All Hail Our Robot Overlords

Did You Know? 81% of customers prefer using self-service options before contacting a customer service representative. (Source)

We’ve gone in-depth about some analytics-heavy subjects over the last couple of days, so let’s take it easy today with a shorter email about a fun subject…

Robots.

Specifically, chat robots.

Last Friday, we saw 28 awesome customer retention stats that all led to the same conclusion…

More companies should be investing more resources into connecting with and improving the experience for existing customers. Several of the suggested strategies involved customer service with one strategy being especially applicable to us today—improving your customers’ self-service experience.

Enter chatbots.

Let’s start where we normally start: the data.

Tidio, a company specializing in AI customer service, conducted a survey of 774 online businesses and 767 customers, asking them a bunch of questions about chatbots. The article has a really cool infographic that’s too big to share in this email, but here’s a snippet I especially liked:

Only 19% of companies surveyed currently use a chatbot despite 74% of those companies being “satisfied” with the results and just 4% “not satisfied.”

On the customer side, 88% said they’d used a chatbot in the past with 69% reporting they were “satisfied” with the experience and just 10% “not satisfied.” A comprehensive Zendesk report found that 72% of people who regularly interact with customer service bots believe they’re getting better.

Customer support isn’t the only area where chatbots are useful, though. In fact, it isn’t even the majority. Just 37% of companies report using chatbots for customer service with the plurality (41%) being used for sales.

Those sales chatbots were used in the following ways:

• Route website visitors (23%)

• Collect info (22%)

• Qualify leads (18%)

• Help with a purchase (17%)

• Book product demos (10%)

• Engage and delight (8%)

• Other (3%)

According to the business leaders Intercom surveyed, chatbots increased sales by an average of 67% with 26% of all sales starting through a chatbot interaction.

With the rise of ChatGPT and other AI models, it’s extremely affordable for even one-person businesses to build and deploy their own chatbots.

• Tidio offers a variety of customer support and email marketing chatbots starting around $10-$30 per month.

• ChatFuel offers Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp conversational chatbots for lead generation starting at just $15-$30 per month.

• ManyChat offers the same general services as ChatFuel for a similar price.

And those are just the established companies. If you have some time today, take a scroll through Product Hunt, which lists startup companies across all sorts of categories, including AI Chatbots. No doubt you’ll find some interesting twists on the typical chatbot implementation, like these recently-launched companies:

• Chaindesk, whose bot is trained on your own company’s website, products, and other data to be more knowledgeable and understanding about your company, specifically.

• Aime, a specialized AI financial assistant that can provide trade ideas, analyze stocks, and report on the trading activities of Wall Street’s whales.

• Sibyl AI, “the world’s first spiritual AI” that’s been trained on “volumes of rare metaphysical knowledge and experience.”

AI tech is changing so quickly and is more powerful than many people realize (though it isn’t real intelligence and has a long way to go before taking all of our jobs).

If you or your company currently use AI chatbots, how has your experience been? Do you regularly survey the market for new technology and use cases to add to or replace your existing implementations?

If you’ve never considered implementing an AI chatbot, give yourself some homework and at least explore possible use cases today. ChatGPT can help with your brainstorming!

Everyone say, “Hi!” to Zach H 👋

Question: If you could have any superpower, but it had to be completely useless, what would it be?

Zach H’s Answer: “I would be able to teleport except I could only go 5 feet and it would take 10 minutes.“

Editor’s Note (from me, Bryan): Lol, Zach, this one made me irrationally angry.

ChatGPT-Generated Joke of the Day 🤣

Why did the bicycle fall over?

Because it was two-tired!

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