7 Useful Chatbot Features That Make a Big Difference

Guest post by Irfan Ak. 

Customer support can be really tricky. If you’re a customer support agent and you fail to deliver the right experience, it sends a really bad impression on your business. It tarnishes the very reputation you have spent years building. And especially, when you’re operating on an enterprise level, a customer dissatisfied will never return and may tell many others not to consider you for purchases. 

We are now living in a technologically adept era where we observe the fusion of automated platforms with virtual agents. With chatbots on the rise, brands (big or small) are now reinventing their customer handling strategies and improving their overall efficiency. We are now observing a real boost in productivity, all thanks to chatbots.

But what makes chatbots so special? Here are 7 useful chatbot features which, in my opinion, make a chatbot capable of delivering the best user experience. 

1) Achieving Conversational Maturity with Natural Language Understanding (NLU)

Previously, chatbots would only be able to respond to your queries based on a set algorithm. Now, however, chatbots have evolved and with NLU capabilities, a chatbot is capable of understanding the very context of a conversation. If available, even in any language.

With NLU, a chatbot becomes capable of identifying the intent of a question that is asked. It can then analyze the question and provide an accurate response. If there’s not a fitting response the chatbot can come up with, it eventually proposes different options to clarify the user intent.

As more and more people are actively interacting, we are seeing quite the surge in developing conversational patterns. This is making chatbots achieve conversational maturity, all thanks to Natural Language Understanding. 

2) Chatbot Integration with CRM platforms

As chatbots are becoming more intelligent, they are now also capable of orchestrating workflows. 

Modern chatbots should have the capability to easily become a part of any CRM. When chatbots will possess the capability of handling real-time customer relationship processes, they will become capable of resolving many complex problems for users in a much easier way. From taking routine backups to password changes, a CRM platform can enhance the workflows effectively. 

3) The Capability to Become Emotionally Intelligent 

A chatbot must be emotionally intelligent. It has now become an integral part of any AI-powered chatbot of the present era. They should possess the element of studying customer’s personality traits and understanding their tone and sentiment. Based on their emotional levels, a chatbot must be fully adept at setting the tone while interacting with the customer. In this way, a chatbot will be equipped with the right way to deliver a highly personalized user experience to customers. 

One of the best examples which I can quote here is  Replika. Although it is not a business providing chatbot applications, it mimics the exact emotions of a human. It’s specifically designed to provide comfort to individuals who are suffering from anxiety and loneliness. By having a chat with the bot, you find that the AI algorithm working at the backend is capable of giving you an emotionally intelligent conversational experience. 

In situations, where problems are complicated and would require expert intervention, an emotionally intelligent chatbot can notify a human employee and respond to the situation. 

4) A Chatbot Should Provide Faster Solutions

We often wonder why brands are opting for chatbot solutions these days and the answer is simple, to make their and our lives easier and simpler. A chatbot can easily save time and effort. It can help resolve base level complex issues without customer support’s intervention. 

Instead of having a customer going through page after page, analyzing data, and finding a solution to a particular problem, a chatbot can easily help identify the problem. 

One of the core features of a chatbot should be to provide efficient solutions to users’ many problems on request. 

5) A Chatbot Should Be Free to Explore Solutions

One significant feature which you should include as a must-have feature in your chatbot is the freedom to explore. If your chatbot can process vast amounts of data to find answers to burdening problems, it can resolve customer problems more effectively.

It will hold the capability to gather insights and information from a variety of different sources. By analyzing the existing solutions on the Internet, these bots become capable of answering almost any customer query and resolve their problem in a very effective manner. 

Also interesting: Improve Customer Experience With The Help Of Voice Assistants

6) Make Sure to Create a Chatbot with a Targeted Purpose

When creating a chatbot, keep its specific purpose in mind. 

If a bot doesn’t have a clear purpose, it won’t be able to produce relevant and agile results. With time passing a chatbot will become more agile and versatile with more interactions. Hence, when you’re planning to design and integrate a chatbot within your website, make sure the chatbot is able to do what it needs to do. The more specifically you define the purpose of the chatbot, the more agile and efficient it will be in achieving goals and objectives. 

So when you create a chatbot, make sure it has a clear purpose and strategy. 

7) Keep a Simple & Easy User-Interface for Chatbots

Last but not the least, make sure the chatbot has an easy-to-use interface. Customers might already be annoyed when coming to you for support. The last thing you want is to frustrate them even more. So make sure your chatbot is easy to find, proactive, engaging, and aesthetically appealing. 

Concluding Thoughts

Chatbots are a growing part of the future. They are powerful tools that help mitigate the inconsistency of problem-solving for brands. Many data scientists are now breaking new grounds in the technology industry and are expanding their knowledge by adopting new Machine Learning methodologies. When data scientists couple these new technologies with modern-day chatbots, they end up creating highly interactive experiences for customers. Chatbots are now a part of our developing ecosystem. They provide a reliable and highly interactive user experience.

We hope that this list of chatbot features will help you improve your customer experience! You can learn more about Onlim’s Conversational AI solutions here. 

Author bio:
Irfan Ak is a digital marketing strategist, growth hacker, digital transformation expert at Branex & a guest blogger on various websites. He has worked with various other brands and created value for them.