Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized how companies communicate with their consumers. Transactional ties are gradually giving way to conversational partnerships in today's organizations. Businesses are discovering new methods to create close relationships with consumers thanks to the introduction of chatbots. "85 percent of customers will be able to manage their connections with businesses without human involvement" by 2021.
So, which would you select if you had to pick between a chatbot and live chat to provide more excellent customer support? Both communication channels offer consumers a unique customer experience by giving immediate responses, so they don't have to wait for an email or call. Let's compare chatbots and live chats and decide which is best for your business.
Importance of Chatbots
Chatbots are primarily intended to enhance the customer experience by automating sales and customer service. When it comes to the benefits and drawbacks of chatbots, bots are always there to engage consumers by answering basic inquiries and pre-qualifying leads by asking pertinent questions.
Customers can interact with bots on websites, apps, and messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp. You can create a bot that suits your company goals by understanding the most frequent chatbot use cases.
Importance of Live Chat
Users may contact sales and support staff via Live Chat to receive real-time assistance. It is the most popular proactive channel since it provides real-time service. 70% of customers prefer live chat. Nearly two-thirds of customers who use a live chat platform return to your website and make another transaction.
Email and phone are essential components of a successful customer service toolbox with maximum client satisfaction. There are several advantages to using live chat. You can use them to enhance critical support metrics like first response and average resolution time.
Chatbot vs. Live Chat? Which Is Best For Your Business
Businesses commonly employ live chat and chatbots to serve and engage their consumers. Both tools can also be used in tandem. In this post, we'll go through when it's advisable to use a chatbot vs. a live chat and better for your business.
Use Cases
Best for Business:
Our Verdict: Tie
It is dependent on various client circumstances and demands, as well as the size of your company. If your chatbot isn't built to respond to sophisticated inquiries, it'll be a waste of time for your company. A chatbot isn't necessary if your company doesn't have a significant consumer base.
On the other hand, if your consumers ask the same questions repeatedly, you may use a chatbot to answer them quickly. It will save your staff time and allow them to focus on more important responsibilities. A chatbot is for you if your company has a large consumer base and answers hundreds of queries every day.
Emotions
Best for Business:
Our Verdict: Live Chat
Live chat is the clear victor here since humans aid it. Humans can better activate their clients' emotions and sympathize with their concerns on Live Chat. Humans can be amusing, tell jokes, be caustic, and even negotiate with clients.
As chatbots lack feelings, here is where they fall short (at least not yet). Although some intelligent AI chatbots, such as Insomnobot, provide intelligent responses, they are limited in number. Finally, if you want to engage with your consumers emotionally, Live Chat integration might be a great option.
Cost Efficiency
Best for Business:
Our Verdict: Chatbots
Hiring a staff of 20 people to provide chat assistance would be far more expensive than using a single chatbot. You won't have to pay it, and you won't have to compensate them for their mistakes, and so on.
A slew of chatbot builders on the market makes it simple to construct chatbots for various platforms. These platforms make integrating chatbots easier, and these bots are less expensive to maintain. One of the most critical aspects that put chatbots ahead of live chat is cost-efficiency.
Workability
Best for Business:
Our Verdict: Chatbots
In this arena, it is believed that humans will never be able to defeat chatbots. We go on vacations, get sick, run late, and celebrate holidays, but chatbots aren't like that. On the other hand, Chatbots never get weary, relax, gripe, or take time off. Anyway, chatbots may operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you utilize one for customer care, it will improve your customers' experience.
Live chat isn't a suitable choice because it's run by humans who lack the attributes I described earlier. If you want to improve your company's work efficiency and availability, a chatbot on your website would be pretty beneficial.
Response Time
Best for Business:
Our Verdict: Chatbots
It's self-evident. Until you have a committed human sitting at the desk, gazing at the screen, waiting for a client to ask a question, live chats can't surpass chatbots in reaction time. A chatbot answers an inquiry quickly, which is why it is chosen when an instant response is required. Because customers dislike waiting for responses, it should be your top goal to respond to them as soon as possible, which is only achievable with chatbots. It's a good chatbot strategy for improving the customer experience.
As satisfied customers tell nine people about their experience, improving your customer's experience should be a top goal for you. On the other hand, disappointed consumers tell 22 others about their bad experiences.
Chatbot vs Live Chat: Personalization
Best for Business:
Our Verdict: Tie
At this moment, it's a draw between chatbots and live chat. Conversationally, live chats might be more individualized. Returning clients will have a different experience every time they commence a new discussion, if your live chat software cannot retain past data from customer chats. An intelligent chatbot may save prior chat data and analyze it before starting a new conversation cover. An intelligent chatbot was emphasized since it is only achievable with smart AI-powered chatbots.
The judgment is that you don't need to teach your personnel to personalize conversations in Live Chats. However, in Live Chats, you must collect data, which is more challenging than it is with chatbots. It's simple to acquire information using chatbots, but you'll need a clever AI chatbot that's been well-trained.
Chatbot vs Live Chat: Understanding
Best for Business:
Our Verdict: Live Chat
To use the term "understanding" to refer to the ability to comprehend the situation's complexities. If there is a human there, they will tackle the problem, no matter how complicated it is. In this scenario, though, we can't rely on chatbots. Chatbots are designed to respond to pre-programmed inquiries and require precise keywords.
If you ask a more complicated question and the chatbot isn't trained for it, it may give you foolish answers or repeat the same response. When typing, we're used to slang, acronyms, and short, informal language. While a person can comprehend "Wud ya pls fix my meeting for 2day?" machine may require you to spell out an entire statement. That will take more time, and I'm sure you won't enjoy it. It shows that the latter wins when it comes to Chatbot vs. Live Chat.
Chatbots vs. Live chat: Final Winner?
Chatbots and live chat are two excellent chat options that may assist your company, contact center, and website. Both can enhance the customer experience, boost leads and conversions, cut expenses, and respond quickly. The human-to-human connection provided by live chat cannot be replaced in delivering the most satisfactory customer experience. Still, chatbots' efficiency in terms of cost and productivity offers significant benefits to a business.
In this sense, we don't believe it's an either/or situation (chatbots vs. live chat) but rather advocate a mixed strategy. It involves employing chatbots to answer basic queries like FAQs and having a live chat system in place so that chatbots can transfer off to a real agent if they can't. You get the best of both worlds with this hybrid strategy. You gain from the advantages of each chat solution while minimizing the disadvantages, ensuring the best possible outcomes for your company.
Chatbot vs Live Chat : The Bottom Line
The best approach to this problem is to utilize both chat applications simultaneously. It will result in more excellent customer service, which might benefit your company. Understanding the benefits and drawbacks of live chats and chatbots will provide you with more significant insights than what you'll gain from employing one of them.
BotPenguin is an AI-based chatbot builder platform, that lets you create intelligent chatbots across different platforms, messengers and websites.
