The digitalisation of communications is taking over both our personal and professional lives. For businesses, around 60% of customers demand a quick answer to their inquiries, and around half of the customer base relies on chat for customer service support. This is why live chats and chatbots are being implemented in companies as part of their customer service strategy.
Live chats are handled by humans that use digital communication to solve customer problems in real-time. On the other hand, chatbots are computer-generated applications capable of managing conversations with customers.
So what is the best choice for your business? A human-operated live chat or a chatbot? Which one is the most effective? This article will give you the answer that you need.
Response Time & Availability
If you are looking to improve response time and availability, chatbots are the best choice for you. The reason is simple: chatbots don’t need humans to operate, so they can easily be available for customers 24/7 and provide immediate response and support. Also, chatbots can handle various queries simultaneously, so it avoids waiting times, and customers can solve most of their questions quickly without any issues.
As humans operate live chats, they are more limited in terms of availability and response. Humans have less capacity than chatbots to handle multiple queries and are more likely to make mistakes. However, it is undeniable that the human interaction offered by live chats is more personal and can handle more complex queries more efficiently.
Personalisation
Chatbots can use analytics to access customer data to personalise the conversation and act proactively towards customers’ requests. Bots even can sense the tone of the discussion and respond accordingly. When building your chatbot, you can give a personality to your bot to make the conversation flow more smoothly and keep the customer engaged.
Still, live chats are handled by humans, so the conversation is human and naturally more personalised. And just like chatbots, they can also count on the support of customer data to provide an even more customised conversation.
Cost-Efficiency
With the advance of chatbot technology, building a bot does not require a significant investment from companies. Chatbot builders like Flow XO even let businesses start their first bot for free. This way, chatbots work as an investment and can be more cost-effective than live agents in the long term. According to recent stats, chatbots can help businesses save up to 8 billion dollars per year.
Even though live chat is still more affordable than traditional customer support, for a business to expand customer service with only live chat, it would need to hire more live agents, which requires more budget.
Problem-Solving
Chatbots can almost immediately solve most common queries and, as mentioned, even act proactively towards customer needs. Moreover, bots have more capacity to multitask and deliver a seamless customer experience to all customers equally, elevating satisfaction rates.
Still, live chats are more efficient to handle more complex customer queries that demand greater attention. Customers would prefer to have their issues taken care of by humans depending on the situation, so having live agents would be a more adequate solution.
What is the best choice for you?
Both chatbots and live chats are excellent solutions for your business and will surely improve your customer service. While live chats can offer a more human customer experience, chatbots are more efficient and have more capacity and availability. However, you can still have the best of both worlds and have a chatbot builder, such as Flow XO, that integrates with live chats.
Flow XO is a feature-rich chatbot builder that allows businesses to seamlessly design and operate chatbots that can easily hand over the conversation to a human agent. Flow XO can provide Live Chat through the Chatbot’s interface, which is even more interesting as it allows you to add Live Chat with your customers in Facebook Messenger or other channels.
With Flow XO you can have both! Build your integrated bot today.