If you've shopped online anytime in the past few years, you've probably interacted with a chatbot. Chatbots are computer programs that can simulate human conversation using text or voice commands. They're used to provide customer service, answer common questions, and help customers make purchases.

In this article, we will discuss the five key benefits of chatbots and how they can help your business grow!

1. Constant Availability

In today's digital landscape, your customers expect to be able to reach you anytime, anywhere. When a customer has an issue or question, they don't want to wait until the next business day for a response. We all know the pain of waiting on hold for hours on end or sending an email and waiting days for a reply.

Before the emergence of chatbots, the only way to offer 24/7 customer service was to have a large team of human representatives ready to take your call at any time—a huge cost and resource commitment. Chatbots can provide this same level of support at a fraction of the cost.

The ability of chatbots to answer a seemingly endless variety of questions means that your customers can always get the help they need when they need it. Particularly helpful if your business picks up during certain times of the year.

If you have a toy business, for example, you may experience a surge in sales during the holiday season. A chatbot can help to manage customer inquiries around the clock, so you don't have to worry about staffing up for peak demand.

2. Multilingual Support

While English remains to be the most popular language online, the growing interconnectedness of the world means that businesses are increasingly expected to offer multilingual support.

Nearly a third of US businesses surveyed by Intercom reported losing customers due to a lack of multilingual support. Even if your business only caters to a local audience, it's important to offer support in the languages your customers are most likely to use.

Chatbots can easily be programmed to understand and respond to queries in different languages, making them the perfect solution for businesses with international customers.

3. Collecting Customer Information

As social commerce becomes the norm, businesses are increasingly looking for ways to collect customer data to better understand their needs and preferences.

Chatbots automatically record all data collected from conversations with customers. This data can be used to improve customer service, create new products and services, and resolve common customer issues.

Building relevant customer profiles becomes much easier with chatbots. Chatbots can collect data on customer age, location, and purchase history, as well as the most common questions and concerns. This information can be used to better understand your customers' needs and improve your customer service, marketing, and product development efforts.

4. Reduces Employee Burnout

If you've ever worked at a call center, you know just how exhausting it can be. Handling customer inquiries—that tend to be the same day after day—for long hours can take its toll on anyone's mental and emotional health.

Chatbots can help to reduce employee burnout by handling some of the more monotonous customer service tasks that could be handled by AI.

By automating simple tasks such as collecting customer information, providing product recommendations, and processing payments, your live agents can focus solely on the issues that actually require their expertise, helping improve business workflow processes and employee satisfaction.

5. More Efficient Customer Support

As we mentioned earlier, chatbots can help to reduce customer service costs by handling routine questions and tasks.

While this figure will vary based on the complexity or novelty of your industry, chatbots generally can handle up to 80% of customer inquiries without human intervention.

Coupled with the fact that chatbots cost up to 30% less than traditional customer service channels, it's easy to see how chatbots can help your business become more efficient. The resulting savings you get from chatbots can be reinvested into other areas of your business, such as research and development, marketing, or employee training.

Chatbots also help to reduce the time it takes to resolve customer issues. In many cases, chatbots can provide an answer to a customer's question within seconds. This speedy resolution decreases the chances of the customer becoming frustrated and leaving you for a competitor.

The advantages of using chatbots in your business are seemingly endless. As the technology improves, so too will the ways in which chatbots can help to improve your company's bottom line.

These benefits should be enough to convince any small- to medium-sized business owner and enterprises to start using chatbots in their organization. With the help of chatbots, your business can enjoy a more streamlined customer service process, reduced employee burnout, and increased efficiency. All of these benefits will lead to a happier and more successful business.