You know the feeling when you need assistance and the first CSR to greet you is — a chatbot?

Chatbots are literally everywhere, and it didn't take them long to become indispensable.

They come in various shapes and deal with varying issues. In plain words, they can differ greatly among themselves, but they serve the same purpose nevertheless.

Chatbots Are Great for First Line Support

However, chatbots still cannot hope to rival human interactions. Typically, they serve to clear the air and provide general information. For any complex inquiry, they redirect the inquirer to live customer support.

Because AI is developing fast, this may soon change.

If you run a business in dire need of a perfect chatbot, there are a couple of tips on how to better chatbot behavior.

Note that machine learning is a continual process. Updating chatbots with new info calls for diligence.

That being said, let's see what can be done to begin with.

Feed Chatbots With New Info

Keep feeding chatbots with new info!

Even if they seem invincible, things can change fast, especially if you're not keeping an eye on the competition.

As mentioned above, this is a long-term commitment, so make sure to set up a team of dedicated employees who'll enjoy the task.

Think of chatbots as students: the more they learn, the better they'll become. Given that times are changing fast, businesses need to follow up with time-relevant info.

Work Around Chatbot Limitations

Before you start polishing chatbot interactions, it's important to understand the limitations at hand.

While chatbots can be trained to be more empathetic and friendlier (see below), they cannot provide in-depth advice like humans can.

That's why they're best utilized to deal with quantity rather than quality, and they are especially useful during busy seasons (holidays and similar), as they can filter through basic queries and leave CSR with more time for complex queries.

“Humanize” Your Chatbots

Merely feeding a chatbot with useful info wouldn't make it stand out. If you want your chatbot to gain some fans, humanize it!

Namely, one of the biggest downsides of chatbots is that — even though they're useful in many ways, they are still machines.

Nothing makes customers happier than feeling empathy coming their way (especially if they're frustrated, which they usually are).

This task is somewhat more complex than the first one, as the success of teaching a chatbot to capture different sentiments relies on the person “teaching” it. On top of that, it should be able to discern between different sentiments without having to ask for input.

Further out, empathetic chatbots should be able to change the approach to fit and match the mood.

Make Your Chatbots Friendlier

Teach your chatbots to adopt a specific tone when addressing your customers.  

This can be done by using Natural Language Processing (NLP), which will teach your chatbot to analyze customers' tone of voice in reply in a personalized manner.

This will help customers relax; in a best-case scenario, they may even forget they're talking to a chatbot and not a real person!

Finally, as you keep feeding your chatbot with updated info, it will eventually learn what kind of personalities your customers predominantly have. It will empower it to provide more personalized responses.  

Escalate Interactions

Since chatbots can so far provide only generalized information, you should make sure to escalate interactions by providing CS representatives with necessary information about previous chatbot interactions.

Simply put, once the chatbot redirects the customer to a human CS representative, the latter should be able to pick up from where the previous conversation left off immediately.

Use Customer Data to Personalize Interactions

Last but not least, as you gather more customer interaction insights, you should feed them to the chatbot speedily.

Eventually, your customers should be able to distinguish between your chatbot and competitors. The practice will also level up customer trust and help your CS teams be more efficient.

The Future of Chatbots

Since trends change fat, no one can say with certainty what the future may bring. However, stats and predictions show that the chatbot industry will have reached a market size of $3.62 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 23.9%. 

As Ai and machine learning (ML) technologies keep expanding, so will chatbots' functionality increase.

Presently, stats show that the healthcare industry is leading in the field of chatbot adoption (43%), with the manufacturing industry (33%), the finance sector (29%) and retail (28%) following close behind. These stats are for the US alone, so figures are likely significantly higher.

At any rate, one thing is certain: chatbots are here to stay and they'll keep improving. Better start feeding them relevant information ASAP, therefore.