Chatbots: New Service Desk Agents | IT Service Desk

The rapid advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has unlocked numerous possibilities for businesses across various industries. Let’s take customer service for instance. It has indeed come a long way—from a traditional people driven process, to an intelligent, automated and interactive one.

The reason for this transition is, customers have moved far ahead of the humanized way of resolving issues. They are now more inclined towards self-service options that help them find suitable solutions and resolve issues on their own. And this is exactly what AI powered chatbots offer. Simply put, chatbots are a perfect blend of human interaction and self-service that is intriguing in every aspect. According to Gartner, by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their engagement with businesses without interacting with a human.

From a business standpoint, how can chatbots help serve the customers better? To answer this question, let’s focus on the factors that make chatbots stand apart.

1. Instant gratification

Today’s customers expect quick responses to their queries whenever they engage with businesses. In a typical customer service scenario, when they are in need of immediate help or information, they would rather prefer to interact with phone assistants such as Siri, Google Now or Amazon’s Alexa, than reading a manual or interacting with a human. By providing quick responses to the customers’ queries, chatbots can deliver instant gratification taking responsiveness, reliability, user-friendliness and customer satisfaction to a higher plane or another level.

In time, fruitful interactions with bots will lead to a scenario where customers trust and engage with chatbots more than any other customer service channels.

2. Complex queries solved quickly

The end goal of every customer interaction is, and has always been, solving their queries as soon as possible. And these customer queries are often complex and involve multiple levels of customer service or touchpoints. However, gone are those days when finding solutions for these queries required human intervention. Today’s AI powered chatbots deploy advanced algorithms and techniques to answer your customer’s queries then and there. This would typically be a time-consuming process for humans.

3. Available at all times

Unlike human interactions, customers can stay connected with chatbots 24/7/365 days a year. They are designed to engage with customers and solve their issues anytime, anywhere. A stable internet connection is all that one needs to connect with chatbots. This helps businesses improve their customer service, quickly monitor feedback, and take appropriate actions to deliver better experiences to their customers.

4. Ease of implementation, affordability and improved ROI

Chatbots are typically lightweight applications that are easy to implement—with APIs facilitating easy integration. They can be used to serve customer queries across diverse business domains; eliminating the need to hire people for customer service. By adopting a chatbot solution, businesses can now leverage all these benefits with reduced operating costs and achieve better ROI faster.

Conclusion

As we move further in the AI driven era, chatbots are rapidly becoming more intelligent with added capabilities. Research suggests that the global chatbot market was valued at USD 190.8 million in 2016, and is expected to grow in years to come. To grab this opportunity, businesses should actively identify the areas where they can be deployed and transform their IT Service Desk.