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When you run a business, customer queries are something you just can’t wish away. They will happen and you need to find a way to deal with them efficiently and quickly.
FAQ pages are not the solution to this problem. Customers may still reach out to your business via email or chat. This can burden your support team which already does not like answering the same repetitive questions day in and day out.
What is the solution then?
An FAQ chatbot is what you should get.
You should get it if you don’t want your support team to stay stuck with basic customer conversations. You may also need that because 10% of agent interactions will be automated by 2026.
It means this chatbot can help you automate common queries and save your support team the sheer irritation of repeating themselves frequently. All this will save time for your support team and make them more energetic and motivated, which can add to the bottom line.
In this blog, we will discuss the FAQ chatbot in detail, and understand its types, benefits, user cases, examples, and everything we should know.
But first, let’s get started with understanding what exactly an FAQ chatbot is….
An FAQ chatbot is a bot designed to answer common questions people ask about products or services. These bots are used on customer service apps, websites, or ecommerce stores to help people quickly find the information they need.
The purpose of using an FAQ bot is to automate responses for repetitive support inquiries and free up support teams. They are built using artificial intelligence (AI)and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, so can operate on the question-answer format.
These bots are way more intelligent than scripted responders and are equipped with natural language understanding. That’s why they can quickly interpret and respond to queries of different types and complexities.
An FAQ chatbot –
Overall, an FAQ-based chatbot can be a great value addition for businesses looking to manage customer conversations smoothly and enhance experiences for users and agents alike.
By 2027, chatbots will become the primary customer support channel for some 25% of all companies. This statistic is a good reflection of the time we live in where our search for a company’s product or service is likely to be answered by a chatbot.
Let’s look at key reasons for using an FAQ chatbot –
Bots can help businesses save up to 30% on customer support costs. How? Well, we know customer service teams play a key role in engaging customers and converting them into prospects. That’s why most companies want agents to handle more complex customer conversations and tasks. This however is not possible if agents are forever busy and stuck with the big quantum of basic queries. However, once an AI chatbot is set up on the FAQ page, the bot will start handling queries autonomously, which can reduce the burden on agents.
Customers love fast responses to their queries. If the response is slow, they might feel frustrated. This can impact customer satisfaction. And we know dissatisfied customers are always among the first to leave and switch to competitors. Since support agents can’t be quick to customer queries all the time, adding an FAQ chatbot to the website can be the solution. Bots can provide responses 24/7 and that too, instantly, enhancing customer satisfaction manifold.
Seven out of 10 customers may stop doing business with a company due to a poor customer service experience. It shows how offering good experiences is key to boosting sales. Quick and timely responses to customer queries can be a vital aspect of an improved service. This is why using FAQ chatbots can drive sales. It can help you engage with potential customers in a better way and be always available to guide them through their problems. So, we can say that chatbots have a big role in improving customer experience with your brand.
The quality of customer service is always proportionate to the experience and empathy levels of support teams. The more experienced your support team is, the more empathetic it is to customer queries, and the better services you can provide. However, support teams are often understaffed and overburdened and this impacts their performance. This prevents them from maintaining the desired level of accuracy and consistency in responses. An AI chatbot can help you avoid this big issue – it can maintain consistency and accuracy in responses in every situation, leading to an enhanced service experience for customers.
Can a chatbot help you expand your market reach? Yes, it can. When you use an FAQ chatbot, it equips you to handle a diverse customer base. It can also assist you in engaging and interacting with customers without any language constraints. The bot can prove beneficial in exploring even those regions and areas that you may avoid due to language barriers. After all, an AI bot can help you provide support in multiple languages to customers.
When you explore the world of chatbots, you will find many types exist. Each type comes with unique features and possibilities for your business. Before getting the right one, the key is to know the business goals you want to achieve, the budget you have, and the support team size you have.
There are three main types of chatbots –
These types of bots are quick to build and easy to maintain. They are beneficial for assisting customers with basic questions. As the name suggests, these bots use pre-defined rules to answer questions. They will have some limitations and can’t answer questions deviating from the knowledge base.
This type of chatbot works similarly to rule-based ones but can also have a more conversational approach. They can identify specific keywords as well. When users engage with a keyword-based chatbot, they can expect conversations to be free-flowy and not be bound by a linear path. They are more advanced than rule-based bots and can deliver excellent results if they identify keywords in queries.
These chatbots are the most advanced among the three and don’t rely on any pre-defined rules. Since they are based on conversational AI ( artificial intelligence) technology, they can lead conversations naturally and make the conversations feel human-like. They are powerful with the ability to decipher user intent and offer relevant responses.
When choosing an FAQ chatbot, the foremost priority should be on your specific business goals. You should ideally want a bot that helps boost your customer service. So, make sure the bot you pick can do the intended task with great efficiency.
Here are some key things to look at when choosing an FAQ chatbot –
Chatbots can perform a variety of tasks and add value to your business in many ways. However, you need to know your business needs and goals before choosing the one. Whether you want to handle more customer queries or wish to minimize the load on your customer support team, your choice should align with your specific business needs and goals.
Select a chatbot that can effectively deal with a wide range of customer inquiries. This will help you manage diverse forms of conversations with ease and deliver improved customer service experiences. However, a chatbot that only gives rule-based responses can’t help that much. Make sure the bot you select can understand the context and handle nonlinear queries.
A chatbot can understand user queries accurately when it possesses advanced NLP algorithms. If it does not, how can you respond appropriately? A bot that is equipped with NLP capabilities will have features like intent recognition that are crucial to delivering meaningful responses.
Customers nowadays prefer support from the channel of their choice. This adds to their convenience and experience with the brand. When a chatbot is accessible across multiple customer touchpoints, it widens the reach of your support for customers. Make sure you choose a bot that can be deployed across channels be it websites, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.
Robotic responses are the last thing customers want when they reach out to your business for support. This can frustrate them, resulting in a diluted service experience. Select a chatbot that is equipped with reasoning and conversational skills. Only this kind of bot can offer more human-like conversations and ensure a positive customer experience.
The more customization flexibility a chatbot offers, the better it will suit your business goals. Having said that, you should select a chatbot that enables customization to match your brand’s look, style, and tone, and also adapts to different question formats.
A bot that is constantly updated and trained gives relevant and meaningful responses. This leads to improved customer service experience. So, choose an FAQ chatbot that gives ease of adding, deleting, and editing common questions. Make sure the bot offers ease of integration with the CMS.
A good chatbot is one that you can effortlessly deploy across multiple channels. That’s why you need to be sure about its compatibility with different platforms be it social channels, websites, messaging platforms, or mobile apps. At the same time, the bot should scale as your business grows and can support an increased quantity of calls.
Make sure you choose a chatbot that has robust built-in analytics capabilities so that you can easily gain user insights. Similarly, the bot should comply with data protection regulations and offer robust security measures.
It’s always a good move to select a chatbot that provides compatibility with your FAQ database. You can consider a rule-based chatbot if the database is simple. On the other hand, you should select a bot with advanced NLP capabilities if the database is complex and vast.
We know omnichannel support is what customers expect these days. They want a hassle-free experience when they engage and interact with a brand across multiple touchpoints and channels. To provide this kind of experience to customers, a business needs to keep all customer interactions synced and in one place. So, select a bot that easily integrates with your existing communication platforms as only then support team can access the data and ensure a great experience for customers.
FAQ chatbots are way more than just answering routine customer queries. They are a powerful and value-added tool for businesses across industry verticals. Their features and versatility are the reason why they are beneficial for both customers and employees alike in terms of improving their experiences.
Let’s have a look at use cases of an FAQ chatbot for both, customers and employees –
FAQ-based chatbots can prove valuable when it comes to enhancing customer experiences. They can contribute in many ways so that customers have a great overall experience with a brand. Given below are major use cases of chatbots for customers –
Businesses can use chatbots to streamline processes and systems. That can add efficiency to customer support teams. Employees can benefit in many ways when a powerful chatbot is employed to handle FAQs. Given below are some of the user cases for employees –
More companies now realize the huge value that an FAQ chatbot can bring to their customer service effort. That’s why we can see how more of them deploy the bot to answer queries faster and redefine the service experience for customers.
Let’s look at some FAQ chatbot examples for customer support from across industries –
Capital One is a good example of how to use an FAQ chatbot to help users/customers with various aspects of their queries. Its chatbot, UNO, can assist customers with account inquiries, transaction history, and credit card information.
The bot sends alerts for suspicious transactions and also sends timely reminders for due payments. It also offers personalized financial help and suggestions based on the user’s history or transactions with the bank. It ensures a secure and streamlined banking experience for customers.
The KML is another good example of how to use an AI-powered chatbot to help users with their different types of inquiries. Its chatbot is very helpful in handling flight bookings, updates, and customer inquiries.
The KLM bot offers support in multiple languages so that travelers from across the world can get quick help. It also offers personalized travel recommendations based on the itinerary. The chatbot helps with FAQs including bookings, cancellations, refunds, etc.
The EVA chatbot by HDFC is a good example of how to elevate customer service with the use of technology. The bot can answer queries related to virtually everything, be it account information, credit card information, loan details, etc.
The chatbot is available across multiple platforms including HDFC’s website, and mobile app, so customers can have easy access to support on any channel of choice. It also uses transaction history data and the preferences of customers to provide tailored banking services.
Building a chatbot is no longer a complex process. You can build it with little technical knowledge, even without writing a line of code. To build a chatbot for FAQs, you can either start the process from scratch or use chatbot templates.
Here is a detailed guide on how to build an FAQ chatbot –
When you build a chatbot, the first important thing is to know the specific goals you want to achieve with the bot. Whether you want to handle basic customer queries or automate FAQs, you need clarity.
Based on the purpose and scope, you can decide the essential features your chatbot must have to help you achieve your goals. You can then decide on the list of potential questions your chatbot will handle.
At the same time, you also need to set a budget based on the complexities of the tasks you want to the bot to do.
You can build a chatbot in two ways – frameworks or chatbot platforms. When you go with a framework, you will need a programmer to do the things for you. However, the chatbot platform is based on the DIY model where a visual builder will guide you through the steps and you will also have pre-built templates to choose from for the chatbot.
When choosing a chatbot platform or a chatbot provider, check whether an easy setup process is available that does not require in-depth technical knowledge on your part.
AI solutions like REVE Chat offer an intuitive chatbot builder to build the best AI chatbot. It helps you train your chatbots with normalization and bulk machine learning (ML). The platform also enables a seamless handover between chatbot and live support to ensure the best conversational experience.
This platform also enables a seamless integration with your existing systems and tools. This feature is important as only then the bot can work smoothly with your current setup.
If you want the chatbot to work properly, you first need to train it properly on data and information. You need to feed into the bot all the common questions customers can ask. This will help prepare the bot to provide relevant answers.
That’s why you need to collect all the common questions your customers can ask and then prepare a list of them. You will need to explore and browse all your communication channels be it your website, social media, messengers, etc to find those FAQs.
When creating a list of FAQs, make sure you focus on those questions that relate to your products or services. Most of the time, customers ask questions related to product setup, customization guide, integrations, pricing, features, etc.
After creating a list of FAQs, the next step in the chatbot-building process is to visualize and plan the conversational flow of the bot. This flow is designed keeping in mind the ways users might ask queries. You need to create flowcharts or dialogue trees with potential queries and responses.
In this stage, you need to work on creating a logical path for how users and the chatbot interact. You need to plan the entire conversation structure based on different user inputs.
The key aspects include –
Now you have reached the stage where you can create the bot. For that, you can use the platform and insert the queries and answers into it.
You can create the bot in two ways – either you can use a ready-made template on the platform, or start from scratch. Then next, you will need to set up intents and entities so that the chabot can understand user inputs of various types.
Since you have already built the conversational flows, you can use the drag-and-drop visual editor to create the structure. You will then need to add responses for each query. If you wish, you can also define specific keywords or triggers to activate certain responses.
After the bot is created, consider integrating it into your existing systems or APIs.
Training is not needed when the chatbot is simple and rule-based. However, advanced bots with AI capabilities need training. When you train the bot, you enhance its familiarity with the inputted FAQs, answers, search preferences, and previous user search queries. A trained bot becomes more conversational and can handle complex queries and conversations effortlessly.
Now you reach the stage of integrating the bot with your preferred channel. You can deploy it with a website, messaging platform, social channel, or mobile app.
Once the chatbot is integrated with a channel, you need to test it thoroughly to check whether it offers relevant responses to user queries.
REVE Chat is an AI-driven platform designed to help you drive customer engagement through feature-rich chatbots. The platform provides a ready-to-use chatbot builder to create customized bots with zero coding. Using the REVE platform, you can create a chatbot based on your specific business needs and deploy it in a short time frame. The platform is suitable for training the bot and measuring its performance against key matrices.
Key features of the REVE Chat platform for building an FAQ-based chatbot –
As we wrap up our in-depth exploration of the FAQ chatbot, it’s clear how these AI-powered tools are redefining the landscape of customer support. They are proving equally valuable for your customers and employees.
We saw how you can use an FAQ-based chatbot to –
We also analyzed various types of FAQ chatbots for the business and learned how each one can add value in unique ways.
We understood the key features you should look for when choosing a chatbot for FAQs and those included –
We also touched upon various use cases including for customers and employees. Some great examples were also discussed, including of Capital One, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines’ Chatbot, and HDFC Eva.
Along the way, we learned how to build an FAQ chatbot as well. We also gave you reasons why to choose REVE Chat as a platform to build the bot for managing common customer queries.
So, you can sign up and explore the features and functionalities of our chatbot builder platform.
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Praveen Singh is a content marketer, blogger, and professional with 15 years of passion for ideas, stats, and insights into customers. An MBA Graduate in marketing and a researcher by disposition, he has a knack for everything related to customer engagement and customer happiness.
As a writer and analyst, he pours the heart out on a blog that is informative, detailed, and often digs deep into the heart of customer psychology. He’s written extensively on a range of topics including, marketing, AI chatbots, omnichannel messaging platforms, and many more.
Mr. Singh also has a passion for subjects that excite new-age customers, be it social media engagement, artificial intelligence, machine learning. He takes great pride in his learning-filled journey of adding value to the industry through consistent research, analysis, and sharing of customer-driven ideas.
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