How Chatbot Can Improve Your Business During Covid-19

Utilizing automation to take repeated responsibilities off your neck can give you more time to focus on other tasks. Let’s examine how pairing business process automation with SMS chatbots can help sales and marketing organizations enhance their qualified lead pipeline, nurture and engage prospects, convert more leads, and so much more.

Covid-19 Pandemic has enabled us to understand how business can continue despite the current economic meltdown. Social distancing is a necessary measure aimed at curbing the virus’s spread. It has crippled so many companies since customers are facing physical restrictions due to nationwide lockdown. Does that mean that communication with your current and target customers should discontinue? This article looks to reveal how chatbot technology can help improve your business during Covid-19. To know better, we need to understand the meaning of automation? Why do we need to automate our sales and marketing activities? How does two-way automated texting experiences increase your conversions and help bring a healthy relationship with your customers?

What is an Automation? 

Automation is a procedure that makes use of no human assistance. The most popular types of automation used in successful businesses are Business Process Automation and Robotic Process Automation.

Business Process Automation (BPA)

BPA is a technology based automation of complex business processes. Some common uses of BPA include: 

• Internal business process automation: employee onboarding, purchase order management and restructuring data customer-facing. 

• External automation: email automation (sending drip campaigns), basic profile-based targeting (digital advertising), and personalization with dynamic content (content marketing).

This automation only focuses on a single process that benefits the organization, while missing out on the opportunity to connect the automated methods and communicate with the external customer.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is more like a BPA sibling that incorporates the use of robots. RPA is more like a virtual worker trained to perform any repeatable and standardized workflows or tasks. An example of a repeatable workflow would be receiving an email, extracting the data and recording information in your Customer relationship management (CRM). To break it down, its like using technology to automate a repetitive task like qualifying or following up with a sales lead. 

RPA and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are used to create chatbots. Chatbots and two-way SMS chatbots are essential in improving customer relations in sales and marketing. It is like building a robot-to-human communication between an organization and its customer. With the aid of a two-way SMS chatbot, you have a virtual worker that works on your account and can have text-based communications with your customers.

Difference between an Automated One-Way Texting Bots and Two-Way Texting Chatbots

Automated texts are different from your standard text messaging because they are triggered or programmed to send an unaided text on their own. The most popular type of automated text is a one-way alert (appointment reminders, confirmations, etc.). Businesses send messages that include a text or a link. Part of its features is that customers cannot text back.

Two-way automated texting chatbots make the entire process look like an actual human conversation so that customers can input feedback.

Automated texting is not only fast, but it also allows you to have a personalized and contextually aware conversation with customers. The chatbot can use customers’ names, remember conversation details, and offer customers the liberty to perform assignments even when the business isn’t open. Plus, it allows customers to respond, and they’ll respond quickly (as fast as 90 seconds). It’s essential to communicate with current and prospective customers how they wish to; it indicates more progress, more satisfied clients, and more referrals.

The benefits of using Automated texting

1. Improves Your Pipeline of Qualified Leads

The principal purpose of marketing automation is to advance the qualified lead pipeline. With an automated texting chatbot, you can ask a prospective customer a list of questions in an appealing conversation and determine if they match your criteria. The leads find out immediately if they are eligible, through the chat. If they qualify, you will be notified to contact the lead; you can take the next step from then on.

2. You Get more benefit for your marketing efforts

For businesses who are already marketing to leads on their social media profiles and website, you can complement your marketing force by adding automated texting to your website forms, traditional and digital ads. Leads can start a conversation and get a personalized response right away. There is a big chance that your lead qualification could fail when you wait longer than 5 minutes to respond. With automated texting, you can transform inbound traffic and grow your response speed at the same time.

 3. Automated Texting Ensures consistency

To keep up with sales and marketing speed, swift communication with the same messages and consistent follow up is important. Automated texting chatbots guarantees that your current and potential customers will get the message you intend on sending. And, your automated texting chatbot will follow up for as long as it takes, for a fraction of the cost.

With automated two-way texting, you can:

• Engage with leads and boost conversion rates
• Utilize a chatbot to qualify your leads via text; this will enable you to spend time closing available leads.
• Sustain and manage your inbound traffic with personalized recommendations
• Automatically catch up with potential customers who have missed appointments via text and find the best time to speak to them again.

4. Programmatically triggers your SMS workflows

Customer relationship management (CRM) is your home base for those who are in sales and marketing. If you have already built a workflow, you can configure your SMS chatbot to send text-based activities in your CRM. Also, the entire details your texting robot collects from a prospective or current customer during their conversation will be sent back to your CRM, so you know precisely where the person is in the process.

5. Move Faster with Real-Time Quotes

Using automated texting instead of a conventional long web form speeds up your proposed customers’ quoting process. With automated texting, they can instantly respond to questions in a conversation, which makes the process much more fun. Not only will you have them involved, but you will also present unbelievable value by offering a quote in real-time when you combine application programming interface (API) with your texting chatbot. Once the lead is ready to move to the next steps, they’ve already improved on the application, and since you’ve made the process so painless, you’ll see more significant conversions from leads to customers.

Now that you are aware of the few benefits of automated texting for sales and marketing. Your business can benefit from automated chatbots like running automated playbooks, filling your free consultation and demo pipeline, screening for prospective customers, confirming appointments, rescheduling and following up and lastly, converting more leads. SMS automated chatbots are the most reliable way to benefit from business automation, which will give you the liberty of texting and making your business available 24/7 despite Covid-19 Pandemic.