Chatbots are gaining popularity across the internet and being positioned as ‘non-human speakers’ that resolve customer complaints.
As a matter of fact, there was a 67% increase in the adoption of chatbots by organizations between 2018 and 2020. (Source: Website builder)
Over time, chatbots are getting smarter and quicker with AI integration and NLP engines. But, what if we tell you that a system as perfect as chatbots is also prone to fail sometimes?
In this blog, we discuss the top 5 reasons for Chatbot Failure and offer solutions to resolve them. (Source: Help Lama).
Here’s an index of what we have to tell you about Chatbots.
1. Reasons for Chatbot Failure
2. Ways to avoid chatbot failure
Reasons for Chatbot Failure
According to statistical data on Website Builder, “30% of American adults fear that chatbots can make errors”. So, here listed below are some points why chatbots fail.
1. Incapable of understanding Human Emotions
It is a known fact that machines can’t understand human emotions. This becomes a bigger issue if the customer complaints aren’t dealt with according to the status of the complaint by a chatbot.
For instance, a customer on a food delivery app is provided with a wrong order or has issues with the restaurant package that is taking time to arrive.
A chatbot might handle both these cases with a refund or a replacement which might work in some cases but will need a human to assess the situation and respond accordingly.
Situations like these can lead to issues with a chatbot where it needs an empathetic tone to be handled. This is one of the disadvantages of a chatbot in customer service where reviews can create an impression, a chatbot isn’t the only thing that can get you a 5-star rating.
2. Lack of optimization over time
According to statistics from Convince & Convert, “Customer service statistics show that 55% of people like chatbots because they provide quick answers”.
The above stats can only be effective if the chatbots are configured, trained, and optimized according to the system over time. Also, according to Gartner, even though 90% of enterprises have invested in chatbots, only 4% are actually using them efficiently.
So, optimizing the system with newer features, queries, and finding a company that efficiently monitors the progress will be beneficial.
3. Human interaction is highly preferred over chatbots
When a query or a request is presented, a human agent understands it by thinking about it while a chatbot only understands it by keywords. Not all the complaints that reach a company have keywords in them where chatbots wouldn’t be of great help.
Also, a survey by 99 Firms suggests, “70% of consumers prefer human agents to AI technologies”. So, a human agent is always needed, though the chatbots can assist in monotonous queries or requests.
4. Lack of resolving customer-specific issues
Today, chatbots are powered by AI and have machine learning capabilities that result in seamless customer interactions.
These bots can answer most of the customer queries that are widely asked across forums or searched on Google, but can’t answer personalized queries that are specific to customers.
So, relying on a chatbot system to do most of the customer support handling without any human interaction would result in bad reviews and unhappy customers.
5. Presenting a Bot Conversation like Interacting with a Human
Companies need to be specific about who they are interacting with for their queries and mentioning if it’s a bot or a human agent will make a significant difference.
A survey by Userlike says, “More than half of their respondents, nearly 54%, want chatbots to make it clear that they’re a bot”.
Furthermore, due to chatbot’s inability to understand emotions and specific customer issues, having a human customer support agent to respond to the majority of the queries whilst chatbots take a small percentage of it would be ideally recommended.
6. Building a Chatbot For No Real Reason
Getting a Chatbot on a website might be the best practice for some businesses. If a website can list out all the products on one page and give the information they need, a chatbot wouldn’t really be helpful.
Also, adding a chatbot to help customers to get to their preferred location on a website is not recommended. So, evaluating the pros and cons before getting a chatbot will save a lot of money and effort.
7. Expecting Too much out of a Chatbot
Though a Chatbot is designed with all the smart integrations like AI and NLP engines in them, it can’t handle a normal conversation as humans do.
For instance, a conversation with Poncho, a Facebook weather bot perfectly describes our point here as mentioned in Integromat’s blog.
So, to lessen the frustration of customers, designing a flow of conversation with clear information buttons and directing users to solutions with keywords will be perfect for a chatbot.
8. Using a chatbot system for Advertising
A chatbot should only be used to drive conversations and not to advertise any upcoming events or products unless a customer asks for it.
Using the chatbot for advertising would cloud the window and tend to frustrate users trying to find a solution or get the needed information.
9. Misleading Chatbot Conversations
One of the most frustrating things for a customer would be to not find a solution to their problems and circling to the right where he started.
As chatbots can effectively direct customers with keywords, not many know the exact popular words for the issues they’re facing.
So, offer your customers the option of redirecting a conversation to a customer support agent if a chatbot has issues understanding the issue or more information is needed.
10. Wrong Configuration Issues
Chatbots have to be designed and configured according to specific industries for effective results.
If the generic messages are presented to the customers, the whole purpose of a chatbot deployment goes for a toss.
So, feeding the system with relevant FAQs, messages, and direction buttons will get your business the intended results.
Ways to Avoid ChatBot Failure
Business Insider says, “63% of people are willing to trust chatbots with sensitive information”. So, with this huge number trusting a chatbot, we tell you how to prevent a chatbot failure.
1. Connecting to a Human Agent
Customer support queries with FAQs and some regular requests specific to the businesses can be handled by chatbots.
Human interaction is much needed for customer support and chatbots should be calibrated to pass on the requests or queries to a human agent after a certain level of interaction.
To benefit both – the human agent and a chatbot, a customer support platform like Kapture have features like an agent assistant and an AI-powered chatbot for businesses.
2. Honesty
Being clear about the customer support you are offering whether it’s a bot or a human agent will always be appreciated.
Attending to customer complaints at all hours and offering them live support when needed will be applauded by many.
As statistics from Convince & Convert also show, “64% of the public like chatbots because they deliver a 24-hour service, seven days a week”, people do not dislike chatbots but it is recommended that they specify who they are interacting with for their query.
3. Customer-specific responses
For improved accuracy and tailored responses, a chatbot has to be trained with a lot of FAQs and presented in different scenarios for it to adapt eventually.
With that, the customer support executives can feed different questions and queries for it to handle customers online.
On the other hand, a chatbot can also present different FAQs to customers who can answer them to be guided to their solutions which the bot will learn and familiarize itself with for similar requests.
4. Systematic Maintenance
Though the chatbots are fed with all the recent information and everything works perfectly in the background, the software needs to be constantly evaluated by experts.
Regular checks and keeping it fully optimized for all the latest updates will help chatbots perform efficiently for businesses without any hitches.
5. A trial run
After investing in a chatbot and programming it to work for your business, checking to see if it works should be the top priority.
Before launching a chatbot on your site, a series of questions and different scenarios must be presented to it to see if it handles the queries effectively.
Monitoring its status with KPIs like the total number of engaged users, new users, chat volume, goal completion rate, and bot sessions initiated over time will give you a good status update.
6. A feature-rich Chatbot system
So, we’ve seen the limitations and suggestions to avoid chatbot failures so far, and we also acknowledge the need for a seamless chatbot system with advanced features to cater to new age queries and challenges.
Kapture’s chatbot system is equipped with features like customizable workflows, integrated AI capabilities, and much more to assist you to increase your customer satisfaction rates. Learn more here.
About the Author | |
 | Sunith Ramachandra |
| Sunith Ramachandra says, “Content writing is all about using the right words for the right audience”. At kapture he does exactly the same writing content to create conversations and conversions online. | |
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
