Customer service has become a vital business process for business organizations across the world. CRMs have been deployed in businesses for this very reason, assisting the users in customer service and support. However, CRMs alone haven’t been able to solve all the customer service related problems for a great number of businesses.
Nevertheless, a new innovation has been making its place in the market. Chatbots, although around for a while now, haven't been very popular. The reasons for this lack of popularity include, first-of-all, the robotic voice with a consistent tone, and the inability to understand the customer’s query owing to differences in pronunciation or grammatical errors in typing, hence providing inaccurate results to customers.
These being things of the past, online chatbots today are making up in areas that they lagged in before, as a result of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning. This allows online chatbots to learn from their previous interactions with customers, enabling them to modify answers for any new queries according to the person in question. The Google chatbot is an example of this growing popularity.
What Is An Online Chatbot?
A chatbot, or a chat robot, is a program with abilities of Natural Language Processing (NLP) which enables it to make conversation with live human beings through either auditory or messaging mediums, or even both. Furthermore, with the use of AI and machine learning, chatbots are becoming more capable nowadays of solving problems, learning from each and every interaction that they make with people. Hence, the use of AI bots in various customer service departments.
Chatbot and SuiteCRM Combined
CRMs are considered, nowadays, as a medium for building relationships with customers. This is due to the reason that they act as a central database where all the information relevant to the customers of a business, whether past, present, or potential, is stored. This information can then be accessed by various users in the business organization for various purposes. Such is the case with SuiteCRM.
There exists a saturation point, however, where even CRMs cannot help businesses in maintaining their growth. That saturation point exists due to a few inefficiencies of using CRM software. These inefficiencies might include the need to follow specific workflows to get a task done or time taken to access a customer’s database during a call. Therefore, those businesses that aim to keep their rate of growth stagnant need the help of something that overcomes these inefficiencies. One suitable tool would be a chat robot.
Chatbots help overcome the inefficiencies of human beings. For instance, having multiple customer support agents taking different shifts in the day not only raises the costs of customer support, but also least profits the business organization since there might not be many calls that have to be attended in the night shift. Hence, the staff in the night shift tends to cost the business more than it benefits. If this staff is replaced by AI bots, then these inefficiencies can be avoided.
Chatbots In Different Industry Verticals
As already established, AI bots help eliminate a number of inefficiencies, whether they are caused due to CRM or humans. In fact, apart from eliminating inefficiencies, AI bots can also help in various regards. Examples of such help would include dealing with issues that are frequent or not of a large scale, taking preliminary actions such as acquiring certain required information from the customers or taking calls and messages in the night shift to eliminate the need of staff during that time. When combined with SuiteCRM, a chat robot would also help in the efficient execution of SuiteCRM Workflows, assisting the CRM users in their tasks or autonomously carrying out workflows.
Implications are associated with the use of online chatbots and SuiteCRM in a variety of industry verticals. For the eCommerce and retail industry, chatbots can respond to simple customer queries or provide customers with the most commonly sought information regarding their orders or purchases. Therefore, the burden of customer queries on the customer service representatives can be reduced.
Extraction of relevant information is a feature of chatbots that also has implications for the financial services industry, where customers can be assisted in getting any required information such as their current account balances or the amounts of money that is due to be paid by them. Therefore, customer experience can be improved for businesses in the financial services industry since chatbots will be more efficient in solving simple problems or providing answers to simple queries.
In the healthcare industry, chatbots can be useful in providing required information such as a patient’s medical history. This can allow any required actions to be taken swiftly. Apart from answering customer queries or solving simple problems, chatbots can also be used for cross-selling or up-selling. Since chatbots have access to past data of customer interactions with the business due to SuiteCRM integration, combined with the use of AI and machine learning, chatbots can learn about customers and hence can spot opportunities.
Once implemented, the benefits of using online chatbots with SuiteCRM are not just limited to the industry verticals mentioned. As their adoption grows, the technology might also evolve leading to more uses of chatbots for businesses.
Best Chatbot Options
There are a number of good chatbot options available in the market. A number of factors help determine which AI bots are good and which are not, some of which are discussed. As already mentioned, one of the reasons for the lack of popularity of chat robots in the past has been the consistent robotic voice which did not appeal much to the customers. Therefore, those AI bots that can make conversation with people in a more human-like approach are better than their rather robotic counterparts. Furthermore, chat robots should be capable of carrying out a multitude of tasks so that they can better assist the users as well as other people by executing certain tasks themselves. Moreover, good chatbots also have to be preloaded with information, whether it is customer data or information regarding business workflows. The pre-training of chatbots gives a good kick start to the work that would then be carried out by the chatbots themselves. The ability to integrate with CRMs is also one of the thresholds which is used to distinguish a good AI bot from not-so-good ones.
Having considered some of the factors which help identify good AI bots from bad ones, we will now go over some of the good ones in the market. These are listed below:
- IBM Watson Assistant
- Bold360
- Ada
- Drift
These chatbots can be merged with SuiteCRM with the use of APIs.
Our Two Bits!
SuiteCRM is one of the keys to the success of businesses. Although most of the business goals can be achieved through the use of SuiteCRM, the hunger of some businesses for increased growth in business remains ever-increasing. Such businesses would be able to streamline their sales and support services with the help of chatbots. Chatbots not only reduce the burden on staff members, but also bring about other forms of efficiency, satisfied customers and reduced costs. However, when integrating chatbots with their SuiteCRM, businesses should be careful in their choice of chatbots so as to realize the benefits that they expect from their AI bots.
RT Dynamic is a provider of professional services with regards to SuiteCRM. Our team of SuiteCRM Developers have gained proficiency in SuiteCRM Customization, Integration, Migration and Support. Get in touch now for a FREE CRM Consultation. We will be glad to assist you!
