Conversational Marketing: Improving Customer Experience

The essentials

• Flexible solutions. Conversational marketing leverages chatbots, live chat, and conversational AI for an adaptive and tailored customer experience.
• Complementary Methods. By integrating multiple approaches to conversational marketing, customer interactions are enhanced and support resources optimized.
• customer satisfaction. Using different conversational marketing tools can result in faster responses, personalized support, and a seamless experience for customers.

While it would be nice if we could provide every customer with a personal concierge during and after their purchase, that’s just not possible for all but a handful of brands. Additionally, not all customers want that level of human interaction anymore 41% of customers According to a recent study by Tidio, they prefer live chat over phone support (32%) or email (32%).

Instead, it’s incumbent on brands to provide multiple ways to give customers the feeling of quick answers, tailored answers to their questions, and an overall personalized experience. One of the tools in a marketer’s toolset that’s becoming increasingly important in this regard is something called conversational marketing.

First, let’s make sure we define conversational marketing. As we all know, we marketers love both our catchphrases and our acronyms, so let’s get even here! There are a variety of tools that can be used in conversational marketing. These include automated chatbots, more free-form conversational AI, as well as live chat solutions.

In this article, I’ll discuss each of these conversational marketing approaches, talk about the strengths and weaknesses of each, and how they can work together. Let’s begin!

Chatbots: A simple interface

The first type, which we will discuss, offers a relatively simple interface for customers to start a conversation with our brand. A chatbot Provides a website or mobile app visitor with a chat interface, which in most cases presents multiple choice options and usually leads to a form to fill out, a link to more information, or sometimes contact information for a representative who can help can with a more detailed request.

While I say this is a simple approach, in many cases appearances can be deceiving! The branching of questions and answers can get very complex, and here lie some of the challenges of this method.

Chatbots are also prevalent, with over two-thirds of consumers worldwide after using them for the past year. Their advantages lie in the immediacy of information they can provide in a more natural user interface.

The downsides of a chatbot are that you’re likely to get frustrated if you’re looking for something outside of the preset choices and options. Think back to your phone support experience when the options to dial “X” for a certain set of services just didn’t meet your needs.

Because of this, chatbots can often quickly solve a majority of customer challenges and queries, but to be successful, brands need to provide an easy exit to true in-person (or conversational AI, which we’ll get to in a moment) alternative methods to have to get answers.

Related article: The 10 Best Chatbot Providers You Should Know in 2023

Live Chat: Based on traditional telephone customer service

In many ways, the operating models of many conversational marketing platforms are based on the more traditional phone-based customer service approach. The next method we will discuss is the method that most closely resembles a more traditional customer support approach – live chat…

The advantage from the customer’s point of view is that the communication is completely controlled by people. So if these people are well trained and have full access to the available information, customer issues can be resolved quickly and humanely.

The disadvantage of live chat is that a team (whether in-house or outsourced) needs to be hired to handle the incoming requests. From a customer perspective, too, there can be discrepancies in the end results, which depend heavily on the amount of training, access to information, and individual expertise. Not to mention how change is managed when new products or services are introduced. All of this can lead to additional investments to maintain quality.

There are times when automated solutions are either difficult to implement due to the multitude of potential sources of information, or the potential questions can simply be answered more effectively by one person. In these and other cases, live chat can play an important role.

Related article: Time travel: How chatbots have evolved over the decades

Conversational AI: The most complex method

Finally, we have the more technically complex of the three. While all these methods are often grouped under one platform that is under consideration Conversational AIwhat I would really call conversational AI is…

There are several benefits of conversational AI, but perhaps the best way to think of it is as a balance between the size of a chatbot and the personalization of a live chat. Of course, for conversational AI to work well, it needs good training, access, and time to learn.

In a sense, conversational AI is the best of both worlds, allowing customers to ask questions without being forced to choose from a select menu of options, while also giving brands the ability to automate the responses and so the Number of teams reduce members who are needed for support.

Combining the customer-facing ease of use of a free live chat with the scalability of a chatbot, conversational AI can, with time and training, deliver the best scenarios. As with chatbots, brands would do well to provide a way to reach a real human or provide alternative methods of information gathering. Even though conversational AI can be deceptively human, I think making it transparent that a person isn’t dealing with a real person can be of great benefit if any challenges arise.

Merge conversational marketing components

Now let’s talk about how these three methods of conversational marketing can work together for the benefit of your customers and your business.

Those who have concerns about using chatbots instead of live support should know this 40% of customers I prefer neither one nor the other.

The first scenario I will examine is what we refer to as “low hanging fruit”. This is a case where information that a customer may be looking for is requested very frequently and can be easily viewed. In this case, a chatbot alone can be enough to give a customer what they need. However, in slightly more complex examples, a chatbot can mostly get a customer there by having the conversational AI handle some detailed and nuanced questions and answers. All in all, the customer gets what he needs promptly.

In a second hypothetical scenario, as a first step, a brand can use either a chatbot or conversational AI to gather key information about a potential or current customer and then relay it to live chat, where a real human will do the talking for the customer Rest of the conversation can lead away. This saves staff time gathering basic information and uses it strategically when it matters most on a personal note.

There are many more possible use cases, but you can already see from the above two that there is a lot of flexibility when you think about using the different types of conversational marketing together.

Final Thoughts on Conversational Marketing Tools

As you can see, there is no one right way to use real-time communication tools to help your customers get answers, find more information, and be happy with their experience.

True success can come from using one, two, or even all three methods in combination and integrating them into a seamless customer experience where you can respond quickly while providing the information and answers your prospects and loyal customers need and need where you need them.