In today’s world, businesses can reach large masses to offer them their products and services. Large audiences come with great responsibilities, and with great responsibilities the crisis you must face gets bigger as you have more customers to explain yourself to and win back when things go wrong. Fortunately, we have the technology to have our backs when things become unstuck. In this article, we will be showing several examples of how chatbots can step in to save the day.  
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When The Problem Arises and You Need a Quick Solution

Most of the time, companies try their best to reach their goals and make their customers happy. But as it is seen in many cases, problems arise in most companies, even including the biggest ones, and the efficiency of the rescue efforts determines the future of the company. According to Zendesk’s 2020 Trend Report, after more than one bad experience, around 80% of consumers say they would rather do business with a competitor. During times of crisis, the possibility of this happening increases in high numbers, making it a high priority for companies to take immediate precautions. In most cases, the very first step is either solving the issue with a swap or informing the customers about the situation to prevent chaos. However, when a crisis happens, many customers will be referring to customer services and as they will be overpopulated, most of them will end up unanswered and feel neglected up to a point where they can even consider switching to other options, like a rival company.  

In the above-mentioned cases, chatbots can be lifesaving as they will assist customer representatives in handling displeased customers. A power company whose electricity distribution has been cut off will be receiving a lot of calls and complaints about the blackout and will probably be asking about when it will be fixed. If the company solely relies on customer representatives, it is almost certain that it will be losing some of its customers. But a company with a virtual assistant will only need to put some explanatory sentences at the beginning of the conversation to prevent customer dissatisfaction. As much as human effort is of big value, virtual assistants can surely jump in to assist them in difficult cases and save them a lot of time.  

Another example can be a crashed service that no longer responds to customers’ needs, like a meal card application that is not showing the remaining balance. Advanced virtual assistants can offer this service, hence the company with a virtual assistant can direct the customers to chatbots for checking their balance for a short period, buying the company some time until the application gets fixed.  

When You Foresee an Upcoming Problem

While most crisis catch you flat-footed, some of them can still be predictable and countermeasures can be taken.  

A company that is aware some information on its website is hard to understand or sit through, can explain the concept via its virtual assistant in just one or two sentences to help their customers understand their products; in some cases, it can even advertise some of their features through the IVA.  

Alternatively, a global company usually receives messages from people who speak other languages. While it is costly to translate all websites and applications, it can be very cost-effective to use IVA for frequently asked questions for the most commonly used languages in order not to lose those customers who believe the website will not help them in their own languages. Similarly, a local company can use a virtual assistant in English -or another preferable language- to provide information to foreign people. Again, it will be easier than translating and localizing each information they provide on their websites and applications.  

Virtual assistants can also be used for more technical cases, such as checking information from the system. Imagine a company that organizes competitions and imagine some participants opposing the system, telling your representatives that they answered right, but the system did not accept their answer. While it will take time for customer representatives to check this kind of information, and in some cases, it may also not be possible to check that, virtual assistants can collect this kind of information in a second and show what really was the case. 

All In All;

Last but not least, the list of opportunities offered by virtual assistants can go on and on, depending on special cases and brands. They are in constant development, and even the pioneers of this field can find it difficult to foresee future developments and possibilities they can bring to the game. In a world that is constantly developing and evolving, it is wise to stay on track with technology and empower your work with it, especially with tools such as IVAs. If you are interested, you can check our services & products to take a closer look at the world of chatbots and see what value we can add to your work.