Thanks to chatbots, people now have the convenience of interacting with brands or websites without having to contact a live person. Chatbots are set to revolutionize the customer service industry. If you’re like thousands of other business owners who are following the advancement of chatbots and considering whether to use one for your own business, you’ll be happy to hear that developing a chatbot isn’t as hard as it seems. But first, here are some reasons to invest the time in creating one.

Chatbots speed up customer service

Nobody likes the experience of reaching out to customer service, either through a hotline or through a chat service only to be placed in a queue waiting for a live agent to be available. Businesses can try to arrange to have a sufficient number of customer service representatives at all times but there will undoubtedly be times when there is a higher-than normal call or chat volume and customers will have to wait, and by waiting, they’ll feel unimportant and unappreciated as customers. When they do get a live agent, the conversation is more likely to start out hostile and lead nowhere. This is where chatbots come in.

Unlike live agents, chatbots can assist an unlimited number of customers simultaneously. A chatbot can lessen the strain during an especially busy time period by answering simple questions and resolving easier issues. For more difficult matters that the chatbot can’t resolve, there is still a benefit. The chatbot can obtain account info, ask security questions, or pull up an order before routing them to the person who can help that customer with all of the preliminary steps out of the way

The problem

If chatbots are so incredible, why isn’t everyone jumping at the chance to have one? Because in order to be reliable and accurate, a lot of artificial intelligence and a solid understanding of coding is required and the average person simply doesn’t know the language of computer programming required to develop a chatbot. The biggest companies with all the resources buy up all the engineering talent leaving small companies with few options. Fortunately, there are affordable alternatives.

Chatbot development platforms

A number of companies have done the artificial intelligence and coding work for you, so you don’t have to. These chatbot development platforms work in a way that’s similar to website building platforms. The platform does the heavy lifting and the user can drop and drop features and work from templates to develop their own chatbots with minimal understanding of coding. These platforms range from the more simple (and limited) and the more complex (with more features but at a higher price and a steeper learning curve). If you are interested in chatbots but fear you don’t know enough, you can get started by familiarizing yourself with the most basic aspects of chatbot programming. Then you can use that limited understanding and with the help of a chatbot development platform, create your first bot. It might not be very good but you’ll get better if you keep fine-tuning and learning about chatbot programming.