The CEO of guestposts.online says with the internet passing the 25-year mark of viability it has also wiped out many of the small businesses in every part of the planet. Now, it’s possible to order products direct from the manufacturer or the first tier distributor and cut out all of the retail and mid-sized distributors as well. This can be a huge money saver for the end user but there are problems along the way especially if there are no retail sites where they can view the product and ask pertinent questions. The same problems are inherent with services, maybe even worse, since there isn’t a product to see at all, they have a gap in their customer service and sales if they can’t talk directly to their end users. Leave it to modern technology to advance to the point where companies can now chat with the visitors of their websites in real time. This is a huge advantage for most types of sales or customer service and can be a boost to the bottom line as well. Here are some of the latest in virtual assistants, or smart technology advances for your website.
In The Beginning There Was The Instant Message
It’s now old news but when it first came out the instant message or reply was a huge success for many companies. They could have a website and any questions or comments made could go directly to a person who’s only job was to answer them.
They could check inventory, get a price, find out a delivery date and relay that information straight back almost immediately to any commenter to their website. Sales went up and profits too, plus the costs of answering the website were minimal compared to having salespeople on a retail floor.
Next Came The Instant Chat Boxes
These were the next step in customer service for quick response time on a website. These small pop-up chat boxes could have live people manning them 24/7 to make sure that any person visiting the website got all the information they needed. These customer care chat boxes could do everything if given the power, to check inventory, prices, or take care of defective returns and refunds too. They were the next best thing to going into a store and talking to a real salesclerk.
Plus, it was possible to hire and train work-at-home assistants that could have access to inventory in real time, be trained to handle refunds, and they could learn the details of the product in inventory as well. Since they worked at home they could be paid less and keep more since they wouldn’t need transportation into work daily, could eat at home, and had all the comforts and none of the hassles of full-time work.
The Next Step Is The AI Virtual Assistant
These aren’t the same, lame, deaf phone bots that your local utility has been using for the past decade. We’ve all had problems with those, they can’t hear your words, they won’t let you past to talk to a live representative for any reason and you end up hanging up on them.
No, the new virtually human automated assistants are intuitive and will engage customers in what would seem like a natural conversation with either voice or text. They work on websites, apps, or can answer text messages too. They can take the place of the lower tier of humans without any problems whatsoever.
Since they have a very human sounding voice, can understand many complex questions and interactions, they are excellent first responders. In fact, many people like to chat with them knowing that they aren’t wasting anyone’s time with silly questions. If there are difficulties in understanding, or subjects arise that only a human can help with, then the AI assistant can immediately turn the call over to a live person. It saves the company from having to hire hundreds of people to answer basic, mundane questions, and only have the live reps for the most difficult duties.
Since the computer generated responses are all recorded and analyzed they can also be adjusted in the future to deliver better responses. This is the best way to optimize their customer service for the best accuracy. There are dozens of companies now offering such AI assistants online, a quick search and comparison of abilities are easy to do.
Nancy Baker
Admin
Vitaly Kuprenko