Marketing 4.0 entails a shift in marketing from traditional-style campaigns to the more sophisticated engagement of target audiences with personalized, automated, and real-time experiences. As such, chatbots have become an integral part of this new trend and are turning out to be a powerful tool for businesses.
By 2022, according to Gartner, 70% of white-collar employees (including customer support reps) will be leveraging conversational platforms like chatbots. The is complemented by immense growth in the market size of conversational AI (currently progressing at a CAGR of 21.9%).
The implication is clear — for businesses to succeed and keep their customers satisfied, they need to move beyond self-service platforms and implement real-time communication channels. Chatbots are a solution that allows businesses to develop tailored messaging on multiple channels and respond to customer's questions and comments in real-time.
And in doing so, they open the gates to successful marketing. Here's how:
Customer Contact Points Have Changed
Yoichi et al. (2018), in their recent study, reflected upon the customer contact point changes with respect to the transition from Marketing 2.0 to Marketing 4.0.
The researchers outlined how consumer-centric marketing has changed to human-centric marketing. Likewise, the purpose of satisfying the customers has transitioned into gaining trust. While Marketing 2.0 focused on differentiation, Marketing 2.0 emphasizes engagement.
Also, there has been an enormous shift with regard to value being offered, with "Emotional Value" being a replacement of "Logical Value."
But the most significant change has been observed in the area of customer engagement. Earlier, marketers used to concentrate heavily on one-to-one relationships. In this day and age, however, every enterprise looks at facilitating n-to-n relationship development.
All these contact points form the basis for facilitating an improved customer experience. Because the customer experience is closely associated with qualities like speedy responses, 24*7 availability, intelligent responses, and seamless communication, AI chatbots find themselves as central elements to successfully driving the marketing endeavors of small- to medium-scale enterprises.
AI Chatbot Support is an Indirect Form of Marketing
Chatbot support can be described as the "generic term for any automated service that is used in corporate or individuals' work." In the same vein, chatbot support can be seen as a form of indirect marketing. These chatbots are used to provide essential functions and information while the main customer contact point on which they are based remains unchanged.
You could think about chatbot support in the same way as a personal assistant. As you would not miss an important call from your IT department to fix a critical problem, you can use an automated service such as a chatbot to provide basic or urgent information.
As these chatbots are used in both human-to-human and human-to-machine interactions, they have the potential to improve the customer experience considerably. Companies can use AI chatbots to automate traditional marketing exercises like tele-sales and event assistance. Furthermore, they can offer real-time information through social media channels and ensure their message is delivered effectively and efficiently.
All in all, AI chatbots' employment means that the customer satisfaction score soars high, which is one of the pivotal elements for acquiring and sustaining customer engagement.
Read More: AI Chat Support – Everything You Need to Know About This Revolutionary Customer Service Technology
Automate Your Customer Support with Conversational Chatbots From SupportGenie
In this world of instant digital gratification, speed is everything, and customers expect companies to deliver that speed through all contact points and channels. Favorably, AI is making contact center technology smarter and more efficient. Companies can now improve customer support by tapping into the huge potential for AI chatbot support.
With SupportGenie, companies have total control over their conversations with customers. Here's how:
1. Integrate a Chatbot into Your Site or App
By integrating chatbots into your site or app, you can provide instant support to thousands of customers in a short time. You can even monitor and control the types of questions and queries that customers ask. Moreover, by automating the most common support issues, you can reduce costs and improve your business performance.
2. Provide Live Support with Your Chatbots
Live chat has become one of the most effective ways of soliciting customer feedback and establishing customer relationships. It has become the preferred method of customer support for many companies. It is essential to have live chat with chatbots for enhanced customer service with quick responses from chatbots. The integration enables you to serve customers faster and especially at times when agents are not available.
3. Understand What Customers Want from Your Chatbots
Businesses should be able to use the data collected by the chatbot to identify trends and customer issues, so they can make changes in their businesses accordingly. This will boost customer satisfaction and lead to increased sales of products and services.
In a Nutshell
Gone are the days when customer service was something that happened only internal to the organization. Today, customers expect a seamless experience where they are able to interact with the business outside of working hours. You will need to develop innovative ways of getting customers to engage with chatbots as much and as often as possible — perhaps even employ user experience testing.
The aforementioned will ensure that your customer support and delivery are not compromised by external factors such as weather or traffic conditions — and you are on the most appropriate path to empower the organic marketing efforts.