CANADA
Chatbots personalize and humanize social media, smartphone apps, and e-commerce sites. They are a conversational interface. At their best, they come close to talking with a knowledgeable human, drawing heavily on advanced AI machine learning and natural language processing.
Many small businesses don’t consider them in their planning; they seem high tech, high risk, high cost, and intimidating. Dollar Tea Club, a subscription service based in Toronto, Canada, shows that they need to be none of these. All its business is online. It offers artisan teas in small amounts, starting at $1 a month. The blends are creative and unusual, all made with no artificial ingredients and sourced through direct trade with producers.
Most of Dollar’s “customer touches” are by email. “And the emails don’t stop when we go to sleep,” says Allan Shulman, c.e.o. Many of the messages cover similar questions, about subscription plans, delivery times and brewing. The responses were often cut and paste answers from boilerplate text.
Shulman initially looked at basic software chatbots but they didn’t offer much of an alternative. They were weak at understanding the phrasing and nuances of customer questions and gave limited responses. That’s changed. Leaders in AI are packaging their software as the equivalent of mobile apps. Small businesses can quickly develop their own chatbots through structured menus.
IBM’s Watson Assistant, Dollar’s choice, can detect user moods. Facebook’s Messenger chatbot platform will pick up that a customer who uses the word “vegan” is sure to be interested in options appealing to vegetarians. There are hundreds of low-cost chatbot development services. They all support major social media apps, including for WhatsApp, SMS, Instagram, Facebook, WordPress, etc.
The general estimate of development effort seems to be that a small business can create a robust and useful chatbot in around 30 days.
The benefits to Dollar and customers are clear and contribute to building a customer-centric, operationally efficient business: Cost and time savings: Dollar estimates that 80% of customer enquiries are now answered immediately online and without leaving the site, unlike email. Shulman’s statement that this saves him 1-2 hours a day will resonate with any small online provider overloaded and understaffed.
Revenue generation: Dollar’s conversion rates for enquiries to sales have risen from 3.09% to 4.17%, a 35% increase. Customer engagement: Customers stay on the Web site longer and get instant replies, making for an interactive conversation rather than a correspondence.