Chatbots are one of the attractive options that businesses are currently eyeing to create effective and real-time conversations. Moreover, this technology can also be integrated with one of the world’s favorite short message applications: WhatsApp.
Businesses are aware that customer care is an important aspect of business continuity. Microsoft also found that 68% of customers they surveyed for a study showed a more favorable view of brands which provide proactive notifications via customer service. However, as the number of your consumers grow, and so, too, the number of incoming chats or messages, a bottleneck will inevitably eemerge – the mismatch between the number of incoming chats and the number of human agents available.
This mismatch directly contributes to the decline in the quality of existing customer service. Starting from inefficiency, overwhelmed administrators, delayed responses and subsequently leading to unattended and neglected conversations, which are missed opportunities. As a result, many customers change their intentions and cancel their orders due to slow response by the brand. Even worse is when this potentially leads them to switching to other brands.
The Age of Assistance
This phenomenon is also reinforced by the fact that Google Insight has remarked that we are entering the Age of Assistance. With the behaviour of consumers who are more impatient due to higher expectations that they have with the availability of information, coupled with instant and fast responses, businesses must also be able to move quickly to respond to this without being limited by operating hours.
Let’s get acquainted with Chatbots!
Chatbots are one form of solutions to dealing with rapidly increasing consumer demands. As an automated conversation system, chatbots can create an effective customer experience. Using available historical data, chatbots can identify how to respond appropriately to consumer requests.
Why Chatbots?
The presence of chatbots is not only beneficial for consumers but also for companies. Besides being able to enhance the customer engagement process, chatbots can also save operating costs by up to USD 8 billion per year by 2022. Not only are chatbots able to give a financial advantage, they are also able to provide efficiency to time and manpower needed by any business. In addition, the number of potential leads that are generated by using chatbots will be greater than just by depending on manpower.
On the consumer’s side, chatbots can provide unlimited response time. Chatbots can be used 24/7 so consumers don’t have to wait for business operating hours just to get a response. In addition, this technology can provide a better and more memorable customer experience for consumers. With real-time conversations, consumers can freely ask questions and receive information immediately.
Chatbot x WhatsApp Business API
Chatbots were previously associated with use on commercial websites. However, along with its sophistication, businesses can now use it in one of the world’s favorite instant messaging app, including in Indonesia: WhatsApp.
As a short message application with 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, WhatsApp has deep potential to reach a wider market of customers and become an effective business communication medium with multiple advantages.
Why WhatsApp Business API?
First, end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp helps consumers feel safe.
Secondly, the unlimited number of devices allowed to access a WhatsApp Business API account can provide flexibility for businesses to allocate their customer service agents efficiently to manage consumer enquiries.
Thirdly, the WhatsApp Business API can be equipped with an agent distribution feature so that companies will not be overwhelmed in sharing and monitoring the work of their customer service agents.
Fourthly, looking at WhatsApp’s engagement rate of 98% is a promising number of capturing your target audience.
By including a chatbot on the WhatsApp Business API, you will be able to provide real-time responses and confirmations to various incoming consumer questions. This solution is perfect for businesses who want to maximize the customer experience through this one favorite application.
But how do you integrate chatbots into WhatsApp Business API? The answer is Qiscus’ Multichannel Chat. Keep reading to find out how!
How to integrate Chatbot into WhatsApp API
You are able to use a prior built-in chatbot of your own if you don’t have one yet, don’t worry! You can use the chatbot provided by Qiscus and other network partners who have collaborated with Qiscus.
For a more complete explanation of the mechanism for embedding chatbots into the WhatsApp for Business API, please read here.
Chatbot privileges on Qiscus Multichannel Chat
Qiscus provides a bot integration feature that allows collaboration between humans and chatbots to respond to customer enquiries. This system is called human-bot collaboration. With all the sophistication of chatbots, we do not deny that the role of human agents is still needed.
For less-complicated and general questions, using bots will be very effective in lightening the load of customer service agents. However, for more complex and specific questions, the role of human agents is needed so that the answers given to consumers can be more precise and customized. This is because chatbots work based on historical data so there might be new questions that the chatbot system has not learnt.
Human-Bot Collaboration Mechanism
1. Handover
Handover is a feature that helps customer service agents collaborate to handle questions missed by the chatbot. Quite simply, all new and complex incoming messages will not be forwarded to the chatbot because they will be handled directly by the human agent.
There are several scenarios that can be customized, three of which include:
- Intentionally asking the chatbot to forward / handover active conversations to available human agents.
- Using sentiment analysis, where the handover will be automatically applied to messages from negative users.
- By counting the number of questions that were not answered. For example, if the chatbot cannot answer a particular question 3 times, the conversation will be forwarded directly to the human agent.
You can read a more complete explanation here.
2. Global Activation x Local De-Activation
When activating the chatbot, all incoming messages will automatically be handled by the connected bot. Therefore, Qiscus provides global activation and local de-activation features which users can opt for when handling all incoming messages.
In global activation, it means that by default, all conversations will be handled directly by the chatbot. However, admins, supervisors, and agents can still deactivate it manually in the desired rooms by pressing the bot toggle button. Meanwhile, local deactivation provides flexibility for admins, supervisors, and agents to be able to deactivate chatbots in certain room (s).
With the presence of the two features above, Qiscus is the right choice for businesses who want to try chatbots to manage consumer chats on the WhatsApp Business API. Qiscus does not eliminate the role of humans but collaborates both man and machine to produce a more effective and efficient performance. So you don’t have to worry about making consumers uncomfortable yet at the same time, you can still provide a high response rate for your business.
Try now!
Chatbot integration with WhatsApp Business API is the right solution for businesses amidst the increasing demands for real-time business communication and consumer expectations. If you still have questions regarding this topic, please visit this link. Find out how to maximize your business conversational experience by reading our white paper here.
