Artificial Intelligence (AI) is growing by leaps and bounds and technologies such as Chatbots have become an integral part of this digital transformation. Data from Juniper Research suggests that Chatbots leveraged for customer service have a strong potential to reduce costs; with deployments realizing annual savings for retailers of $439 million globally by 2023, up from just $7 million in 2019.
The chatbots growth has been prominent across a number of industries, to the point where 1.4 billion people worldwide now use them on a fairly regular basis. According to the chatbot statistics, by the end of 2019, almost a quarter of the global population will be using some kind of chatbot support on a daily basis.
Moreover, chatbots can cut operational costs by up to 30% and 50% of businesses plan to spend more on Chatbots than on mobile apps.
“One of the biggest changes happening in customer service right now is in automating the customer experience. Whether it’s after-sales support, providing information or launching a rewards program, the idea is to automate as much of the process as possible and to achieve a seamless interaction with customers which is fast, easy, and intuitive. And AI chatbots that engage with customers in two-way communication is the answer to these as it opens a whole new world of possibilities for businesses to build a more interactive and personalized customer experience”. said Mr. Souffiane Houti, the Founder and COO of VIAFONE Technologies.
Businesses now need to connect with customers through channels they are most active with including messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Facebook messenger, which have surpassed social media applications.
Users spend daily more than 3 hours on average on WhatsApp and that’s why it becomes all the more critical that businesses shift their presence to channels which consumers use to engage.
“VIAFONE Technologies builds chatbots using their advanced drag and drop interface and it automatically gets deployed on the 11 most prominent social media channels. The company’s “Chat2AI” control panel displays analytics as well as a customer heat-map to provide companies with deep learning and insights on customer interaction, with the ability to train the AI for optimum responses”, said Mr. Alessandro Gaffuri, Founder and CEO, CELS Group.
“The chatbots can work as great communicators; in fact the chatbots that we created for 360 Mall in Kuwait and Mall of The Emirates in Dubai have already received very encouraging responses and won the Gold Award at RECON 2019. The technology allowed the shopping malls to have their customers engaged, communicate with them in real-time and provide loyalty and rewards program,” added Mr. Gaffuri.
