The following story is a simple solution for a complex problem. This basic method for getting started with Chatbots is intended for call center managers who haven’t implemented any strategy in this area. However, it may still be useful to call centers that already have a strategy in place to get some new ideas or even more so to move current ideas forward. The simplicity of NEARSOL’s own experience might seem hard to believe, but it’s really how we got Chatbots. We quickly got comfortable and grew it from there.
Talk about Chatbot has Become Overwhelming
The main reason I believe that “Chatbot Customer Service Strategy” is so hard, is because the term “Chatbot” has been turned into such a buzzword for everything that it has driven us to a point that both providers and consumers have different ideas of each.
Call Centers and Facebook caused this confusion
The complications start with the providers; also, Facebook is to blame in part. On the provider side, we want to offer a perfect #chatbot, one that will automatically detect the customer and even their mood, sync it directly to our CRM, and have the robot instantaneously analyze several hundred scenarios and come up with the best response combination to make the customer happy.
We as providers need to stop thinking that our products and services should do everything we as consumers wished companies would do for us. We need to keep in mind that as consumers many times what we say we will do, is not what we end up doing. We say we want complex apps and interactive self-serve solutions, but in reality, it’s been the simplest technologies that have had the highest success globally.
Click-to-Chat: The Simplest, most Basic thing you can do in Chatbots
As Contact centers, there is a way we can leverage Chatbots in simple ways. The simplest of all is by creating a click to chat hyperlink and publishing it across your web and social sites. When a customer clicks on the link it launches Facebook Messenger and the user can simply initiate a free-flowing chat, while on the other end of the messenger line there is no magical robot, but just a customer service agent typing back responses.
You can get started with “Chatbot” Customer Service really easily today if you add this to your web and social properties, even some of your email templates.
Start with a Basic Click-to-Chat Implementation
At NEARSOL we did two basic things:
First: We created a click to chat URL and some click to chat buttons.
Second: We told customers about our new option to click and chat.
We used a few channels to share this new feature with customers. All of a sudden, we had a much stronger grasp of the phrases, spelling, and types of messages that people sent into our call center when needing help via chat, which allowed to lay the foundation for us to have a library and relational database dictionary for the future programmed chatbot we launched
