Is it a Good Idea to Install AI-Enabled Chat Bots to Handle Customers?

Chat bots have been steadily growing in business usage for quite some time and now even the Cloud-based platforms are going for these, especially those that are AI-enabled. This is especially true of E-commerce based platforms, but also of other forms of businesses, that don't necessarily sell online, but have an online platform to initially engage potential customers, before they go further into the business dealing.

But is it a good idea to install AI-enabled chat bots? What do the customers think about the companies that install them? What kind of experiences do they face while communicating to chat bots? Will they soon replace human executives? There have been studies to understand these questions, especially in the last 2-3 years.

How Should a Customer be Engaged?

The ability to handle customers efficiently to their satisfaction and to convince them to take the bite and to make a purchase is what keeps the business moving.  This is where the entire idea of an AI-enabled mechanical system goes wrong. Because chat bots don't really handle customers to turn them into potential satisfied customers, but simply respond to their queries mechanically. The entire principle of engaging a customer is set aside by the mechanical chat bots. There have been studies where more than 75% of customers have reported frustration when they visit a website and have to deal with a chat bot that simply doesn't understand their query and doesn't have the accurate responses ready for them.

On the other hand, a human agent can deal with every customer according to his or her needs and respond to everyone according to their unique needs. This is something the chat bots cannot do.

Don't Pretend to Be Human

The worst trick that a company can resort to is to make the chat bot pretend to be human. This not only frustrates the customers, but turns them away from the company. It has been found in studies that a chat bot which says that it is a mechanical bot and responds to only initial query and then transfers the customer to a human executive is the most preferred by the customers.

The bottom line is that the customers want to talk to human beings when they are coming to a business to spend their money. They don't want to waste their time talking to a machine.

If you want someone to spend their money on your business, you should respect their time and money and at least give them a respectable hearing by a human executive.

What do the Customers Think of Companies using Chat Bots?

Studies have shown that people are more willing to wait in a queue to talk to a human agent than to talk to chat bots. If a company doesn't want to give them the comfort of talking to a human, then such companies acquire a bad image in the minds of customers as "Not customer-friendly."

If your customers are turning away, you should do research into how you are treating them and if you are giving them the simple comfort of a human executive who understands their needs properly.

Researches have shown that customers don't trust a company where they don't get a chance to talk to a human executive. They may regard such platforms as scams.

Why Are Businesses Installing Chat Bots?

Despite all the studies that show the uneasiness of customers with chat bots, businesses are continuing to install chat bots. Not only this, but the larger ones may even commission market research studies that provide convenient results in favour of the client company to show that chat bots are popular. The reason behind this is that chat bots are low-cost to install and require much less expenditure than employing a large team of executives to respond to customer queries, who have to be paid salaries and other privileges according to the nature of their jobs.

In this context, Rajiv Mamidanna, Director, Technosprout, Mumbai, says, "There are pros and cons. Companies are trying to reduce human interaction to make regular run-book queries to be answered by bots. The biggest gain for these organisations is the reduction in man-power. While the biggest challenge is that if your system does not learn quickly, then you will have unhappy customers. My recent experience with Jio was similar. They just don’t have the option to select to speak to an agent. They expect that the bot does everything; under the assumption that they have fed intel to the bot about all issues. But that’s not the case. So bots, when used carefully can be a boon. But if the intent is to replace manual intervention, then it is a process that is bound to fail. Clear demarcation of what they should be deployed for and what not is critical."

"Bots, when used carefully can be a boon. But if the intent is to replace manual intervention, then it is a process that is bound to fail. Clear demarcation of what they should be deployed for and what not is critical."

--Rajiv Mamidanna, Director, Technosprout, Mumbai

The businesses want to cut cost and find it much cheaper to install chat bots. But they don't calculate that in the long run, chat bots are detrimental to their business. There are certain costs that you cannot cut if you want to do well in business.

On the other hand, those who work in the field of IT, understand that AI is here to stay. Julian John, CEO, Zion Technologies says, "The future is AI whether you like it or not. It's upto the service oriented companies to tweak their AI bots further to make it as close to human interaction as possible with the advent of the surprising AI robot Sophia, there is a lot of scope to enhance the chatbots. The need of the hour is ‘real time learning on the fly by the chatbots' and integrating their intel banks in real time during interaction with the customers. We are seeing adoption of this technology in a very coarse way by many companies as they have standardised responses to set questions but as soon as the customer asks an ‘in between’ question the chatbot goes for a sixer. The range of the questions has to be not only enlarged but even the real time correction is necessary. We are going to see adoption of much finer technologies in AI regarding chatbots. The future can even see the amalgamation of AI chatbots with Projected 3D VR. We are just getting started."

"We are seeing adoption of this technology in a very coarse way by many companies as they have standardised responses to set questions but as soon as the customer asks an ‘in between’ question the chatbot goes for a sixer. The range of the questions has to be not only enlarged but even the real time correction is necessary."

--Julian John, CEO, Zion Technologies, New Delhi

No matter how close the chatbots come to the humans, they can never replace the human angle in dealing with customers. Hence, even if they come close to humans, it would be good sense on the part of the businesses to let human executives handle the customers. A chat bot can handle some simple queries.

Hence, it's always a good investment to have a team of executives with good communication skills to handle customer queries, as it's in the long term interest of the growth of the business.