Providing responsive customer support is a requirement for small businesses across all niches. Without quality customer support, a business brand simply loses its relevance, credibility, and reputation. No wonder most successful companies and major business brands spend so much attention, money and expertise on improving customer support.
While customer support is always going to be important in the
planning of things for any business, it is undergoing rapid changes for the
latest technologies. Intelligent chatbots have recently been the latest value
addition to companies' customer support acumen.
Providing quality customer support at low cost is still a
challenge for startups and emerging brands. Although they may not manage a
large customer support team, they need to play on an equal footing with big
brands regarding providing customer support. This is where the chatbot plays
the role of automation. The concept of live chat software also brought a sigh of relief
to businesses.
Here we are going to explain the pros and cons of live chat and
chatbots and what may be more suitable for different needs.
Suggested Read: 7 Proven Ways to Attract and Retain Customers
What is Live Chat?
Live chat became popular years ago, and still, a lot of
businesses in industry niches use live chat. Live chat service is offered via a
commercial website by a plugin, widget, or program with a different icon. It
works as a business application to answer questions and create conversations
with customers through messaging. Real-time chatting capability with customers
is the hallmark of live chat.
Pros and Cons of Live Chat
Live chat provides an equal share of pros and cons for customer
support. Let's take a look at them.
Pros
- Live chat programs provide instant access to customer support.
- Live chat helps improve brand reputation by providing support through quick conversations.
- Support quality can be easily evaluated by tracking messages. Live chat software can be improved rapidly based on messages.
- Live chat support comes free with website or mobile app.
Cons
- Absence of support personnel can actually reduce customer engagement and interest.
- As the amount of traffic on the server increases, live chat can slow down in response and involve longer wait times for customers.
- Live chat software using pre-scripted responses often make the conversation monotonous and may fail to inform what customers are asking.
- Lack of alignment between the customer's time zone with the operator can be a problem for live chat programs.
What is Chatbot?
A chatbot is a software application that can simulate
conversations with customers in a human style. Being powered by AI and machine
learning technologies, chatbots can be more intelligent to answer customer
questions and in a data-driven manner to address specific customer intentions
expressed through queries.
Pros and Cons of Chatbots
Chatbots have a balanced share of pros and cons of providing
customer support. Let's take a look at them.
Pros
- Chatbots are conversational software programs that are created once and deployed for customer support. Therefore they are more cost effective.
- Chatbots provide very responsive and quick customer support.
- Lightning fast response time helps improve customer experience to a great extent.
- By having all the data, chatbots help to use the scope of data analytics and attract relevant customer insights.
Cons
- Just because chatbots are basically bots, they are not more flexible in responding to inappropriate queries from customers.
- The creation of an intelligent chatbot involves the service of expert app developers requiring high initial costs.
- Based on a database of information, chatbots are more vulnerable to crashes.
- Reducing human touch and relying more on scripts, chatbots often have an in-depth understanding of a specific customer problem.
- For complex and multifaceted issues, chatbots are inadequate, and businesses need to be addressed with humanitarian assistance.
Live Chat vs Chatbot: What do you need?
Now that the pros and cons of both live chat and chatbots are
discussed, it is time to explain which of these two solutions can be useful.
Complexity of Questions
If most of the questions and questions asked by your customers
are simple and objective, then chatbots can actually provide a better service.
Conversely, if the questions involve some clarification and deeper
understanding, then live chat would be better suited to answer.
Fast Response Time
If customers require the fastest response time within just a few
seconds, a chatbot may be more appropriate. If a wait time of one minute or 30
seconds is not a problem for your customers, then live chat may be more
appropriate.
Cost Effectiveness
Both live chat and chatbot solutions are cost-efficient. While
some operating costs are required on a regular basis at first, chatbots do not
involve good one-time investment and no operating costs. choice is yours.
Human Touch
Since live chat involves the interaction of a human agent
through a messaging program, it is more human and interactive in nature.
Chatbots mostly lack human touch, but some intelligent chatbots that mimicked
my conversation can actually sound more human.
Suggested Read: 5 Benefits of Live Chat Service for Your Business
Conclusion
Finally, we have to say that not all live chat programs and
chatbots behave the same. So, excellence in creating a live chat function or
chatbot is a privilege that will guide your entire development. If you want to
present simple FAQs through a conversational interface, a chatbot would be
more ideal. But to handle more in-depth and complex questions, presumably, you
need live chat software.
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