Think about this and ask why you should invest in a chatbot

Things to Consider Before Investing in AI and Chatbots

AI and chatbots are a substantial investment, yet they are often used for the simplest tasks; tasks that Google search or existing knowledge bases already handle. To justify such big investments you need to find the right business case for ROI. This is what we recommend. [activecampaign]

Author: Björn Jonsson & Stellan Kim Kristiansson

When new trends arrive, many companies don’t want to miss out. AI and bots have been buzzwords for several years and continue to be interesting potential investments for companies. For ‘fear of missing out’, it seems many companies and organizations do not ask the obvious question:

How do we make the best use of the chatbot as well as get a return on our investment?

Is a chatbot the best solution for what you are trying to achieve?

Customers often say, “We want an AI-powered chatbot”. When we ask them what it is they want the bot to solve, the answer is usually for handling FAQs.

There are other, less expensive solutions that handle FAQs. Maybe your company doesn’t have to invest in such a high-cost item as AI technology to get the desired result.

Focus on you Google search and let BOT AI take care of more complex questions
Consider why you should invest in a expensive bot solutions if you only are going to answer simple FAQs when Google does the same job for free? Why force your customer into multi steps conversational interface when Google can present the answer with a simple search.

One example is taking advantage of a good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on your content. Most simple FAQ searches can be served directly on the Google search page (above). This is very convenient for the customer (especially mobile users).

A modern, indexed knowledge base is also an alternative to FAQ bots. The content can be indexed, so there’s no need to have redundant content in the chatbot and on your web pages.

Bot Traps

It’s easy to fool yourself with the idea of a chatbot that ‘solves it all’. Here are some common ‘traps’ to be aware of:

Speed – It takes a lot more steps to start a conversation with a bot than just asking Google
Redundancy – FAQ information in bots is not indexed by Google. You probably need to have redundant information on your webpage
Bots are as good as you train them, you have to dedicate many hours to it. ‘Self-learning’ bots are still a myth!

Things to consider before investing in AI and Chatbots

That said, AI powered chatbot is the way to go if you are planning to take the next step in automating customer service and have the resources to train the bot as a ‘process bot’.

This requires a more advanced bot platform, but it will save many hours that live agents can use for cases in which human interaction is important.

A ‘process bot’ will solve the following cases that will release recourses for live agents:

Intent routing & pre-qualifying a customer – Collecting customer data and intention, then passing that to the right live agent OR self-service channel
Assisting customers in completing web forms
The bot should navigate the visitor to the right FAQ answer rather than having to tell it; a page Google can also index. This way, there’s no need for redundant content (bot and page content)
Case management – Close and categorize to save time for live agents
Customer information – Serve customer data on request, i.e., due date, order status, update info, etc.