We live in a world of technology. Businesses can no longer ignore technological innovation. In fact, they should be incorporating new technologies as often as possible, to help drive their company forward towards more profitable positions. From large companies, to restaurants, fashion designers and sports teams, the use of chatbots is becoming more widespread. Businesses are finding that they can help ease customer pain points and be a useful customer service resource.

A chatbot is a computer program that simulates human conversation via auditory or textual methods. Chatbots and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) are used to power instant messaging, virtual assistants, and other conversational tools. ChatBots use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand the intent of the message and respond accordingly.

Chatbots have the potential to improve your business in many different ways if done right. Here are just 8 ways chatbots can help businesses:

1. 24/7 Customer service support

A chatbot can provide instant help for customers who are stuck on a specific page or are looking for additional information about your products, saving your company money and keeping customers happy. Since chatbots run on internet connected devices, they can respond to customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

2. Schedule meetings and events

Too many businesses spend too much time trying to figure out when people are available for meetings — or even waste time tracking down who's in the office when certain things need to get done. A chatbot can help with this by letting people make appointments through your bot interface (or by texting with your bot). That way, you'll know exactly when someone wants to meet with you — or if they want to cancel an appointment when something comes up at the last minute.

3. Sales

When you create a bot designed for sales, you can use it to walk customers through an order or explain how your products work. You can also use it to give customers discounts and other promotions. Many businesses offer coupons exclusively through their bots, because using them is more convenient than printing out a coupon and taking it somewhere.

4. Reduce Costs

Chatbots are more cost-effective than many other marketing channels, with minimal operating costs involved. Plus, they don't need to be paid for their services.

5. Increase Brand Awareness

Using chatbots to interact with your customers will certainly increase brand awareness, just like what social media has done so effectively over the years. It's an easy way to disseminate information about your products and services, especially if you're targeting a global audience.

6. Generating leads and Automate Your Outreach

Chatbots make it easier to qualify leads because they can automatically respond when someone visits your website, asking them questions about their interests and needs while only sending warm leads to your sales team. This will help you automate the process of reaching out to new leads and allow you to follow up with them more consistently.

7. Monitor Your Performance

Have your chatbots analyze data about how well they are performing. This information will help you determine which kinds of responses generate the highest levels of customer satisfaction and which kinds of issues need further improvement.

8. Providing personalization

You can create chatbots that deliver personalized content to your customers in real-time, regardless of where they are in the website or app. This helps increase engagement among your audience because you're able to reach them at just the right time when they're ready to commit.

Today, businesses are using chatbots to automate basic tasks that websites, apps or online portals cannot handle. This way, they can provide information without the need of interacting with humans. This is not only cost effective but it is also convenient for users. Chatbots can help businesses in more than just customer service. From saving time to saving money, chatbots help us in many ways we don't even realize. There are a lot of different industries where you can use a chatbot. In fact, chatbot(s) can help with pretty much any task you have. Even if your business is not directly related to tech or computers, it can still benefit from a chatbot. Building your own chatbot doesn't cost you much, you can take advantage of Manychat - a chatbot platform that offers free subscription up to 1000 contacts.

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