to have chatbots empowering their customers and employees to take their business to new heights. And indeed, 67% of today’s customers used a chatbot in the last year. One of the main goals of any business is that of maximizing profit by minimizing overheads. Virtual assistants play a key role in achieving that goal.

In today’s world, most companies are focusing on getting their businesses into the digital space to build new customer bases through social media and other messaging platforms. Chatbots play a crucial role in this digital transformation of a business’ reach.

Virtual assistants help reduce operational costs. Every year there are billions of customer support requests being made across various industries. Businesses can save on hiring costs by leveraging these solutions. You see, chatbots can help answer simple and often repetitive queries, allowing customer service agents to focus on more complex tasks. Chatbot solutions can also be scaled depending on the number of customers engaging with the bot.

In 2020, when everything is at the consumer’s fingertips, the modern customer does not like to wait for help. Another advantage of chatbots is that they provide 24/7 support to customers. This helps in keeping customers engaged with the brand, minimising lead wastage, and attracting potential new customers from multiple time zones, as support is available outside traditional business hours. Whereas handling many customer services queries at once can lead to occasional human error, through the power of artificial intelligence, you can train chatbots to respond to customer queries quickly and consistently, therefore reducing the possibility of mistakes.”

Virtual Assistants also help sales and marketing teams engage with the user by asking relevant questions, after which it can analyse the responses to detect patterns, which will help in qualifying the user as a possible lead. The sales team is then notified in a systematic way, so that they can follow up with the customers easily. This saves a lot of time and effort in manually searching and surveying new customers for the business. Through interactions with users, chatbots can also give personalised recommendations that inform the user of any offers or discounts to improve sales.

In today’s multicultural world, it’s important to leverage diverse lingual market segments. Businesses can also take advantage of the multilingual capability of a chatbot to attract more customers and increase their brand value. Companies can reach out to customers from different parts of the world, thereby diversifying the customer base and providing a unique experience through virtual assistants.

Implementing chatbots can help companies to function more efficiently internally as well. HR and IT chatbots can cater to staff queries and provide excellent service to employees, thus increasing overall team productivity. Employees can easily interact with the bot to receive answers to their queries, without having to depend on HR or IT personnel. Virtual assistants can also help senior management to assess employee performance and views throughout the organization. Chatbots are not just the future for businesses; they are already here, and they’re here to stay. By keeping up with the state of play in B2B and B2C communications, your company can provide your customers and employees with the best possible experience and take your business to the next level.