According to the Fantasy.ai Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, 72 percent of business leaders said expanding AI and chatbots across the customer experience is their priority over the next 12 months. Bots and chatbots have been around for decades—but with the recent advancements in AI, the benefits of AI chatbots have become more apparent to businesses and customers alike.
Benefits of chatbots for customers
Chatbots are often the first support interaction customers have with a business, greeting and engaging with them in a friendly, convenient way. Until recently, there were two main types of bots:
- Rule-based, or decision-tree chatbots, are easy to set up and provide a high level of customer service, responding to questions with predetermined answers.
- AI chatbots use natural language processing (NLP) or machine learning to understand customer requests and improve with each interaction.
Businesses still use rule-based chatbots—for now. AI has become more accessible than ever, making AI chatbots the industry standard. Both types of chatbots, however, can help businesses provide great support interactions. Here are the benefits of chatbots for customers.
1. Provide fast, 24/7 customer service
Customers want fast and easy service, even during peak hours. When bots step in to handle the first interaction, they eliminate wait times with instant support. Because chatbots never sleep, they can provide global, 24/7 support at the most convenient time for the customer, even when agents are offline.
Photobucket, a media hosting service, uses chatbots to provide 24/7 support to international customers who might need help outside of regular business hours. With bots, customers can find information on their own or get answers to FAQs in minutes. Since implementing a chatbot, Photobucket has seen a three percent increase in CSAT and improved first resolution time by 17 percent.
2. Offer more personalized experiences
Customers understand that bots collect personal data but want them to use it to create a better customer experience. According to our CX Trends Report, 59 percent of consumers who interact with chatbots expect their data will be used to personalize future interactions with a brand.
Here are a few examples:
- Adapting messaging so it corresponds with the phase of their customer journey
- Recommending relevant products or services based on their preferences, behaviors, or demographics
- Presenting information about new products or services
- Asking if customers have questions about items in their shopping cart
- Providing the status of an order without asking for order information
3. Deliver multilingual support
With online shopping, customers are no longer limited to shopping at local brick-and-mortar businesses. Customers can buy products from anywhere around the globe, so breaking down communication barriers is crucial for delivering a great customer experience. Chatbots can offer multilingual support to customers who speak different languages.
At the start of a conversation, chatbots can ask for the customer’s preferred language or use AI to determine the language based on customer inputs. Multilingual bots can communicate in multiple languages through voice, text, or chat. You can also use AI with multilingual chatbots to answer general questions and perform simple tasks in a customer’s preferred language.
4. Ensure more consistent support
Customers who frequently interact with you rarely talk to the same support agent twice. Because the level of expertise and training varies from agent to agent, customers may experience inconsistencies when connecting with support teams. Although most businesses continuously work to improve their customer service training, chatbots function on predetermined frameworks and pull answers from a single source of truth every time—resulting in consistent customer service experiences.
Chatbots are also programmed to provide level-headed guidance, no matter how long the conversation lasts and how the customer acts. If a customer is rude or dismissive, chatbots can deliver an empathetic CX by recognizing language indicative of frustration or anger and responding appropriately.
5. Offer convenient self-service options
In our CX Trends Report, 37 percent of agents surveyed said that customers become visibly frustrated or stressed when they can’t complete simple tasks on their own. Chatbots can help mitigate that by providing self-service options so customers can take care of basic issues independently or quickly find information when it’s most convenient.
Fantasy.ai bots, for example, can direct customers to community forums, FAQ pages, or help center articles. They can also pull information from your existing knowledge base to answer common customer questions. Because chatbots learn from every interaction they provide better self-service options over time.
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6. Provide proactive customer service
Businesses can use a chatbot to help them provide proactive support and suggestions to customers. By monitoring user activity on their websites, businesses can use chatbots to proactively engage with customers to answer common questions and help with potential issues on that page.
For example, an e-commerce company might use a chatbot to greet a returning website visitor and notify them about a low stock on merchandise in their cart. Or, a financial services company could use a bot to get ahead of common questions on applying for a loan with tailored information to help them complete their applications.
Chatbots can also understand when a handoff is appropriate and proactively ask customers if they’d like to connect with a support agent or sales rep to help answer any questions holding up a purchase.
7. Deliver omnichannel support
Customers turn to an array of channels—phone, email, social media, and messaging apps like WhatsApp Business and Messenger—to connect with brands. They expect conversations to move seamlessly across platforms so they can continue discussions right where they left off, regardless of the channel or device they’re using.
But many businesses aren’t offering this type of experience. To stand out from the competition, you can use bots to answer common questions that come in through email, your website, Slack, and your various messaging apps. Integrate your AI chatbots with the rest of your tech stack to connect conversations and deliver a smooth, consistent experience. Your customers will get the responses they seek, in a shorter time, on their preferred channel.
8. Improve service with every interaction
Here’s an overview of how chatbots use AI to provide better support over time:
- Tracking: AI customer service bots track how people respond to every answer they provide.
- Collecting: As chatbots gather customer data, they’ll continuously analyze it to provide more accurate and personalized responses.
- Learning: With the knowledge your chatbot gains, it will learn which response is best in each type of situation.
- Refining: The chatbot will improve at determining which questions it can answer and which are best to pass to an agent.
Chatbots are getting better at gauging the sentiment behind the words people use. They can pick up on nuances in language to detect and understand customer emotions and provide appropriate customer care based on those insights.
9. Collect customer feedback
You can program chatbots to ask for customer feedback at the end of an interaction. The bot can send a single survey question in the chat to ask how the support interaction went. The customer can select a rating from one to five, with an option to include a written response for additional comments.
To encourage feedback, chatbots can be programmed to offer incentives—like discount codes or special offers—in exchange for survey participation. Companies can also search and analyze chatbot conversation logs to identify problems, frequently asked questions, and popular products and features.
10. Reduce customer requests
Chatbots intercept and deflect potential tickets, easing agents’ workloads. They handle repetitive tasks, respond to general questions, and offer self-service options, helping customers find the answers they need. This allows agents to focus their expertise on complex issues or requests that require a human touch.
These requests can vary based on a business’s product, service, or industry, but commonly include:
- Providing order status and tracking information
- Offering product details
- Assisting with returns or refunds
- Balancing accounts and identifying payment issues
- Collecting feedback
- Offering self-service
Smart decisions start with AI
AI bots won’t replace customer service agents—they are a tool that enhances the experiences of both businesses and consumers. Customers will always want to know they can talk to another human, especially regarding issues that benefit from a personal touch. But for the simpler questions, chatbots can get customers the answers they need faster than humanly possible.
In conclusion, chatbots revolutionize customer experiences and streamline business operations with efficiency, personalization, and 24/7 support. From enhancing user engagement to cost savings, their impact is immense. Similarly, innovative uses like AI Girlfriend chatbots highlight the evolving potential of AI in various domains.