Business owners can definitely leverage on the culture of immediacy that comes with the wide usage and prevalence of chat applications, especially with the help of Conversational Experience that can add a differentiating factor to their business. Using chat applications for daily conversations, especially for socialisation or work, have become unavoidable fundamental forms of communication for our customers. In the business context, chat conversations can be used to sustain the customer-company relationship. An intimate relationship between brands and customers can be developed via good communication, hence building connection to your brand. Therefore, every chat conversation carried out between your business and customers will be able to increase customer confidence in the brand or company. That is why a simple chat channel is needed to create a conversational experience that can further the company’s goals.
Conversational Experience Means Real-Time
The Conversational Experience is an easy back and forth exchange of information using certain channels such as chats. According to Microsoft, in its 2017 State of Global Customer Service Report, 56% of customers agreed that connection with a brand is important, especially in the context of customer service. Conversational Experience is all about how customers interact with your company. Customers can ask questions spontaneously and get a response in real time. Conversational Experience via chat conversations are often implemented as a strategy to improve customer engagement. Many would not know that Conversational Experience is a very effective method to reach customers; it is estimated that you can reach two to five times more customers through Conversational Experience than through conventional, non-real-time channels such as email, online forms, and others. Conversational Experience is all about how to improve your customer’s journey interacting with your brand right from the start of the transaction to the point where your customers provide instant responses for their product-related feedback.
Conversational Experience Implementation
The core strategy for building a Conversational Experience is to facilitate chats between customers and the company itself. With the ease of receiving and providing feedback through simple chat, it’s easier for customers to feel connected to your company. Many large companies have begun to build Conversational Experiences by using chat channels to communicate as it is just more practical. Here are some examples of how Conversational Experience has been applied in many industries.
Kesehatan
Looking at the gargantuan number of smartphone users in Indonesia and the potential of telemedicine technology, the health care industry has started to implement information technology in the form of a healthcare application where it enables patients to receive medical advice from credible doctors anywhere and anytime from their mobile phones. Chat features are implemented in the app to help patients communicate and transact with doctors for diagnoses and medication. This feature has also been integrated with a cashless payment system using a real-time “usage meter” form which calculates the consultation charges for the patient on a pay-per-use basis. With this app, people no longer need to queue in hospitals or travel far to seek medical attention, saving costs, time and energy.
Education
With a live chat feature, educational applications have become a fully concentrated and cellular-based learning solution. These applications allow students to have direct interactions with their teachers or professors while receiving instructions via live chat and video calls. Students can complete their assignments through the app and interact with available teachers to get answers for their assignments or other academic-related questions instantly.
Banking
Chat applications have also been implemented in the banking industry as a form of commitment by the industry to transform conventional banking systems into a digitised one through a specialised banking application. Chat can be implemented via several features within the banking app. For example, requesting for existing exchange currency rates used to be a tedious and inefficient task. However, chat features are now available to allow users access to this information immediately. Employees can also benefit from the use of chat in your app, for example, to propose for leave, access their performance review, seek reimbursements for a business trip or complete other human resource (HR) related actions simply through the chat function. Furthermore, the current digitised banking system has made communication between employees in branch and main offices more effective.
Smart City
The Smart City application includes a chat feature to help the government communicate with the public at large. This chat feature in the app has enabled members of the public to communicate with the government more effectively. Users can use a simple chat function to inform government officials about their findings or make an official complaint through the application. Government officials, ministries, civil servants and even the police can follow up with findings from the public quickly, especially since it is combined with feeds from different sources of information, including CCTV. Therefore, it enables two-way communication between the government and society for a better life in the country.
E-Commerce
Conversational Experience has been brought into E-commerce and implemented through many features. For example, Conversational Experience has been used rather effectively for customer service. Instant replies from the customer service department of a brand via chat feature on an e-commerce application will benefit customers; they will be able to receive quick solutions for their problems. This makes customers feel connected with and heard by the company. It is worth noting that e-commerce applications are used by millions of people. Therefore, the chat features in these applications need to be optimized and have to be fully functional even when the e-commerce app is undergoing maintenance.
Insurance
Many insurance companies are now moving rapidly towards insurtech. In a nutshell, it is the application of technology to solve challenges within the insurance industry. However, one major challenge with insurtech companies currently face is engaging customers to gain their trust. Many potential customers and users of insurtech companies have reported that they find it difficult to obtain sufficient information and have fears of being deceived by these companies. Thus, Conversational Experience has been powerful as it allows insurtech companies to communicate directly in real-time using in-app chat to engage customers. Chat also allows insurtech companies to connect with these customers and potentially reach out to more potential ones.
Human Resource
HR is known for its tedious amount of mundane tasks such as managing employee data, attendance lists, leave proposals, overtime, and payroll calculations (including take-home salary, taxes, health insurance or administration for employment social security). With the integration of chat apps, such rigorous and time-wasting tasks can be solved just by allowing employees to chat directly with the HR department in an application in order to fulfill these needs.
Building a Conversational Experience means facilitating companies to engage with current and potential customers. Leveraging on Conversational Experience is expected to provide a more personalized and intimate experience for every customer and has become necessary to differentiate your business. Looking at Conversational Experience as an idea and how it has already been implemented in many industries, we can conclude that it is a very important tool for brands to reach out to consumers using various existing chat applications. This is where Qiscus’ expertise can be helpful for your business and we can definitely assist you in building a Conversational Experience that is just right for your business.