No matter how much we try, we never seem to exhaust methods to enhance the customer experience. But that’s the beauty of marketing, isn’t it? There are no limitations to fulfilling customer expectations, and in the age of empowered consumerism, we know customers will always ask for more. We no longer live in a time where customer experience is just limited to a graphical user interface. Customer experience these days is a more holistic word, covering a spectrum of things from the user interface, how the brand interacts, how it allows you to navigate the website, how it stays in touch, and many more. It is these customer experiences that define who you are as a brand and how much money your customer would spend on you.
To further put things into perspective around the importance of customer experience, according to Forbes, 84% of companies that work to improve their customer experience report increased revenues & Brands with superior customer experience bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lag in customer experience.
Tactically speaking, if you are not achieving your revenue targets, chances are you have fallen back on the very thing you should strive for- Improving Customer experience! Of course, you will have to work on your website. Still, developing a convenient communication channel with your prospective customers is essential. You do not need to worry about the graphical interface and yet increase the chances of getting a response. Let’s take a look at how we can do that, shall we?
The Whatsapp Chatbot
A chatbot is generically a sequence of statements that answers your customer’s questions, talks, and engages your customer to provide you the required information. When this is done on Whatsapp, it is a WhatsApp Chatbot.
On WhatsApp, there is already a default Graphical User Interface (GUI), but you can control the messages that are being sent. On this platform, you can also take the liberty of being friendlier and talk in a casual manner that appeals to the customer.
Here are a few examples of what you can do with WhatsApp Chatbot:
- Reviews
Let’s say you are a restaurant owner, a friend of yours came to your restaurant and had your best dishes. How would you ask him for a review?
- Dude, with all honesty, tell me, how was the food?
- I hope you liked the food? We had worked hard, hope everything was appropriate?
These messages can connect to the customer on a personal level as it provides them the experience of talking to their friend or an acquaintance. Now consider the third question –
- You just had food at X restaurant; how would you rate your food there?
Let’s look at the experience these messages create; the first two give an experience of a casual conversation where honesty would be valued, while the third one seems like a brand pushing you to give it a 5-star rating. Personally, I would add the third message to spam.
- Upselling and Cross-Selling
A lot of brands are using WhatsApp to upsell and cross-sell their product. App sumo found that eCommerce websites that use bots to upsell; increased their revenue by 30%.
- Cart abandonment reminder – People put things in their cart but forget to buy them. As an eCommerce provider, whenever there is an opportunity where you feel you would be able to convert this customer using a discount, you should offer it immediately.
- Hey Jen, I remember you had liked that red dress, and for you, just for you, I am offering it at a discount of 20%. Buy it Now!
- Purchase pattern recommendation – Whatsapp bots can be beneficial as a delivery platform for your recommendation engine. The person has bought something. He/she needs something that compliments it. Send it to him/her.
- Hey Rahul, you bought those amazing Jeans at an incredible price! Are you thinking of a T-Shirt this month to adorn with the Jeans? Here’s our new collection. Wanna try?
- Basic Customer query solving
You do not need to set up a large support team to ensure that you solve customer’s questions and provide them an efficient experience. Let us understand how a bot can be a useful replacement for some repetitive customer support tasks:
- Basic questions about your product or service
- Customer – I would like to know the variants available for these white shoes (the customer is on the page)
Bot – Great Choice, there are three color variants – White, Blue, and Black, and five size variants based on the UK sizing, i.e., 8,9,10,11,12.
- Customer – What is the carpet area of this apartment?
Bot – The Carpet area of this apartment is 1250 sq. ft.
- Lead Generation
A Customer hates nothing more than the fact that even after having a long conversation with the bot, the data was never stored, or no information was used for his/her further visits.
A Chatbot can be configured to improve that. You can generate leads, gather information around the leads, and also nurture them the next time they visit your store, making sure to address them with their first name to personalize the conversation. Let us look at some examples –
- Lead Generation
>> Hey Dave, It was great seeing you on the website today. You know I feel we can talk again. How about you allot, my team and I, some time slots where we can talk and explain the product to you?
- Lead Qualification
>> Hey Jenny, I remember we once had a conversation around how chatbots could be useful. I haven’t stopped thinking about that, and I now have an entire eBook answering it. Would you like to download it?
To Summarise all of this, David Cancel from Drift once said, “Chatbots can get the same information that any form can — but without the friction and cognitive load that you get when you’re staring down a form with 11 required fields, which, if you can believe it, is the industry average.”
Chatbots are bridging gaps in customer service and ultimately assisting companies in improving the consumer experience. With the pace at which chatbots are being used in organizations, it suffices to say that they will change the landscape of employer-customer relationships.
As a marketer, you can definitely convince your customers to do whatever they wish to achieve using your product. Customers are not just customers anymore. Connect with them on a personal level through chatbots and witness the wonders it can do for your organization.
Go Rock that World, Ladies and Gentlemen! More than one conversation at a time.