Online chats have come to revolutionize customer service and help improve the customer experience. But between chatbot and live chat, do you know which one is best for your company?
The answer is: it depends! Both resources serve to provide online assistance and have advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, before choosing, you need to identify the customer’s and the organization’s needs and understand how each Technology works.
We have prepared this article to clarify all your doubts on the subject. See below what chatbot and live chat are, and understand which tool is most suitable for your business.
What Is A Chatbot?
Chatbots are service robots that interact with consumers without human intervention . Technology can solve simple demands to complex issues.
The best-known form of the feature is in textual conversations on websites, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Telegram. But the chatbot is still responsible for creating virtual agents that can interact by voice. The technology works in two ways: rules or Artificial Intelligence. Understand!
Rule Driven Chatbot
In this case, the bot is fed a pre-programmed conversation script. That is, it follows a flow guided by the training rules and can only solve the demands present in the initial programming.
Despite working in a limited way, the Technology is very useful for answering repetitive questions that demand unnecessary effort from human attendants.
For example, the customer wants to know about the exchange and return policy of e-commerce. Ideally, this information should be provided by a bot trained to resolve consumer queries to optimize service. The same logic can be applied to registration changes, information about the delivery time, and order status, among others.
However, as only some things are rosy, the rule-driven chatbot has shortcomings. The tool can only answer clear and direct questions. The bot cannot identify the demand if the customer’s question needs to be more specific or has misspellings.
Chatbot With Artificial Intelligence
Smart chat operates with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies — in Portuguese, “machine learning.” In this case, the bot responds to predetermined demands, learns from previous interactions, and adds new information to the knowledge base.
That way, as it interacts with consumers, the service robot gets smarter and more efficient. Even if there are misspellings or confusing sentences, the bot can interpret the demand and search for satisfactory solutions.
The biggest challenge of this Technology is in the initial implementation, as it takes time to maintain a long conversation and solve complex demands. It’s like a child developing a new skill: the more training, the more effective interactions.
However, the benefits outweigh all the disadvantages of the chatbot — both rule-driven and AI-powered —. Both technologies enable 24-hour-a-day, 7-days-a-week service.
Therefore, even if the customer has a demand in the middle of the night, the shopping experience will be preserved. That’s because the consumer will get immediate answers before dawn.
From the company’s point of view, the resource is advantageous because it allows the service of several consumers simultaneously.
What Is Live Chat?
Live chat is a live chat that necessarily requires interaction between humans. The company needs a real attendant to respond to customer demands. This feature best suits more specific and complex requests requiring human skill.
Dealing with customer complaints, for example, is a very delicate moment that requires empathy and flexibility from the company. In this situation, the ideal is to have well-trained people to listen and offer customized solutions.
If you leave this demand to the automatic service, you risk losing customers and not getting them back. After all, standardized responses create a feeling of impersonality and can make the consumer angry. A human on the other end of the chat can better understand the subtleties of communication, identify emotions and assimilate what the customer wants.
But there are obvious downsides to using the feature. Have you ever imagined the exorbitant expense of maintaining a 24-hour staff for assistance? Depending on the company, this alternative is not viable. The cost of live chat is higher than that of chatbots.
Additionally, customer dissatisfaction over longer response times can become a nuisance.
How To Choose Between Chatbot And Live Chat?
The first step is to identify your business’s customer profile: high touch or low touch. After all, the important thing is to offer the most appropriate support to the public, not the company.
High-touch consumers demand greater human support, so it is essential to make live chat available. On the other hand, low-touch customers are supporters of self-service and often consider human intervention unnecessary. In this case, the chatbot is more suitable.
It is essential to analyze the operational conditions of the organization. If it is unfeasible to provide human assistance 24 hours a day, the chatbot becomes necessary.
However, if the demand for service only happens during business hours and there are no long waiting periods, the agents can handle the task with live chat.
There is no need to choose between one or the other. The idea is to combine strategies and enjoy the benefits of both resources.
For example, you can use the chatbot to make the first call and direct the consumer to the live chat only in extreme cases when the bot cannot satisfactorily resolve the demand.
