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08/19/2019

Daily Buzz: Are You There, Chatbot?

Chatbots sometimes fail

You click on a website, and immediately a box pops up in the corner of the screen: “Hello! How can I help you today?” It’s a chatbot, a type of artificial intelligence technology meant to guide you and other visitors to their end goal.

For many organizations, chatbots are a great tool to initiate customer service communication. But technology can fail, and relying wholly on bots to solve issues—and therefore removing the human element—can cause member frustrations.

“A common mistake today is that companies still view chatbots as an alternative to human-to-human communication channels when the reality is companies need both,” said Morgan Molnar, senior product marketing manager at SurveyMonkey, in an interview with CMSWire. “It’s no longer a matter of ‘bots vs. humans.’ Instead, the goal of modern businesses should be to make it as easy as possible for people to start conversations and buy on their terms, in real time, when it’s most convenient for them.”

So, for a successful chatbot experience, make sure members know that the chatbot is, indeed, a bot—and that they can reach a human on the other end if they prefer.

And don’t forget to test the tech before deployment. AI is supposed to be intelligent—if it isn’t answering questions or providing support, then it won’t be useful to members.

Please select this link to read the original article from Associations Now.

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