Do you know what happens when your website visitors are not able to find the right information quickly? 90% of them leave!

Consumers these days want products, services or information quickly and easily. Web services and mobile apps are suitable if they know exactly what they want and are familiar with the site layout.

Given a choice, most people will avoid contacting call centres too! Before the Pandemic, it was a frustrating experience! Now it is even more so with a lot more people on the line!

Hiring new agents to handle the influx is an expensive option! Multi-language support, product training, agent stress levels and churn just add to operating costs!

Enter the Chatbot

Chatbots or Conversational Bots are poised to take over the on-demand approach favoured by consumers today! The usage of chatbots is preferred if you serve Omni-channels like Facebook messenger or Telegram for simple interactions! And if chatbots can quickly switch over to human agents either on voice or video for detailed or expert answers, then that’s the icing on the cake.

How does Conversational Bot work?

By implementing the chatbot in, fashion and retail businesses, for instance, customers are encouraged to switch over to it instead of contacting the call centre:

• The chatbot first checks if the person is an existing customer! If so, it checks whether the interaction is for an order, a query or a complaint. New orders are processed instantly. For simple queries or order status, the chatbot answers directly. Complex queries and complaints are logged for agents to reply!
• New customers are asked to register using their contact ID.
• After basic registration, new customers are asked about the product they want to enquire about or purchase.
• If the customers are not exactly sure, they are transferred to a human agent to continue the conversation through a voice call.
• Finally, the conversation is completed by providing the delivery details and settling the billing formalities

Intelligent Architecture behind the Chatbot and Ordering System

At first glance, the functionality of the chatbot seems to be simple. However, the intelligent chatbot incorporates NLP (Natural Language Processing) capabilities to understand customer intent, i.e. parse user queries, collects pertinent information and frames replies.

At Digileap, we built a Sharepoint site containing standard queries and responses over time! Complex queries are rerouted to agents. The answers given by the agents and the queries themselves are added to the Q&A database for future use. NLP helps in crafting variants of those queries; this way, similar queries are answered automatically!

The chatbot also connects back to a database for automated order-taking for regular and new customers. The conversations are typically completed over the web chat itself.

For new customers, in case they have difficulties handling the messaging, the conversation can be rerouted to the voice channel. For commercial customers, Microsoft Teams is added as a secure and auditable channel. More channels like Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp are on the way, so customers do not need to switch out of their preferred UI.

Benefits and Outcomes of the Chatbot for Retail

• The Chatbot option is vastly welcomed by the IT savvy customers and those who dislike calling the contact centre. Customers love querying the Chatbot and placing orders at one go! There is always the backup option of switching to an agent!
• Agent ‘bandwidth’ is freed up with a large number of tech-savvy customers moving over to the chatbot! Available agents were redeployed to handle complex conversations or new customers. Agents are also retrained on concepts like omni-channel conversations. Their apprehensions about technology taking away jobs have gone away!
• The client company is now able to service a larger number of customers, with over 30% increase in sales in the first year itself. New Products and Services are being added to the pipeline. Employee satisfaction is higher!

The entire solution by Digileap, including Dynamics 365 database is hosted on the Azure platform, reducing infrastructure cost, future-proofing the technology roadmap & capacity increases. Overall, technology investments are paying off handsomely without incurring increased manpower costs. And the move proved to be a blessing in disguise for our client in the post-pandemic era!

Moving Forward…

Using chatbots with AI (NLP) is a strategic decision in introducing intelligent communications in the long term. The inclusion of MS Teams is another tactical move; channels like SMS, Whatapp, Skype or Slack can be added effortlessly at a later stage.