How do chatbots work as blue light services for B2B brands?

Chatbots have been around for years, though it’s taken some time for the technology to really catch on. We’ve gradually progressed from the infamous Microsoft paperclip to intuitive and genuinely helpful communication apps, and now chatbots are transforming the customer experience. 

However, some businesses are still struggling to really get to grips with their chatbot. What tasks should it be performing, and what should be left to the humans?

How do chatbots work as your first line services?

Paramedics aren’t expected to perform heart surgery or manage months of restorative physio. Instead their job is to be the first on the scene, assessing the situation, stabilising the patient and transporting them to the right treatment facility.

Similarly, chatbots are already being used across a whole range of businesses to streamline the customer experience, delight leads and support human teams. They can handle a range of simple requests such as sharing contact details, responding to frequently asked questions and even booking in meetings.

Live chat apps can work alongside chatbots to offer leads more efficient communications online. For instance, chatbots can pick up new leads and identify their needs before passing it to the most appropriate contact, so your team never has to reroute leads themselves.

Check your lead’s vitals

If you’ve ever taken a first aid course, you’ll know that vital signs such as heart rate and body temperature help to indicate a patient’s state of health. Whenever a paramedic arrives on scene, they’re likely to run through this list in order to ascertain the problem.

Chatbots can do the same (more or less). By thinking about the most common questions your customer services team faces, you can build a chatbot that is able to identify a lead’s needs and pre-empt their queries.

For instance, common queries within the banking sector may look a little like this:

• My card isn’t working
• What’s my current balance
• Can I change my overdraft limit
• I need to report a lost or stolen card

Once common queries are identified, make sure they are presented as options as early as possible within your chatbot scripting. The sooner your leads can let you know what’s wrong, the sooner you can solve their problems.

On shift 24/7

Chatbots can also work out-of-hours, greeting leads, collecting their data and sending a notification to the appropriate team member to pick up in office hours.

Giving these bots a personality to match the corporate culture can transform these tools into brand ambassadors that demonstrate company values through every touch point. Your company culture needs to engage the young, digitally savvy Millennials that are taking over the workplace, and putting a little more personality into chatbots seems like an easy choice.

Represent your company’s culture 

Chatbots can fill a variety of practical roles, but it also gives you a chance to strengthen your brand identity and boost audience engagement. Giving these in-house bots a compelling personality is one more way to drive engagement.

Think about the kind of language used across your website, blog and social media accounts. Your chatbot should ideally align with these. Sure, the average lead will know that there’s more than one person behind your company, but a unified brand voice is the ideal.

Employ a good bedside manner

If you’ve discovered any of the Easter eggs hidden within Alexa and Siri, you’ll know a good sense of humour can make all the difference to human-to-robot interactions. Sure, technology is there to help, but there’s no reason it can’t make you chuckle at the same time!

Instead of building a helpful yet dull chatbot, companies should push themselves to think about how they can use this technology to engage and delight their users. 

If you’re looking to employ a chatbot on your B2B website, and you don’t know where to start, get in touch with Six & Flow. We can help you to plan, build and implement chatbots that helps your lead and reflects your brand.