AI customer engagement solutions like chatbots and virtual assistants are taking the world by storm. In fact, by 2034, the market for chatbots is expected to reach a value of $6.96 billion. It’s easy to see why. Chatbots and AI tools aren’t just saving companies, customer service teams, and marketing or sales professionals time and effort – they drive genuine results.
Around 99% of B2B marketers say chatbots increase their conversion rates, and business leaders in multiple industries say chatbots have boosted their average sales by up to 67%.
In every industry, chatbots are streamlining engagement, helping businesses to deliver more personalized and authentic experiences to customers, and even giving companies access to more valuable data they can use to generate growth.
At Aivanti, we see the impact of AI for customer engagement every day, through the increased revenues, sales, and loyalty our clients achieve. Here’s your behind-the-scenes look at how chatbots in customer service, sales, and marketing are revolutionizing lead generation, nurturing, and conversion.
Generating, nurturing, and consistently converting leads can be difficult in any industry. To unlock high conversion rates, companies need to find ways to constantly connect with their audience, guide them through the purchasing journey, and earn their loyalty.
That’s notoriously difficult to do as your business scales, even if you have a huge team of professionals working on marketing, sales, and customer support processes. Investing in AI-powered customer engagement tools, like chatbots, make all the difference.
Chatbots don’t just sit on a company’s website, they actively engage with your audience through every stage of their journey. Here’s how chatbots in customer service, sales and marketing are driving phenomenal business growth.
Companies in today’s world can’t simply wait around and hope leads will come to them. If you’re not actively reaching out and connecting with potential customers – and guiding them to the right products, then your competitors will beat you to the mark.
Fortunately, we’re living in a world where chatbot customer engagement tools can connect with, qualify, and even score leads on a company’s behalf. Chatbots can gather information about a potential lead based on their browsing history and activities, and personalize interactions.
They can ask customers questions about their preferences, goals, and pain points, to qualify leads, then direct those customers to the right products or services based on their requirements. Alternatively, they can use the data they gather to share insights with sales teams that they can use to boost the chances of a conversion.
The insights offered by chatbots, and their ability to use predictive analytics to identify and qualify leads drives higher conversions. In fact, 55% of companies say they end up with better quality leads because they’re using chatbots for AI-powered customer engagement.
One of the top ways AI and chatbots are transforming the customer experience, is by making personalization easier at scale. 71% of customers expect personalization in every interaction they have with a company, and 76% feel frustrated when they don’t get it.
Companies need to personalize interactions with customers to actively encourage them to buy products, and earn their long-term loyalty. But it’s tough to engage in personalized interactions with every customer who encounters your company.
Chatbots improve customer experience by making personalization simple. They can analyze user behavior in real time, learning preferences faster than you can say “machine learning.” This means a chatbot can learn about your customers instantly and use what it discovers during interactions with a buyer. For instance, a chatbot with access to a customer’s browsing history might notice that a user explores numerous web pages for skincare products but doesn’t buy anything.
When customers ask questions about a product, based on their browsing history, the chatbot can deliver tailored, relevant responses, even suggesting ways to bundle products to get the best deal or outcome.
Navigating a website and finding the right products shouldn’t be complicated – but it can be, particularly when companies offer customers a huge range of solutions to choose from. AI chatbots for customer service can help streamline the customer’s journey.
Acting as virtual guides, they help users find what they’re looking for quickly. For instance, if a visitor landed on a website selling books, but didn’t know where to start searching for the best new novel, a chatbot could ask about their preferences and favorite genres, to point them towards the right product. The bot could even share reviews left by previous customers.
AI bots can even suggest specific products to search for, or link customers straight to product pages and bundle deals. Better yet, chatbot customer engagement tools can actively suggest and recommend products that are most likely to appeal to customers based on their previous purchases.
This isn’t just helpful—it’s profitable. Research from Salesforce shows that product recommendations drive 26% of total revenue for e-commerce businesses.
In the digital world, customers don’t just interact with companies between the hours of 9am to 5pm. They’re making purchases, researching products, and looking for answers to queries 24/7. That means you need to be able to connect with your customers at all hours too.
Hiring a team of round-the-clock support experts would be difficult, and expensive, but with AI chatbots for customer service – you don’t have to. Chatbots don’t have to rest, clock out, or take breaks, they can respond to your customers at any time of the day.
That means companies can improve customer experience with a chatbot by giving them access to an always-on assistant that can respond to concerns day or night. Constant availability leads to greater trust from customers, showing them that you’ll always be available to address any problems they might have, and help them make the right purchasing choices.
It’s that trust that keep customers coming back to your business, even when other companies offer similar products for lower prices. Remember, 94% of customers say they’re more likely to make another purchase with a company after a positive service experience.
AI customer engagement tools aren’t just excellent at supporting customers, and potentially increasing conversions. They’re also fantastic for giving companies the insights they need to make decisions that facilitate long-term, sustainable growth.
With a chatbot, customer engagement teams and business leaders can gain instant insights into the needs, preferences, and behaviors of their target audience.
These tools can also collect feedback directly from customers, asking them questions about the products they love, and the solutions they need. These insights give businesses the resources they need to tweak marketing strategies, improve product offerings, and address customer pain points. For example, if multiple users complain about a specific feature, you can address it proactively.
Companies can even use the insights they get from AI chatbots for customer service to create resources that improve the customer journey, such as FAQ guides, and help articles.
One of the best things about AI customer engagement tools, like chatbots, is that they’re not just there to respond to customers. They can also proactively reach out and connect with prospects and leads throughout their purchasing journey.
Using chatbots for customer experience enhancements gives you access to a sales, marketing and customer service assistant that can connect with buyers at pivotal moments, even when your human team members aren’t available.
For instance, if a visitor on your website is lingering on a pricing page, a chatbot could jump in with a time-sensitive discount or free trial offer. These proactive nudges not only spark interest but also drive conversions. Chatbots can also help to keep customers engaged after an initial conversion.
An AI-powered tool can send messages or emails to customers after they make a purchase, asking them for feedback on the product, sharing tips on how to use it effectively, or suggesting additional products and services they might also enjoy. They could even send proactive thank-you notes post-purchase, to increase loyalty and retention rates.
No customer likes being left in the dark. One of the key advantages of chatbots in customer service is their ability to address inquiries instantly, ensuring smooth and efficient communication. These bots excel at tackling common questions such as pricing, product details, or troubleshooting.
Research suggests today’s customers don’t just expect immediate service, they would happily pay more to ensure they get it. Chatbots ensure you’re always there to answer customer questions immediately, and streamline the path to purchase for your customers.
Beyond that, high-quality AI chatbots for customer service also know when they need to escalate a customer’s query or issue to another member of staff. When they encounter a problem they can’t solve on their own, they can instantly route the customer to a human agent.
These bots can even transfer contextual information from previous conversations to a human employee, ensuring customers don’t have to repeat themselves to get the assistance they need. This ensures a seamless, and convenient support experience.
One of the best things about using AI for customer engagement is that it makes it easy to automate tasks that would otherwise frustrate both employees, and customers. For instance, companies rely on data to learn more about their leads, improve their products, and enhance customer service.
However, customers hate wasting time filling out forms and managing data entry. Chatbots in customer service can reduce this issue. They can collect essential information quickly, like names, preferences, and contact details, without overwhelming potential leads.
This means companies gain access to more of the data they need for effective lead qualification, nurturing, and conversion, without frustrating their customers.
Chatbots can even streamline the process of filling out forms for customers in other ways. For instance, a chatbot with machine learning for hotels could surface information about a customer from a CRM and suggest data they might need to include when filling out a check-in form, saving them time on manually entering details.
By streamlining the process of gathering data, chatbots facilitate quicker conversions, saves businesses and employees time, and improve customer satisfaction.
The concept of using chatbots and AI for customer engagement is nothing new. However, as customer expectations evolve, and AI technologies become more sophisticated, more companies than ever before are beginning to discover how chatbots will transform customer experiences in the years ahead.
Business leaders are discovering that chatbots are the key to personalizing interactions, qualifying leads more effectively, and increasing conversions. If you’re not investing in chatbots already, then there’s a good chance you could even lose customers to the competitors that are.
At Aivanti, we’re leading the charge to the AI-powered customer engagement era, with our user-friendly, but advanced AI-powered chatbot solutions. Our scalable and intuitive solutions help companies to foster stronger relationships with customers, improve communication and service strategies, and achieve measurable improvements in conversion rates.
Discover the benefits of innovative chatbot customer engagement tools today, and stay one step ahead of the competition, with Aivanti.
