Chatbot Vs. Live Chat: Which is best for your business?

Chatbot Vs. Live Chat: Which is best for your business?

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Chatbot Vs. Live Chat: Which is best for your business?

Chatbot vs. Live chat : Which is the most suitable for your business?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has played a significant role in transforming businesses from transactional to conversational interaction and engagement with customers. With the emergence of chatbots and live chats, various companies are finding innovative ways in building strong bonds with customers. 

There has been a major comparison between chatbot vs. live chat as people are confused about which of these two services delivers superior solutions with great performance and results. With the emergence of these two communication channels, customers can now get a quick answer to their queries and they don’t even have to communicate through email or phone calls. 

So, are you too confused about the right customer service platform for your business? Do you want live chat support or live chatbots? Or do you need both of them? 

How do they differ from each other in solving your business goals and providing enhanced real-time customer support?

Let’s jump straight into the details of these two channels. 

What Is A Chatbot?

What exactly is a chatbot?

A chatbot system is designed using conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to chat with users in a natural language via text messages, apps, websites, or telephone calls. It uses some pre-defined set of rules to perform a real-time chat interaction with a user. A customized build chatbot is provided by the chatbot agency that is used in varied industries such as healthcare, finance, tech companies, insurance, and many more. 

When customers type inputs, it navigates them to the destination which they are looking for but it is suitable only for basic inquiries that have a limited scope. If you want to simplify the initial work of the agents and generate human-like responses, then a chatbot is the best option for your company. 

What Is A Live Chat?

What is a Live Chat?

A live chat is an online app that enables you to chat with your website visitors in real time. Live chats are used by several companies as here an operator just has to type the response of the visitors inside the chatbox and simply send it to them. 

79% of tech-savvy customers prefer to choose live chat due to its immediate support access. For using a live chat, a user doesn’t have to install any app on their device or signup anywhere as they can simply chat with a representative by landing on your website. 

A live agent from your customer success team is responsible to handle ongoing queries of buyers and they are designed in such a way that any technical query that needs support will be handled by the allotted agent of the team immediately. They can also identify the motives, emotions, and interests of shoppers which helps them to modify their responses accordingly. This also helps you to collect more leads using the fundamental live chat approach. 

Chatbot Vs. Live Chat: Which One To Choose?

Both chatbot and live chat play a major role in resolving queries of users and providing them with a digital customer experience. But it depends on your business goals as you might need live chat support services or a chatbot or a combination of both. Here’s how:

Easy to use

Once you have live chat software installed, your operators can start communicating with your users. You need to invest appropriate time and money in training your agents effectively so that they can answer all the potential questions of your customers. 

If you provide them with a list of FAQs, knowledge base, and customer data information, then they can quickly respond to the queries and enhance the customer experience via live chat

While chatbot is a different case as if you are not investing in AI chatbots, then you need to design your custom bot. This means you need to create a step-by-step dialogue flow if you want to go beyond those welcoming messages in chatbots. 

Here are some steps by which you can create live chatbots:

  • Research and identify the goals of your chatbot for every conversation
  • Use a chatbot editor to design the flow of conversation. You should also remember that different customers can ask questions in various ways but their answers will always be similar. So, you need to carefully look at all these variations while framing the conversation
  • Test the final chatbot
  • Monitor and improve your chatbot using chatbot analytics

24/7 customer support

Providing 24/7 customer service has become a basic requirement for every business as you cannot make your people wait at any point in time. A study shows that almost 68% of customers will leave your business if you provide them poor customer service. 

Chatbot agency provides 24/7/365 support to the customers of your company. It offers a speedy and consistent solution to customers and its infinite availability will help you in lead management and boost sales. Chatbots can be used in building your customer base and customer engagement at various touchpoints. 

They can answer the most common customer query, recommend products and services to users, and book a demo or an appointment with an agent. It also lowers the workload of your representatives and they don’t even have to waste their time dealing with uninterested shoppers. 

On the other hand, live chat support services are available 24/7 which means your human operator will have to perform their duty round the clock. With this, your users can get quality assistance and support at any time of the day. 

Remember, if you have a large number of tickets and routine queries coming all day and night, then a chatbot is the highly recommended option for your company. But if you have fewer tickets every day that require more human intervention, then you should opt for live chat support services. 

Cost-effective medium

You need to take business decisions that generate more revenue at fewer costs. If customers are facing complex issues that need a detailed explanation, then live chat support services are the most suitable option. 

It is the most effective medium of communication as it helps agents to connect with users quickly, boosts your return on investment, enables them to convert the customers down the sales funnel, reduces the churn rate, and converts more website visitors into customers. On the drawback side, it requires you to pay additional costs such as training costs, salary costs, and infrastructure expenses. 

On the other hand, a chatbot is the most viable and attractive solution as a single chatbot can take place of 20 or more agents. Here, you don’t have to spend your costs on salary and other additional expenses and with this, you can lower your operational costs by 30%

Various chatbots agency design these bots in a way that improves your brand’s customer experience and makes the functions simpler to meet the endless needs of users. Chatbots let you automate the responses of your regular queries to build engagement with your customers. 

Accurate response by solving complex issues

Although a large number of companies use chatbots as an easy solution when it comes to accuracy, then no other tool can beat live chat agents. Chatbots use pre-defined patterns to answer simple customer questions but a live agent understands the context and provides the most accurate solutions. 

With the advancement of AI, chatbots agency may provide you with a chatbot that uses Natural Language Processing (NPL) and machine learning but they might not have the ability to think immediately during times of complex issues. 

There are certain cases when customers expect empathy from you to handle problematic situations. In this case, a live agent can be a fruitful option as they can understand the tone and emotions of users which can create a lasting impression. Live chatbots cannot create empathy and is suitable only for providing first-level support solutions. 

A live agent can accurately resolve complex issues in a short period but having both of these services will surely give more success to your business and let you acquire more customers with proactive chat support

Human involvement

Chatbots can run their features without the need for human intervention. This automatically saves your time, energy, and money and you don’t even have to hire an operator for this function. 

It can answer all the initial questions and also increases customer engagement so that the live agent can focus on more complex and strategic tasks while the chatbot takes care of customers’ needs. If you are using live chat support services, then a representative will always provide a human touch with real-time assistance to users.

It also establishes the natural flow of communication and timely response to customers by personalizing the greetings and conversations using the information of visitors to generate customer loyalty. Human operators can solve the most tricky questions through interactive visuals and as a result, this improves customer satisfaction. 

Customer loyalty brand satisfaction

In this discussion of choosing the right support technology between chatbot vs. live chat, it becomes highly essential for companies to meet customers’ expectations and improve their brand’s credibility. In the case of live chat, agents create meaningful conversations and improve engagement with the most active customers. 

They can also focus on improving the customer retention strategy of your business by building loyalty and satisfaction in users. According to Forbes, 71% of customers will not use your brand if you don’t have any customer service representative in your company, and 86% of customers would prefer to interact with a human operator when compared to chatbots. 

Live chats should be used by companies that have more technical queries as it requires personalized explanation. They address the issues of customers with their efficiency of problem-solving and quick query resolution without any hassle. 

However, AI chatbots are also extremely capable of delivering instant responses by generating small talk and boosting consumer satisfaction and with this feature, live chatbots will sound less robotic. 

With immediate responses, your users can become your loyal customers and even brand advocates. It offers frictionless customer service and allows you to measure the performance of your bots so that you can use the chatbot vs. live chat wisely. 

A quick response time

A response time is the total amount of time a prospect has to wait before they get the appropriate answer to their query. In this case, a chatbot is a leading platform as it provides instant responses to users. If you are using a customized chatbot provided by the chatbot agency and that particular chatbot is deployed on your website, then the waiting time of customers will be eliminated immediately. 

In the case of live chats, customers have to wait for a few minutes to get connected with the right agent but this time can also be minimized if you have sufficient and well-equipped team members in your organization. 

With chatbots, you get fewer hold times and quick response times when compared to live chat agents. About 59% of users will buy from brands that provide answers to their queries within a minute. Chatbots are always ready to establish the conversation with their “trigger words”. 

During the time of high-volume calls, it takes up multiple conversations at once and eliminates all the unwanted users. Shoppers can get a response in between 1-5 seconds by using chatbots which is much faster when compared to the agents who first connect with the client, search or recall the answer and then type that in the chat column. 

Personalized touch

When it comes to personalized touch, then live chat support services are a true winner. An agent can always have access to the customer’s data so that they can customize the message for each customer and there will always be a human touch in the conversation. 

Various companies can grow their eCommerce site with chat support services. Representatives can judge the emotions of customers and can shift their tone in both writing and oral communication. They will also create excitement in their tone that can make the communication effective with upset customers

A lack of personalization in conversation makes buyers feel that you don’t care about their precious time and money which can also lead them to shift to another business. AI-based chatbots have access to the data of customers and they provide them with solutions based on the intent of the customer’s messages. 

The best solution for a company is to use both these tools as bots can be used in the initial conversation and a human representative can continue the rest of the conversation. 

Chatbot Vs. Live Chat: The Best Solution

Now that everything is clear to you about chatbots and live chats, how will you decide which platform to choose for your business?

The best approach that you can use here is to opt for both these tools together to create a delightful customer service and experience. Based on customer inquiries and interactions, you can identify whether a chatbot or a live agent is the right fit for your business to build user interaction and generate brand loyalty. 

Complex issues can be solved by a live agent while simple queries can be resolved using a chatbot. But you can also use both of these technologies to deliver the best of both worlds to your customers and to succeed in your business. You can also check out our blog analysis on customer success vs. customer experience to know more information on how to deliver world-class customer support and assistance.