Why do people chat with chatbots?

Chatbots, AI-powered conversationalists, are quickly working their way into people's everyday lives and many businesses' marketing and support models. The technology behind chatbots uses innovations like machine learning and natural language processing to enable chatbots to interact with people in an almost human-like way. Sophisticated chatbots like Amazon's Alexa allow people to use voice commands to control household appliances, while simpler bots on websites can answer common questions.

Businesses have been experimenting with chatbots, trying to find just the right way to deploy them. For their part, consumers are getting more used to chatbots and, in many cases, will chat with chatbots to make issue resolution simpler and faster. In the eyes of consumers, chatbots still have area for improvement. – with most consumers saying they need to get smarter before they'll use them on a regular basis. But they can still provide convenience and accuracy when used in the right situations.

 

After hours support.

Imagine realizing at 10 pm that you have a cable installation appointment the next day that you can't be home for. Tragic! The cable company's call center shut down a couple of hours ago and their website doesn't have appointment scheduling functionality. But customers can chat with chatbots on the site any time of day and to your great relief, you're able to reschedule your appointment using this method. Crisis averted!

Front end of live agent chats.

You may also chat with a chatbot unintentionally when you initiate a chat session for customer support. Some organizations use chatbots to greet you and collect some basic information before elevating your session to a live agent. If the bot has been designed well, it should enhance your experience, enabling your support agent to hit the ground running because she now has some of your pertinent information from the start.

The chatbot initiated the conversation.

Chatbots aren't shy about introducing themselves to people and starting conversations. Just in your everyday internet use, it's likely you've visited websites where a small screen pops up and invites you to chat. If you choose to respond, there's a good chance you will chat with a chatbot.

You have a simple question.

You may have already chatted with a chatbot on a particular website and found it competent at answering basic questions. It's a little odd to think we can get to know a specific chatbot's capabilities and even develop a little bit of a relationship with it, but that can happen with repeated use. So you may find yourself intentionally visiting Barbara the Bot because you know "she" can help you.

NICE can help businesses with their chatbot needs.

Do you want your customers to be able to chat with chatbots? If so, we have a solution. NICE CXone, the world’s #1 cloud customer experience platform, transforms your call center software – empowering exceptional agent and customer experiences: every channel, every time. Partnerships with leading chatbot providers make NICE your go-to for all your digital support needs. Read our blog post, Cheat Sheet for Building the Best Chatbot, to learn more about how to design successful chatbots.

Any digital channel

Your customers are trying to reach you for service on digital channels – even if you’re not there yet. How many SMS text messages go to your call center phone number with no response? Who’s trying to find you on Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp and not finding you? Now with CXone it is easy to provide digital-first omnichannel service in all the channels your customers expect.

  • Personalized digital interactions: deliver native experiences in each of 30+ messaging channels, such as rich media, emojis, and other collaboration tools.
  • Simple to Activate: pre-integrated channels make it easy to offer to customers and agents.
  • Easy to Say “Yes”: simple packaging removes barriers to offering all channels to customers and agents.
CXone digital channel
Empowered agents

CXone empowers all your agents to deliver a true digital-first omnichannel customer experience by simultaneously combining all customer interactions in one intelligent inbox across multiple digital channels and voice for agents to select ("pull"), while dynamically prioritizing the most time-sensitive or real-time interactions according to service levels ("push"). All delivered in a single application – complete with full customer context, journey history, and sentiment.

  • Single Interface: one inbox for all digital messaging and real-time (voice/chat) channels – retaining native experience of each messaging platform.
  • Agents in Control: ‘pulling’ work in natural flow, while dynamic prioritization maintains SLAs – and prevents ‘cherry picking’.
  • Customer Card: full customer context, journey and conversation history, plus sentiment.
Holistic management

With CXone, omnichannel interactions are managed holistically, from agents to supervisors and beyond. Integrated workforce optimization, analytics, automation and artificial intelligence across digital and voice interactions ensure complete management across contact center operations.

Related resources
Case Studies

Best Practice: The Power of a Digital First Contact Center

Your customers have different preferences in how they want to contact your business. Hear from NICE customer, ESCI on how opening digital channels transformed their contact center, improved agent productivity and drive down costs for their contact center.