5 Ways You Can Sleigh this Holiday Season with a Chatbot!
The holiday season is just around the corner and it might be time to consider adding a Salesforce Einstein Bot to support your sales, service, & internal teams to keep up with the influx of demand the busy season is going to bring. It’s no mystery that there has been a shift in the way we are engaging with the brands we love. Customers are moving from phone channels to the digital channels & expect to be able to engage with brands when, & how, they want. Whether you run your own e-commerce platform or manage an online storefront for a large retailer, a chatbot could be a great investment.
What is a chatbot?
A chatbot is an AI powered bot that can automate personalized conversations & allow users to get instant responses to their inquiries while still receiving an experience much like when they are talking to a human. A Salesforce Einstein Bot is a chatbot tool that is natively integrated into Salesforce & allows you to not only provide a different channel to your customers, but also leverage the full potential of the Salesforce Platform. At first glance, a chatbot may seem like a multi-function engine that can do anything you want it to in just a couple of clicks, however, in order to bring a robust, high-impact chatbot to life, each component needs to be customized with the gathered requirements, all gleaned through hours of discovery!
“An Einstein bot isn’t just a monolithic thing; it’s an ecosystem of ideas that come together to provide an overall experience.”
Retail chatbots provide a smart way to scale exceptional customer experiences. Retailers can leverage a chatbot to grow far quicker with loyal customers than companies that constantly rely on a semi-satisfied customer base. If you want to make sure that you don’t lose sales opportunities, & eventually revenue, it is important to understand how a chatbot can support your business during the upcoming shopping frenzy, which is only a few months away!
What’s with the buzzword “Conversational AI”?
"Conversational AI" is a buzzword that is sweeping through the ecosystem. But what does it actually mean & how does it play a role with chatbots?
Conversational AI refers to the manner in which you engage your customers, prospects, or partners through an automated engine leveraging AI. Chatbot designers use Natural Language & anticipatory design to delight a customer, meet their needs, & keep them engaged.
“In other words, with the dawn of conversational AI, bots finally learned to speak human!”
How can a chatbot help your business to increase sales & sleigh this upcoming holiday season?
1. It can personalize the shopping experience with product recommendations
One of the best holiday uses of chatbots is to help shoppers quickly find the product they are searching for. For example, your bot might want to ask the following questions:
Who are you shopping for?
What are their interests?
What is your ideal budget?
Based on the customer’s response, your bot can offer different options!
2. It can provide a seamless customer service experience
Your chatbot is there to answer common customer questions about products & purchases. Thanks to AI, your bot can provide customers with information about availability & return policies. Your customers will get the help they need, when they need it, 24/7.
3. It can ensure a positive shipping experience with package tracking
When your package delivery services are managed by external companies, businesses can’t always impact speed or quality of service. What you can do though, thanks to your bot, is keep customers up to date by letting them know when their order will show up at their door if they ask! By allowing them to track their packages whenever they need to, customers will never feel out of the loop.
4. It can add some holiday cheer to the shopping experience
It is always a fun idea to add a bit of Christmas inspired fun into your Chatbot messaging during the holiday season! You can do this by updating your bot script to say Christmas themed phrases like “Merry Christmas!” or “Happy Holidays!”
5. It can take pressure off your agents
During the busy season, many companies hire temporary staff to keep up with the increased seasonal demand, which usually means more sales agents. However, it can be challenging to know how much staff you actually need & if your plan is really cost-effective. Chatbots help solve this problem by ensuring you don’t need to hire as many agents. Your bot is available 24/7 & is excellent at handling multiple cases!
In conclusion, what is the ROI you could see from a bot?
Einstein Bots leverage Conversational AI & enable seamless automated conversations to provide excellent sales & customer service for your customers. By leveraging an Einstein Bot on your chat & SMS channels, you are able to move customers off expensive channels, all the while providing 24/7 personalized experiences.
Here at NeuraFlash we like to advise our customers that you have one shot!
One shot to give your customer an incredible, unique, & personalized chatbot experience that will keep them within the new channel you deployed. A bad experience with a new chatbot channel will discourage a channel shift & prevent you from achieving the very goals you set out to accomplish. To create this as an effective new channel for your business you need to take the time to invest in the team needed, the chatbot mission, & define what success looks like to you and your stakeholders.
As a leading AI & Chatbot Partner of Salesforce, with over 30+ collective years in this space, NeuraFlash has deployed the majority of all Einstein Bots currently live today in the Salesforce ecosystem. Leveraging our team’s expertise and the lessons learned from our 60+ Einstein Bot Customers, we have developed this guide to help you get started on your bot journey. If you are ready to bring your ‘A’ Game to the hyper-competitive holiday market this year, contact us today!
