OPINION: How chatbots can grow your business

Chloe Blatch, Senior Digital Marketing and Account Executive, at ThinkEngine, talks about the multiple customer engagement functions that can be automated through chatbots.

There are numerous benefits to using a chatbot for your financial services organisation, whether you want to engage customers, generate sales leads or convert website visitors. The possibilities are endless and the development of a chatbot can become even simpler when using a low-code tool. In this article we cover how you can easily integrate chatbots into your firm as a digital engagement tool to grow your business.

Streamline your sales funnel

Generating leads for your sales team can be a difficult and intricate task, but what if I told you that a chatbot can do all the hard work for you? By engaging the potential customer with your website chatbot, you can encourage visitors to make an action and push them in the right direction, to generate more leads as a result. All the groundwork is covered by the chatbot, without you even having to get involved.

Times have changed and online users are looking for greater immediacy in their quest for information. Delays to this process can mean that visitors may leave the website instead of getting the answers they require. Investing in a ‘pointing’ style chatbot (which directs people to the information they require sooner) enables your business to progress them through the sales funnel quicker.

The comprehensive range of features and benefits available in evolving chatbot technology allows you to profile each visitor through questions to ensure they get to their answer as quick as possible. Such an approach facilitates a greater level of engagement and willingness to further explore not only the chatbot but perhaps the business’s products or services.

If the user needs further support, chatbots can integrate with live chat to enable instantaneous interaction with a member of your team. This can reduce time and eliminate costs, by the bots answering a higher volume of questions and providing more information.

As a bonus, they can handle visitors from around the world, which helps you cater to customers in different time zones. No matter where your customer is operating from, the chatbot is always there for support 24/7. Can your sales teamwork 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? The reality is this doesn’t matter, as the chatbot can manage this process for you. In the modern world of marketing having an ‘always on’ approach to sales provides your business with the greatest chance of evolving in the digital world.

Reduce expenditure in your business – The cost advantage

Businesses are always finding new and efficient ways to save money on resources and product development. With a chatbot this process can be easier. By investing in a chatbot tool, you are less likely to have your team spending time finding new customer leads, as the chatbot can do all this for you.

This provides a cost saving element as the bot will free up employee’s time enabling them to focus on performance strategies for the business.  Plus, no one has to oversee the chatbot, unless you have a live chat of course but otherwise the bot can run on its own accord without needing management. Do you think your firm could save money by investing in a digital tool? Also, could the impact of a greater focus on your team’s core business activities drive a greater chance of higher revenue generation?

The personalised approach

Great online customer experiences often always deliver a personalised approach. The benefits of this technique are firmly grounded within the chatbot concept, and with a personalised visitor experience it could potentially increase the opportunity for a user to share their contact details to improve a firm’s lead generation process.  Users can then provide their details for a call back at the click of a button, with no hassle.

Chatbot integrations make this process so much smoother, giving you the option to receive email notifications straight to your inbox, enabling you to pick up the phone to the potential client immediately. Alternatively, if you would like to take things to the next level, you are able to easily integrate directly, or with third party connections, to your existing technology solutions including your company CRM.

Flexibility of use

Many people often consider chatbots as a sales tool only, however when they are considered in an alternative way they can bring exceptional cross business benefits for a number of uses. We advise clients to think about how else chatbots can be used to streamline processes, increase productivity, and reduce operational cost.

A great example of alternative uses of chatbots might include social media engagement campaigns, internal business data collection activities (for example HR, Finance or Operational tasks) and customer/client feedback insight.

If your business is yet to invest in the technologies of the future, ask yourself why not? No and low code platforms can often deliver a risk-free entry into new tools and integrate with your existing technology stack.