Small businesses that want to compete favorably in the future are adopting artificial intelligence to automate their activities with customers, including the use of chatbot technology that simulates human conversation through text or voice.

While some small businesses have leveraged chatbot technology, most have not. In this post, we will take a look at five chatbot benefits for small businesses.

1. Data collection for marketing purposes

You need your customers’ data to make marketing decisions. Chatbot technology makes it easy for you to collect the information you need from a customer even while you sleep. If a customer signs into a chatbot on your site using their Facebook profile, you can get access to their public data.

Сhatbots also can request the email address and phone number of your prospect or customer, and all this happens in a friendly, conversational way. With services like SendPulse, you can build a chatbot for popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, or popular messenger services like WhatsApp and Telegram. This allows you to be more flexible in your lead generation and marketing campaigns.

You can even go further and embed a form they can fill out for you to add them to your email list. As you grow your email list using a chatbot, you can launch an email campaign with a series of surveys to understand your customers’ preferences, enabling you to segment your list and send personalized emails and SMS notifications.

2. Instant customer support

Potential customers don’t want to waste time searching for key information about your business. The longer you keep them waiting, the higher the chances of them abandoning your website for your competitor’s website.

Chatbot technology handles this for you. You can set up a chatbot, integrate it into your website, and provide 24/7 customer support, giving prospects and clients the information they want automatically.

You also can set up auto replies on different social media platforms, which target customers may use to interact with your business.

3. Seamless customer journey

Your audience wants a seamless experience starting from the time they find your site to when they make a purchase, and a chatbot facilitates this. It can guide a potential customer from the awareness, consideration, and purchase to the onboarding stages. All it takes is for you to give the bot the proper instruction.

Some customers even prefer the guidance of a chatbot when trying to make purchases, especially when websites are difficult to navigate, which can be frustrating.

4. Lead generation

Chatbot technology, when properly integrated, can initiate discussions when users visit your site. This is called conversational marketing. The aim is to capture the attention of users by telling them in a chat how your business can help solve their problems.

A user may willingly share their details, which you can use to follow up and engage them in meaningful conversation. For example, a user who interacts with a Facebook messenger bot can automatically become a contact on your page and any promotional post you make on your page reaches them.

You can also target them when you launch a paid campaign on Facebook to generate leads since they are already in your contacts.

5. Cost reduction 

Chatbot technology has reduced the number of employees businesses need for customer service, decreasing overhead costs. For example, instead of having a customer service agent chatting live with customers, you can program a chatbot to do most of it.

Although chatbots can’t completely replace humans, they can handle some of the lesser tasks and pass the more complex ones on to humans. It is like having an automated system that interacts with your customers 24/7, boosts your lead generation, and at the same time saves you money.

 

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash