Four Reasons Chatbots Fail — And How to Get It Right
Diego Bartolome, chief innovation officer at Language I/O
Looking to upgrade your customer support strategy? If you haven’t already, implement a chatbot.
In addition to offering around-the-clock support, almost 40% of internet users say they would rather interact with a chatbot than a live agent. If that’s not enough, chatbots are also projected to save industries an estimated $11 billion by 2023. Between the positive consumer sentiment and the significant benefits to organizations’ bottom lines, it’s no surprise that the chatbot market is expected to grow from $5.6 billion in 2022 to $46.4 billion by 2026.
But there’s a caveat to the promise of chatbots: they must efficiently and effectively support customer needs.
The consumer ultimately determines the efficacy of your chatbot, and a negative experience with a chatbot is a failure of customer care. There are a variety of factors that play into a chatbot’s success or failure.
Let’s explore four reasons why chatbots fail so you know how to make chatbots succeed.
Failure #1: lack of personalization
Though chatbots are artificially intelligent, they need to be practically personalized. After all, 80% of customers are more likely to purchase from a brand that personalizes experiences than from a brand that does not. As retail spaces become increasingly saturated and e-commerce continues to grow, personalization will make your customer experience stand out from the crowd.
Luckily, you probably already have the tools to tailor your customer experience. If customers are interacting with your chatbot, they have most likely provided it with crucial information, such as their name and what they’re looking for. Your chatbot should use the provided information along with the data in your customer relationship management (CRM) platform to customize that individual’s experience, from the first point of contact.
Failing to personalize your consumer’s experience will lead to frustration nearly three-fourths of the time. Further, failing to personalize your chatbot interactions will make customers feel that you do not care about their loyalty, which can lead to lost sales, or worse, customers purchasing from an entirely different brand.
Failure #2: absence of multilingual support
Though English accounts for about a quarter of the languages spoken online, you can’t ignore all other languages. Indeed, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic combined make up an additional third of the languages spoken online.
Why is multilingual support critical to your chatbot success and — more importantly — customer loyalty? More than three-quarters (76%) of consumers prefer to make purchases in their own language. So, using English as the primary or only language ostracizes approximately three-quarters of customers who have a different native language.
Implementing multilingual customer support may seem challenging, but digital tools can help. Chatbots that fluently communicate in multiple languages rely on centralized AI that ensures key terminology is consistently translated across a broad range of languages. It also accommodates a version of “internet speak” that includes shorthand, slang and common typographical errors. These challenges can feel daunting, but implementing a reliable, high-quality translation resource can improve your multilingual digital efforts.
Failure #3: unestablished performance metrics
As all good marketers know, a campaign should never launch without a strategy to measure its performance. Chatbots require the same performance evaluation. Before implementing your chatbot, set KPIs and ensure you can track data that measure progress toward your goals and helps you make data-backed decisions. As a dynamic and ever-changing aspect of your customer service unit, chatbots also require ongoing tweaks, so data should tell you when to adjust the technology according to customer feedback.
To understand a chatbot’s value, businesses should track metrics like:
- Rate of resolution
- Average length of conversation
- Volume of chat
- Abandonment rates
- Ticket volume
Organizations should also take live agent satisfaction into consideration when measuring chatbot success metrics. If chatbots are successful, live agents will see fewer common or repetitive questions and can instead focus on solving challenges that require a human touch. Giving agents more bandwidth to solve meaningful problems improves their quality of life at work, ultimately driving both customer satisfaction and employee retention.
Failure #4: unrealistic expectations
If a customer has a common question, a chatbot can answer it up to 80% of the time, leaving live agents out of the equation entirely. Because of this, chatbots can cut your customer service labor costs by nearly one-third. Chatbots are also available 24/7, 365 days a year, regardless of holidays, weekends or other times that your live agents would be unavailable to answer questions. A chatbot’s constant availability leads to increased customer satisfaction as 61% of customers report speed as the most important factor in customer service.
Although chatbots provide significant benefits, their capabilities are not infinite, and those using them must understand the technology’s limitations. For starters, chatbots are not a complete solution to customer service queries. Despite cutting labor costs and bringing the number of open tickets down, complicated or sensitive questions will always require an actual person and a human answer. When a chatbot cannot solve a problem, it is necessary to bring in a live agent.
With insight into failures, you can avoid chatbot missteps and set up your chatbots for customer service success. If you want to convert one-time buyers into loyal customers, you must adopt chatbot solutions that enhance the customer experience with personalized experiences, multilingual support, data-backed success metrics and human support.
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About the Author
Diego Bartolome is chief innovation officer at Language I/O, with 16 years of experience at the intersection of language, computers and technology, assisting companies in communicating in spoken languages. Formerly with Microsoft specializing in cognitive services, Bartolome holds a bachelor’s degree in management and business and master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering. On LinkedIn and Twitter.