The global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced human beings to practice social distancing and to stay safe and alert from this deadly virus. It is not only the masses that have been greatly affected due to this pandemic, but businesses have been devastated. In the COVID – 19 situation, it is a very tough time for business and other companies to come up and contact with the new clients and ask for doubts. It is technologies like Chatbots that have come up to the support of the business. In this time, businesses need to stay closer and connected to their customers and clients.
As their capacity to thrive is being measured by their ability to adapt in this pandemic instead of following just the old ways. There has been an increase in demand for chatbots because it is helping businesses in these tough times. Chatbots, if perfectly designed and deployed to help in quick sharing of up-to-date information, reduce the psychological damage caused due to fear and isolation.
Let us discuss some of the ways Chatbots are helping businesses to respond during the pandemic:
Instant Messaging –
Numerous businesses today depend upon live chat, as they have to handle many information requests at this time. Live chat has become the main channel of support for businesses, which need to onboard agents. And coordinate their replies so that customers do not get contradicting responses from their agents. Using chatbots businesses can standardize their responses. Businesses can create an information-rich article and produce it anytime a customer requests for the required information.
Chatbots Inform Customers about Service Disruptions –
Disruption of service has become common at the time of the pandemic, as flight cancellation and shipment delays have become common. While businesses do have little or no control over the disruption. They can control the way to communicate these disruptions to their customers. A single supervisor can update a chatbots, and all their customers will immediately have access to this information. It also informs customers in a well-planned and timely manner, businesses mentally prepare their customers, thereby reducing a whole lot of frustrating calls.
Chatbots Easy Handling of Increase Customer Support Volume –
There has been a sudden increase in the volume of customer support of numerous businesses. Generally, customers are inquiring either about the availability of services or the status of their orders. These questions mostly have a standard, template answer and an increase in support volume is seasonal. So increasing the support team size to handle these queries does not make sense. Therefore, in such circumstances, chatbots help by deflecting repeated questions, thereby reducing the burden of the support team.
Handle Transactions with Zero-touch Workflows –
Besides providing information, businesses can move one step further and can automate the repeated transactional workflows. Chatbots can also be built to reschedule an order or process a refund by working with the existing APIs and workflows. By automating these processes businesses can easily save hours of manual effort.
Chatbots are Better Handling of Customers –
Businesses who are dependent on the human support team to handle their support volume are not able to well manage and handle their customers’ queries. Handling all the incoming support volume often becomes overwhelming for customer support agents. And also results in increased wait times for customers that also raise their anxiety. Thus, having a chatbot on 24X7 businesses can ease the anxiety of their customers. Because updated information remains accessible all the time without dependency on human agents.
