When you’re running a business, keeping costs as low as possible is important. It helps you maintain a healthy profit margin and keep prices reasonable for your customers so they remain loyal.
To that end, you must constantly keep a close eye on business costs. If opportunities arise that might lower them, you’ll probably check them out to see if they could benefit your business. Chatbots could be one of those opportunities.
Should You Use a Small Business Chatbot?
Although they’ve been around for a while, the last few years has seen an increase in chatbot use. But are chatbots all they are cracked up to be? Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of using chatbots to help you decide.
Pros of Using Chatbots
1. Faster Customer Service
One advantage of using bots is that they help you provide faster customer service. If you have a business, they can provide customer service on your website 24 hours a day. What’s more, they don’t need weekends, holidays, vacations, or sick days off.
When online customers have questions, all they have to do is ask the bot on your website. There’s no waiting on a human to look it up because the answers are a few keystrokes away.
2. Increased Customer Satisfaction
Another of the pros is that your customers will be more satisfied. When they get satisfactory answers and speedy service, they’ll be happier, shop more, and return again.
3. Lower Labor Costs
Using chatbots gives you an advantage when you are trying to keep costs down. Since you don’t have to pay for employee benefits, they may cost less than you’d pay an employee.
Of course, lower labor costs translate into increased profits for your business. In the end, that means more money in your pocket.
4. Variety of Uses
It’s possible to use chatbots in more than one area in a business. You could use them for customer orders, customer service, and advertising just to name a few.
Cons of Using Chatbots
1. Limited Responses for Customers
Although using chatbots may provide faster customer service overall, they aren’t perfect. Simple ones may have only limited responses for customers. Therefore, not all customers will get the answers they are searching for.
2. Customers Could Become Frustrated
Because many chatbots work from a limited data base, they can’t improvise. In other words, if they get confused, the conversation could run in a circle. That can lead to customers who become frustrated.
Slang and sarcasm are lost on a chatbot. Customers who use may not get the results they were hoping for and needing.
3. Complex Chatbots Could Cost More
Complex chatbots that solve some of the problems described above can cost more than simple ones. In some cases, these artificial intelligence chatbots cost thousands more. That defeats part of the purpose of a chatbot, which is to save money.
Setting up AI is expensive due to the hours of work and testing involved. Sure, they can learn, but it still takes time.
4. Not All Business Can Use Chatbots
A Con is that not all business can use them. Some businesses are far too complex for chatbots to be practical.
Trying to program all of the different questions or possible scenarios in such a circumstance would be costly. Additionally, the hours it would take would make such an undertaking unfeasible.
It’s true that using chatbots in some businesses is a good way to lower costs and increase profits. But you should consider all of the pros and cons before adding them to your business.
Republished by permission. Original here.
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