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AI-Powered Chatbots: The Key to Delight Customers

by content 07.06.2021

Customers are expensive to acquire in the first place. Research by First Page Sage (2020) shows that, on average, it could cost around $600 - $1200 to obtain a new customer in the Financial Services and Insurance industries.

Chatbot FPT.AI

Customer Acquisition Cost By Industry, by First Page Sage (2020).

Think about that for a second.

If you are in the Banking sector, you will need to spend an average of $120,000 to acquire 100 new customers. It is also a rule of thumb that finding a new customer costs 5 times more than 

keeping an old one happy. Furthermore, in the long run, satisfied customers can become brand ambassadors to advocate on your behalf, helping you acquire more customers, enhance the brand image, and grow revenues. In short, once you have a customer, you cannot afford to lose them. 

According to KPMG (2020), the Top 5 business sectors for consumer experience in 2020 in Vietnam include: financial services, logistics, telecom, travel & hotel, and non-grocery retail. Understanding the importance of customer satisfaction, these types of enterprises have been putting customers at its core and endeavoring to enrich customer experience to satisfy and ultimately, retain them. Despite the first position in terms of customer experience, many banks and insurance institutions are still struggling to fulfill customer expectations. Particularly, the new reality due to COVID-19 requires a seamless experience for customers - both online and offline.

Customers are turning away from your business. Why?

Bain & Company (2017) finds that a customer is four times more likely to switch to a competitor if the problem is service-related rather than price or product-related. Zendesk (2020) further indicates that 82% of customers turned away from a company due to poor customer service. These remain true as most businesses concentrate solely on the purchase phase of customers and neglect the consideration and post-purchase phases. Companies tend to invest in ineffective product advertisements and fail to impress customers with the brand values and build relationships with them. In reality, customers do not just suddenly know about your company, buy your products, and decide to stay loyal to your brand. As a matter of fact, they expect intensive and personalized care throughout their touchpoints with your business. 

Undoubtedly, you have to revamp your customer service right away. Needless to say, in the era of advanced technology, websites are a crucial starting point for customers to learn about and interact with a business. Yet it is oftentimes overlooked and thus, driving customers away.

Chatbot FPT.AI

Perceptions About Customer Service, By Super Office (2021)

Hypothetically, a customer was scrolling through your website and for some reason, he/she could not find the needed information. The customer reached out to the website support team, filled in all the information and waited for a response, but the wait of 2 minutes seemed like forever. Feeling frustrated, the customer was about to leave, and you were at risk of losing that valuable customer without even knowing. Now imagine this scenario but repeated for hundreds and thousands of times throughout your company lifespan. This is something any great business leader would want to avoid at all costs.

Yet such a circumstance had been way before you deployed a chatbot. 

Now, even before that moment of impatience, your “virtual agent” can pop up and offer assistance. The chatbot, on behalf of your agents, could answer all product-related questions such as product configurations, current promotions, pricing and orders, warranty and so on. Most importantly, customers like how it can provide prompt responses! A survey by Userlike (2020) finds that only 9% of customers do not support the use of chatbots. Nonetheless, the problem is that customers can only ask for certain information with limited choices. Customers are expected to follow a defined conversational flow to reach the best answers; however, it mostly confuses the chatbot and eventually results in dead ends.

The good news is, the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) opens a new door for businesses to improve customer service and overall customer satisfaction rate (CSAT). AI-powered chatbots enable more natural interactions with customers via machine learning. Chat history and domain’s knowledge base is used to better recognize the conversational context as well as the user's intentions and expectations; thus, the chatbot could predict and provide suitable answers towards customers’ needs. Consequently, AI and machine learning help ameliorate chatbot responsiveness and accuracy, minimizing the “I don’t understand your question” response. 

The following video provides a clear explanation on how effective chatbot could achieve for banking enterprises:

Chatbot applications in the Banking industry

Learning from numerous conversations with customers, the chatbot eventually is able to understand abbreviations and provide more natural responses as well as beneficial assistance to customers. Customers can even quickly and securely make a transaction directly with the chatbot. Chatbots can also be integrated across multiple messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Zalo, and Viber, offering an omni-channel customer experience. It is no longer pressing buttons; it is attempting human-like conversations.  

Nevertheless, in spite of all the appraisals that one can find on the Internet, chatbots cannot replace the fundamental role of humans in customer service. Rather, chatbot is merely a solution to assist agents with repetitive questions and issues. Agents can monitor the chat flows and easily intervene when needed, allowing them to solve more complex situations like consulting, sales activities, and emergencies.

Upgrade your game OR stay behind the digital competition

Ever since the first launch of chatbots in 1966, firms are incrementally leveraging the advantages of chatbot in their organizations. In a study conducted by Uberall (2019), 80% of customers reported a positive experience with chatbots. In terms of business administration, IBM (2017) indicates that chatbot deployment can reduce operational costs by up to 30%. Business leaders further claimed that AI-powered chatbots are able to increase sales by 67% (Forbes, 2019). Without a doubt, a chatbot investment is imperative to augment business efficiency and growth.

Foreseeing the digital transformation trend, more and more Vietnamese enterprises have been expeditiously catching up with the wave and adopting chatbots to amplify their customer service. In which, banking firms such as VPBank, TPBank, and Vietcombank have been leading the movement with the help of Information Technology vendors. Exceedingly, they seek attentive consultancy and support from domestic technological experts in order to obtain digital solutions that are tailored to the Vietnamese market. Acknowledging the need, having started the research phase in 2013, FPT.AI was officially launched in 2017, becoming a vital partner to many businesses throughout the digital transformation process. With competent expertise and experience in the AI field as well as best-in-class products and services, we have helped numerous firms to accelerate the digitalization journey and acquire outstanding business results.  

Key takeaways for great leader to disrupt CX to win customer heart

There is no secret to what customers expect from brands: a convenient and personalized experience. By accompanying brands to deliver the best customer experience in Vietnam for years, we experts at FPT.AI have concluded three key points that any managers or even directors should consider as insights to improve the customer experience for your business:

? Do not over-complicate CX: It is commonly agreed that CX matters, but brands do not need to try to surprise customers. Customers want convenience, first and only. After all, you have to meet customer expectations before you can exceed them.

? Personalize: The success key to open convenience is to personalize. The more you personalize customer experience, the more convenient and easy it becomes. In exchange, customers will reward personalization with loyalty. 

? Harness the power of advanced technology: Consistently delivering convenient personalized experiences at every channel, every digital touchpoint. This will require readily solution access to all data personalization demands and flexibly support CX online, which chatbot is one of top-choice for every brand.

FPT.AI provides a pre-built platform for businesses to easily create and manage chatbots on the user interface. You will also receive support and advice from our international qualified experts regarding the chatbot implementation and customization. On average, our partners have witnessed 96% successful cases resolved by chatbots and 60% workload reduced. Moreover, as a pioneer in natural language processing (NLP) for Vietnamese, we have integrated and constantly upgraded the technology to our AI chatbots. We are confident in delivering the best possible experiences for Vietnamese users.

Are you ready to captivate your customers with AI-powered chatbots? If you have any concerns, we are here to help.

Learn about our Conversation here: https://fpt.ai/chatbot  

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