Customer Service Chatbot Definition, Benefits & Examples

Technology is evolving faster than ever, one thing remains constant: exceptional customer service is the cornerstone of every successful business. Just think you’ve just received a shiny new product, and you’re eager to get it up and running. But alas, you encounter a snag and need some assistance. The good news is that you don’t have to navigate through a maze of automated phone menus or wait on hold for hours. Say hello to your new best friend – the customer service chatbot!

The rise of AI-powered customer support chatbots has revolutionized the way companies interact with their customers, making the entire experience smoother, quicker, and more enjoyable. These digital wonders are not only reshaping customer service but also redefining how businesses build lasting relationships with their clients.

In this blog post, we’ll learn the definition of customer service and support chatbots,  their benefits, ways to improve customer service and support, and real-life chatbot examples.

What is a Customer Service Chatbot?

Customer service chatbots are designed specifically to serve purposes along the customer journey. The smart customer care bot can answer up to 70% of simple, FAQ-oriented customer questions or direct customers to find additional information or resources on your website. 

Such chatbots come with the added benefit of reducing the number of contact center queries received, which means customer service agents can spend more time handling complex customer issues instead of regurgitating information that could be easily automated or found in an FAQ.

What is a Customer Support Chatbot?

A customer support chatbot is a sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) program designed to interact with customers conversationally and provide automated support and assistance. These chatbots are integrated into various communication channels, such as websites, messaging apps, and social media platforms, to engage with customers in real-time.

The primary goal of a customer support chatbot is to offer prompt and personalized solutions to common customer queries, issues, and requests without the need for human intervention. These chatbots are trained using natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, which enables them to understand and interpret the customer’s messages and respond in a human-like manner.

The functionalities and capabilities of customer support chatbots vary depending on their design and the complexity of their underlying AI model.

10 Key Benefits of Customer Service & Support Chatbots 

Customer service chatbots and customer support chatbots have revolutionized the way businesses interact with their clients. These AI-powered virtual assistants offer a plethora of key benefits to both companies and customers alike.

Firstly, they provide instant and round-the-clock support, ensuring that customers’ queries and concerns are addressed promptly. This not only enhances customer satisfaction but also boosts brand loyalty.

Secondly, a chatbot for FAQ can handle multiple conversations simultaneously, significantly increasing efficiency and reducing response times. Additionally, they are adept at handling repetitive tasks, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex and personalized interactions.

Furthermore, customer service chatbots are constantly learning and improving through AI, becoming more proficient at understanding natural language and delivering accurate responses. As a result, businesses can offer consistent and high-quality support experiences to their customers, ultimately leading to increased customer retention and business growth.

The use of AI for customer support chatbots can accelerate support in many ways at different levels. 

#1. Provide Instant Support

#2. Deliver a Better Experience 

#3. Stay Available 24×7  

#4. Ensure a Seamless Hybrid Support   

#5. Achieve Easy Scalability

#6. Minimize Customer Support Costs

#7. Reduce the Number of Support Tickets

#8. Collect Real-time Feedback 

#9. Improve Productivity of Support Agents

#10. Automate Your Social Media Support

Let’s look at each of the ways in detail; 

#1. Provide Instant Support

Long queue times often scare away customers.  

With businesses losing 75% of customers due to waiting times, it would be safe to say that ‘not getting instant responses is easily one of the greatest customer frustrations, and also a major cause of customer churn. 

Implementing a chatbot along with other communication channels can help you deliver instant assistance to the FAQs requested by customers. 

Amtrak’s Julie is a good example of how to use a customer service chatbot to the best effect. It promptly responds to queries from a comprehensive knowledge base on travel information and policies from across the Amtrak system. 

The bot has answered approximately 5,000,000 support queries in a year. In fact, Amtrak witnesses 25% of a significant increase in bookings and 30% more revenue with the help of Julie. 

How a customer service chatbot is better for support?  

• You can train your customer support chatbots to anticipate customers’ needs and deliver relevant answers. 
• Bots can be used as the first point of contact to reduce customer churn and make human handovers for complex issues.
• If your business receives repetitive queries, implementing chatbots can be a wise way to provide instant support without making customers wait.
• Even when chatbots can’t solve a problem immediately, they can at least provide an instant response relevant to the customer’s query and create a good impression on your customer.  

#2. Deliver a Better Experience

Good quality conversational support is always one of the important aspects of customer experience.

When you use a customer service chatbot, you can address customer’s requests in real time, making them more inclined toward the brand.  

A  chatbot on the website or a messaging app can provide a certain level of support on a round-the-clock basis. 

Tips to deliver a better CX with a customer service bot

• Identify the type and urgency of the issue. 
• Send the ticket to the right department or agent. 
• Push it to the top of the queue based on the level of urgency.
• Help the customer schedule a chat/call during business hours to eliminate feelings of uncertainty. 

#3. Stay Available 24×7  

43% of consumers expect 24×7 customer service from e-Commerce/online retailers while just a little less than that expect the same but for approximately 12 hours a day/7 days a week.

Naturally, a better resolution speed is at the heart of the desire for customers when they expect businesses to be available all the time. 

Providing a quick response and fixing an issue in a first contact itself is one BIG differentiating factor when it comes to retaining customers. 

This is one of the top reasons why chatbots are being deployed to deliver superior customer service around the clock.

The customer support chatbot can tap into the comprehensive resources and provide quick responses, at any time, even when the support team is unavailable. 

Being able to engage customers at their preferred time improves satisfaction and loyalty towards your brand.

Best practices for using AI-powered customer service for round-the-clock support 

• Use the bot to engage your customers by providing instant answers to common queries.
• Address simple queries instantly with customer support chatbots and reduce the number of support tickets.
• Trust the chatbot template for customer support to allow agents to focus more on the critical aspects of customer service. 

#4. Ensure a Seamless Hybrid Support   

Businesses that want to provide live chat support can have three options: 

• Live chat

• Chatbots

• A hybrid approach of using both  

The right balance of both communication channels can help deliver better customer support.

When you offer hybrid support, you are easily able to strike an equilibrium between providing relaxation to the support team and offering qualified services to your leads. 

It will be like embedding your bot in the first stage and putting human support backstage.

This is how businesses can automate repetitive queries with bots and ensure automation in customer service. This will ensure the complex ones are seamlessly transferred to the human agent. 

Tips to deliver hybrid support with customer care chatbot

• You first need a better understanding of live chat vs chatbot by learning the pros and cons of both platforms before offering hybrid support.
• There has to be a seamless transition between the customer service chatbot and human agents so that customers do not face any inconvenience.
• It’s important to trust hybrid support to reduce the number of touchpoints for overall resolution. 
• When the bot is unable to resolve the query, it needs to be directed to the agent for an effective solution in the first contact itself. 

#5. Achieve Easy Scalability

Having the option to scale the support is the first thing any customer-centric business can ask for. 

There are times when a sudden hike in traffic is inevitable like the festive seasons or peak hours. For such times,  how would you handle the rush with the same support infrastructure in place?

Obviously, you will encounter challenges such as adding more support experts, providing training, etc.

Adding chatbots to customer support can help you avoid all such issues and also give you the scalability to handle conversations in real-time. Plus, doing this is simple and economical as chatbot cost is something you can easily manage. 

Additionally, chatbots in customer service can also help you improve business productivity without any extra costs and resources. 

How to scale support with the best customer service chatbots? 

• You can easily balance scalability with both chatbots and live chat. The simple queries will be managed by the bot and the complex queries will be handed over for human support.
• Bots can engage in endless conversations irrespective of time and volume that bring business growth as well as customer satisfaction. 

#6. Minimize Customer Support Costs

Chatbots can help economize customer support tasks without compromising the quality of service. 

Thanks to customer support chatbots, your business can save expenses that accrue on adding more support agents, providing support training, or maintaining a robust support infrastructure. 

Deploying a customer service chatbot can help can handle numerous conversations at the same time and deal with an increased volume of customer requests while keeping the costs under check.

How can AI-powered customer service help in reducing support costs? 

• You can estimate the peak time for your business and then deploy chatbots to manage costs. 
• If your cost per chat is high, you can implement a customer support chatbot to handle conversations efficiently without extra investment.
• You can train your customer service bots regularly with FAQs and help them understand the user intent better to provide a relevant response. 

#7. Reduce the Number of Support Tickets

Not resolving the customer issues at the earliest can hamper the growth of your business and needless to say, may spur an increasing number of support tickets. 

In fact, 265 billion customer support tickets and calls are made globally every year, resulting in a massive loss to the industry in support costs.

To avoid such losses, you need to think of boosting customer experience with your brand and resolve their issues promptly. 

Globe Telecom — a major provider of telecommunications services in the Philippines — is a good example of how to effectively use customer support chatbots and achieve amazing results as well. The telecom chatbot helped it increase employee productivity by 3.5 times and customer satisfaction by 22 percent as it resolved simple queries in the first go and improved first contact resolution.  

How do the best customer support chatbots reduce support tickets? 

• You can automate simple queries such as order status, return policy, and delivery time with bots and manage your customers efficiently.
• Customer support bots can be programmed with all the information to deliver error-free service, avoid complications, and achieve a higher accuracy level. 

#8. Collect Real-time Feedback 

Feedback is vital for every business as it helps you to know how much the customers are satisfied with your products and services.

However, for businesses, it is not always easy to get customers to fill up feedback forms or answer questionnaires.

Such situations can be avoided by implementing chatbot services as then you will gain a better feedback loop and improve customer relationships while having better data on users.  

Tips to use a customer service chatbot for customer feedback  

• You can use a chatbot to gather preliminary information before connecting the user to the right support representative and shorten the wait times for customers. 
• The bots-powered feedback can help you know the areas to improve in your products, services, or bot flow for better interaction. 

#9. Improve Productivity of Support Agents

Implementing customer support chatbots increases the efficiency of a customer service team. 

In fact, support reps can become 3x times more productive in handling priority tasks when bots are there to seamlessly address the FAQs promptly.

How do bots make the support team more productive?

• Handle voluminous support requests – Bots are capable of attending to several customer interactions simultaneously and it ensures your customers are not waiting long to get a response. 
• Escalate issues to the right team – Some customer issues require expert assistance and bots can route them to the expert support agents and ensure better responses. 

#10. Automate Your Social Media Support

A lot of customers now turn to social media for engagement and customer support. However, in the majority of cases, this outreach is neither addressed timely nor even not entertained at all. 

One reason may be that businesses are constrained for resources and they may not want additional manpower for social platforms. 

Customer support chatbots can overcome this problem through automated responses to users’ requests on social media. Social bots can seamlessly carry conversations with users, to assist them. 

How to use social bots to connect with customers more efficiently?

• You can respond to user requests, and comments on time, which will improve the experience. 
• Many sectors like retail, travel, entertainment, and even health and finance can use social bots as assistants and deliver customers great services over social media. 
• Social bots can help you grow your social image by providing real-time customer support on a big public platform. 

How to Choose a Customer Support Chatbot?

Choosing the perfect customer support chatbot is pivotal for enhancing customer satisfaction and streamlining your business operations. Here are seven critical points to consider:

1. Customization: Your chatbot should reflect your brand’s personality and tone. You should always look for a solution that allows you to customize responses and tailor the user experience to match your brand identity.

2. Natural Language Processing (NLP): An advanced NLP-powered chatbot can understand and respond to customer queries more accurately. It also mimics human conversation. This capability ensures smoother interactions and higher customer satisfaction.

3. Integration: It should have the capability for seamless integration with your existing systems, such as CRM platforms and knowledge bases, which is essential for providing accurate and up-to-date information to customers. Choose a chatbot solution that offers easy integration options to maximize efficiency.

4. Scalability: As your business grows, so should your chatbot.  Make sure, your solution can scale alongside your needs without compromising performance, or the quality of service provided to your customers.

5. Analytics and Reporting: Offers insights into customer interactions are invaluable for identifying trends, improving responses, and optimizing performance over time. You should look for a chatbot solution that provides robust analytics and reporting capabilities to help you make data-driven decisions.

6. Multilingual Support: If your customer base spans different regions, having a chatbot that can communicate effectively in multiple languages is crucial. You need to ensure that the solution you choose offers multilingual support to cater to diverse audiences seamlessly.

7. Security and Compliance: Protecting customer data and ensuring compliance with regulations are non-negotiable. Choose a chatbot solution that prioritizes security and offers features to safeguard sensitive information. Also, it provides peace of mind for both you and your customers.

How to Improve Customer Service With Chatbot?

It requires a thoughtful design, implementation, and ongoing optimization approach. Here are five important tips to enhance customer service with a chatbot:

1. Clear and Concise Communication: You should use simple language and avoid jargon or technical terms that may confuse users. The chatbot should be able to interpret user queries accurately and conversationally provide relevant responses.
2. Personalization and Contextual Understanding: You can utilize data from previous interactions, user preferences, and browsing history to tailor responses and recommendations to each user. This can enhance the user experience and make interactions with the chatbot more meaningful.
3. Integration with Human Support: While chatbots can handle many customer inquiries effectively, there will be instances where human intervention is necessary. You’ll have to ensure integration between the chatbot and human support agents so that users can easily escalate complex issues or request assistance from a real person when needed. This can help prevent frustration and ensure that customer queries are resolved promptly.
4. Continuous Learning and Improvement: Analyze user interactions, feedback, and conversation logs to identify areas for optimization and refinement. You can use this data to update the chatbot’s knowledge base, improve response accuracy, and enhance overall functionality over time.
5. Transparency and Empathy: Be transparent with users about the capabilities and limitations of the chatbot. Communicate that they are interacting with an automated system and guide how to utilize its features best. Additionally, incorporate empathy into the chatbot’s responses by acknowledging user emotions, expressing understanding, and offering assistance in a supportive manner. This humanizes the interaction and helps build trust with users.

Examples of the Best AI Chatbot for Customer Service

Chatbots for customer service are designed for personalized responses, streamline communication channels, and enhance overall customer satisfaction. With 24/7 availability and seamless integration across multiple platforms, chatbots empower businesses to efficiently manage customer inquiries, resolve issues, and deliver a superior customer experience. Now, let’s take a look at some of the best customer support chatbot examples.

1. Website AI Chatbot Examples

• REVE Chat: It is an omnichannel customer engagement platform designed to empower businesses with powerful tools for real-time communication and support. With a focus on enhancing customer satisfaction and driving conversion rates. It offers a suite of features tailored to meet the diverse needs of modern businesses. Its key features include:

1. Chatbot: REVE Chatbot is one of the best AI chatbots for customer service with conversational capability. It is a great chatbot example for customer service. It automates customer interactions with its intelligent chatbots powered by natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML).
2. Live Chat Support: Offer real-time assistance to website visitors for instant communication and resolution of queries.
3. Co-browsing: Collaborate with customers in real time by viewing and interacting with their web browsers to facilitate effective guidance and issue resolution.
4. Ticketing System: Manage customer inquiries efficiently with a robust ticketing system and ensure timely resolution and tracking of support tickets.
5. Analytics and Reporting: Gain valuable insights into customer behavior and interaction patterns to optimize workflows and enhance service quality.

• IBM Watson Assistant: It is an AI-powered chatbot platform that enables businesses to build and deploy virtual assistants across various channels. It leverages machine learning algorithms to understand natural language inputs and provide accurate responses. It can be customized to suit different industries and use cases, such as customer support, IT helpdesk, or virtual agents for banking. 
• Google Dialogflow: Google Dialogflow is a powerful conversational AI platform that allows developers to create intelligent chatbots and virtual agents. It offers a user-friendly interface for designing conversational flows and training the chatbot with sample interactions. Dialogflow supports multiple languages and integrates with popular messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, Slack, and WhatsApp. It also provides rich analytics and insights to monitor chatbot performance and identify areas for improvement.

2. E-commerce Chatbot Examples

• Shopify Chatbot: Shopify offers a chatbot solution for e-commerce businesses to engage with customers and provide support directly within their online store. The chatbot can assist users with product recommendations, order tracking, and general inquiries about the store’s offerings. It can also handle tasks like processing returns, updating shipping information, and managing customer accounts. Shopify’s chatbot aims to enhance the shopping experience and increase customer satisfaction by providing instant assistance.
• Sephora Virtual Artist: Sephora’s Virtual Artist chatbot is a virtual beauty advisor that helps customers discover and try makeup products virtually. You can upload a selfie or use their device’s camera to see how different products look on their faces in real time. The chatbot offers personalized recommendations based on the user’s skin tone, preferences, and previous purchases. It also provides tips and tutorials for applying makeup and offers the option to purchase products directly through the chatbot.

3. SMS Chatbot Examples

• Bank of America’s Erica: It is an AI-powered virtual assistant developed by Bank of America to provide banking services and support via SMS. Its users can text Erica to check account balances, transfer funds, pay bills, and receive personalized financial insights. The chatbot utilizes natural language understanding to interpret user queries and execute banking transactions securely. It also offers proactive alerts and reminders to help users manage their finances more effectively.
• HealthTap: It offers a telemedicine platform that includes a chatbot for medical consultations and healthcare advice via SMS. Its users can text their symptoms or health-related questions to the chatbot, which then provides personalized recommendations and connects them with qualified healthcare professionals if necessary. The chatbot can assist with scheduling appointments, refilling prescriptions, and accessing medical records securely. 

Summary

When it comes to delivering unparalleled customer support, there’s no denying that REVE Chat stands head and shoulders above the rest. Its AI-powered customer support chatbot combines cutting-edge technology with user-friendly customization, making it the perfect virtual assistant for businesses of all sizes.

From lightning-fast response times and seamless multilingual capabilities to interactive engagement and continuous learning, REVE Chat is a true game-changer in the world of customer service chatbots. By streamlining support operations, boosting customer satisfaction, and maximizing efficiency, this chatbot empowers businesses to build lasting relationships with their valued customers.

So, if you’re looking to take your customer support to the next level and create unforgettable experiences, look no further than REVE Chat – the best chatbot for customer support. Elevate your support game today and witness the transformation it brings to your business success!