7 Ways Chat Service Software Can Reduce Operating Costs for Customer Support Teams

When it comes down to setting your retail venture above the competition, nothing matters as much as your customer service strategy. According to statistics, businesses that view customer service as a value centre – rather than a cost centre – achieve 3.5 times more revenue growth.  

At the same time, it has become extremely challenging for retail businesses to level up their customer service while sticking to a certain budget, especially while growing and scaling up. Fortunately, ever-improving chat-as-a-service technologies that use Artificial Intelligence are here to help.  

With the best chatbots, you can take advantage of automation, conversational AI, and live chat features, which can bring significant cost-saving and efficiency benefits to your customer support teams.  

Below, we’ll look at 7 ways on how today’s chatbot solutions for retail represent a vital tool to grow your business and reduce your operational costs. Let’s get started.  

1. Streamlining Customer Service Operations 

One of the most significant cost-saving benefits of AI chatbots is a significant decrease in operational costs. According to statistics by Gartner, customer service chatbots and other digital self-service solutions cost retail companies only $0.09 per customer contact. On the other hand, assistant customer service costs $14 per contact.  

Want to calculate how much our chat services could save you? Why not check out our free ROI calculator. 

Besides reducing these costs, artificial intelligence led chat solutions also offer a wide range of integrations that allow companies to streamline their software and other digital tools. This results in more streamlined customer service operations and better outcomes for each customer.  

2. Boosting Agent Efficiency and Productivity 

Although AI can’t replace a customer support team, it can certainly help support your customer service representatives in providing more value to each user. Thanks to automated features, repetitive and time-consuming tasks can be carried out by a custom chatbot, thus freeing up precious time that can be redirected to the most important projects.  

3. Delivering 24/7 and Multilingual Customer Support 

The latest features provided by chatbot solutions can help you scale up your retail businesses without needing to hire additional customer support representatives or retrain your team.  

For example, chatbots with multilingual functionalities are able to converse (in real-time) with users in over 120 languages. On the other hand, self-service features allow your business to remain accessible around the clock, and in any time zone, reducing the need for multi-lingual international support team or for employees to be working outside of office hours.  

4. Reducing Training Costs for New Employees 

Chatbots can be fully customised to reflect the values and voice identity of your business. This allows you to provide real-time, relevant, and consistent answers to your customers at any time.  

At the same time, with chatbot live chat features, more significant queries can be immediately escalated to specialised customer support representatives. These functionalities will filter the volume of customer queries and match each query to the right specialist.  

5. Handling Routine Queries Automatically  

Whether you wish to use chatbots for managing bookings, providing information to users, or responding to frequently asked questions, AI solutions are fully programmed to handle routine queries professionally and quickly.  

Thanks to conversational AI, chatbots are able to interpret each query and provide consumers with resources and answers that are relevant and personalised to the needs of each customer.  

6. Providing Quick Response Times to Customer Inquiries 

In the retail industry, meeting customer needs swiftly is critical. An online AI led chat solution can help you handle inquiries quickly, even outside of business hours.  

For example, a customer may need to know your return policy or product availability at midnight. Instead of expecting them to wait until the beginning of the next workday to get an answer to their query, a chatbot can offer immediate assistance, for this routine question. 

This aspect is even more important if you are looking to grow your retail business or expand internationally. Doing so would normally involve a significant effort to hire and train customer service representatives that can handle the increased volume of customer contacts and queries.  

While your customer service teams remain your business’s most valuable asset, implementing a chat solution can help you go a step further and guarantee that each of your customer’s inquiries is responded to in real-time.

7. Improving the Quality of Service Through Analytics and User Feedback 

Besides streamlining labour and automating tedious tasks, an AI-powered chatbot can also provide cost-saving and efficiency benefits indirectly.  

For example, thanks to features such as chat surveys and conversational forms, chatbots can gather feedback from your customers in no time and in an engaging way. This allows you to learn more about your audience and collect valuable insights that you’ll need to create more relevant and appealing products or services. In turn, this can help you increase your volume of sales and continue growing your business.  

Finding The Best Chatbot Solution For Your Needs 

When it comes down to introducing a chatbot to reduce the operational costs of your business, it is important to keep in mind that each retail company or venture will have its own needs and goals. Opting for an off-the-shelf chatbot or online chat can become an expensive investment that leads to scarce returns. Instead, when opting for the fully-customisable chatbot solutions created specifically for retail by the expert at Futr AI, you can take advantage of unique features designed to tackle your pain points and help you reach your goals.  

Get in touch with our team to learn more or request a demo to get started.