Today, customers expect 24/7 support and instant gratification and small businesses are having a hard time keeping up. Strong customer relationships are at the core of every small business, but business owners like you struggle to strike a balance between amazing customer support and running their day-to-day operations.
For this reason, small business owners are implementing chatbots to account for customer pain points as well as assist them to boost sales, improve retention and grow their business processes. It’s estimated that by 2023, chatbots will help businesses save up to 2.5 billion hours of admin work, and that number is only expected to go higher.
However, not every chatbot is suited to meet the demands of small business owners and their customers. That’s why it’s important to address common customer pain points within small businesses, what a chatbot is and how it can help you run your operations with ease.
Knowing how customers perceive your brand and addressing their pain points can help you nail customer service for any small business. By implementing the right customer experience strategies, you establish trust with your prospects and increase retention
But first, you’ll need to understand the common pain points customers face today. This way, you’ll get to the root of what you need to do to service them in a more effective and helpful way. The key is to nurture them throughout their experience to help you build credibility. While you run a small business, think of yourself as a thought leader in your field.
No matter how small your business is, you have the potential to attract a loyal and attentive customer base. To get there, you just need to know what they’re looking for. Below, we’ve gathered some don’ts that customers today commonly
Losing a sale becomes inevitable when you put a customer on hold while they wait for an answer. The reason is that today's customers expect immediate satisfaction, and if you cannot offer that, they will most likely move on to your competition. So, you need to ensure that your customers do not feel like you are wasting their time.
That is where adding a callback feature to your customer service toolkit comes in handy. Remember that most clients prefer to speak to a live agent, but the callback option comes second in customer preferences.
In the past, customers were willing to wait up to 12 hours to receive a callback or email response. With the rise of smart technology and same-day delivery options, customers tend to get impatient should a business wait to respond to them for that long.
If a business takes forever to respond to a simple inquiry, customers are likely to move on to a competitor or a larger business that has 24/7 availability in place.
According to a recent study conducted by Salesforce, 66% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs. This means customers today crave an experience uniquely tailored to them, from start to finish.
The problem is, however, that many small businesses can fall short of offering a customized experience for their customers. This is partly due to shortages in staff and limited budgets to accommodate these expectations. The good news is there are plenty of affordable and intuitive solutions out there that you can leverage to help level up your customer service game and in the long run, raise your bottom line.
In simple terms, chatbots built exclusively for small businesses take the pain out of onboarding and make it easy for you to integrate the solution with your website in a matter of minutes.
Pre-built conversation templates are made to exclusively meet the needs of your business type, so any question your customer asks can be answered appropriately. Many chatbot solutions require significant time and effort to onboard, which means hours of building out potential conversations and potentially needing the help of an IT expert. With a chatbot for small businesses, you don’t need to sweat the small stuff and can set it and forget it until you’re ready to look into customer feedback.
With the help of an admin portal, you can look into your conversation history to identify common patterns throughout each interaction. In the end, this will help you establish a smoother business process, so you can continue to improve your product or service. You also won’t have to manually write down customer feedback, allowing you to view everything in one place without hassle.
Chatbots built exclusively for small businesses have a variety of key benefits that can both delight your customers and make your life as an owner smooth sailing. Below are a few benefits to consider:
Handling customer queries can take time away from you and your staff’s hectic workday. The last thing you need is a wrench in your productivity or getting stuck answering emails late at night.
It’s not always easy to tell how long it will take to resolve a particular customer issue, yet addressing a situation to the end is critical. So, by investing in a chatbot built just for small businesses, you don’t have to waste time either training a staff member to spend hours outside of your normal work hours to respond to emails, or even listening to voicemails.
Plus, a chatbot built just for small business owners should be relatively easy to set up and learn how to navigate.
The way you plan the daily activities of your small enterprise will determine how much you can expect to achieve at the end of the day. Running and growing your small establishment with a limited number of workers is challenging.
Ideally, your chatbot should integrate with a scheduling system such as Calendly to help you manage your hectic schedule and book appointments without manual effort. This means that customers can directly make appointments or place orders online, without the need for you to even pick up the phone.
Training a new employee on your business processes and customer service is not only time-consuming but costly. Customer service solutions are also often quite an expensive upfront, and worse might require you to hire extra help just to understand the software.
Chatbots for small businesses grow as you grow, meaning, they won’t require significant costs to implement or run overtime. As your business grows, you will have the opportunity to either learn more about what the solution can do, or leave it as is to keep servicing your customers.
This solution also never sleeps, takes coffee breaks, or goes on vacation. . As a result, your business will not lose out on engaging your customers outside of regular business hours or holidays. In the long run, investing in a chatbot built just for small businesses
Customers today would rather leverage a texting-like experience to solve their problems rather than a direct phone call. Also, 65 percent of businesses feel more comfortable purchasing from a business that has a messaging option.
The overall theme here is that self-service options are a priority for the modern customer. Convenience always wins and if you can give your customers the option to engage with your business with a few taps on their smartphone, they’ll resonate with this experience.
Many customer solutions today are dark and cold, but with a chatbot built just for small businesses, you can help create an amazing customer experience from beginning to end. Your customers will appreciate that while your business is small, it still anticipates their needs and provides them with a bright and interactive journey the whole way through.
It is quite frustrating if a lead or an existing customer has to wait longer than necessary to get a response whenever they reach out to you. When that happens, the odds of getting in touch with them decreases.
Implementing a chatbot built just for small businesses, however, will help wow your customers and keep them coming back. These chatbots are capable of remembering the user every time they visit your website, which shows them you care and listen. This will give you the space to grow and learn from every interaction while encouraging your customers to keep using your business for their needs in the future.
Unlike humans, chatbots built exclusively for small businesses are not constrained by public holidays, time zones, or normal business hours. As a result, they can offer you the chance to service your customer, 24/7, 365 days of the year. Your customers will experience an unrivaled level of personalization throughout their journey.
While nothing can fully replace human-to-human interaction, chatbots built just for small businesses are a great compromise to offer the highest level of customer service without sacrificing significant costs, time, and energy.
The truth is, small business owners today cannot handle modern customer expectations simply because it’s not humanly possible. Chatbots can help you bridge this gap by combining human intelligence with technology to help you anticipate what your customers need, while you get on with your hectic work schedule.
So, are chatbots better than humans? Yes and no. Chatbots can certainly help you find more time in your day and reduce costs, but it will be up to you to leverage the information you receive from the chatbot to make your business better and improve with time.
Say hello to Amy and goodbye to late nights responding to customer inquiries. Amy is the perfect customer service employee for any small business owner. She does not need a vacation, is always available, and is eager to learn on the job. Her purpose is to not only assist your customers but retain them. Over time, her knowledge and experience only improve. She is never in a bad mood and can service your clients 24/7, so you can keep going about your daily tasks without doing mundane tasks at the same time.
As a business owner, you can access Amy’s insights on any computer or mobile device. She is easy to use for business owners and customers alike. She is easy to deploy with an automated setup process and intuitive interface. Click here to sign up for the Amy blog to stay up-to-date on industry trends and best practices.