Did something like this happen to you recently?
And because nobody responded within a few minutes, they’ve already moved on to one of your competitors.
If you’ve been using chat software that doesn’t respond, this article is for you.
Many small businesses like yours run with under 10 employees, so it’s difficult to have someone staffed on a live chat bot all the time, leading to situations like the above.
In this article, we’ll weigh the pros and cons of using live chat versus AI Chatbot solutions for your small business.
Before we jump into what’s better for your business, let’s go over the importance of responding to potential prospects recently.
“75% of prospects do business with the company that contacts them first.”
This means that if you’re not responding to your customers quickly, you're probably losing business.
Speedy responses not only convey that you care about the customer's concerns but also help in building trust and loyalty. A fast reply to a query or complaint shows that you're here, you're ready to help, and you're invested in your customers' satisfaction .
Customers expect prompt communication from businesses. In fact, slow response times can leave a negative impression and drive potential customers away. The quality and speed of your service directly influence the opinions of customers, which then may spread through word of mouth or online communities, impacting your business's reputation .
AI Chatbots like ChatSMB are the clear winner here compared to live chat solutions, especially for small businesses. Without having someone waiting to respond to chats, they can go unanswered for hours, maybe even days.
This brief overview will cover the advantages of both live chat and AI chatbots for your small business.
The advantage live chat has is the human touch.
Live chat allows your customers to have real-time conversations with human agents, giving them a personal touch in their interactions. This is particularly useful in situations where a personalised approach is needed, such as customer support. When using live chat for your business, you can provide a more tailored service, enhancing customer satisfaction.
One thing to note: outsourcing live agents is usually not a good idea. Many services will say that they can staff support agents, but when they do, they usually are very slow to respond and will never quite have the context or “human touch” that your prospects are looking for.
Slow responses: One limitation is that it requires your agents to be available and attentive, which may not always be feasible. In particular, small businesses without a comprehensive staff can easily lose customers due to slow response times.
Training difficulties: While standard FAQs can be added to live chat, they still rely on your agents to pick appropriate canned responses and provide helpful support. Incorrect or unsatisfactory responses may lead to customer frustration and harm your business's reputation.
Context limitations: Lastly, live chat may not be suitable for resolving all types of issues. Some problems may require additional time or connecting with another department, which can complicate the process in live chat environments. Nonetheless, assessing your business requirements and weighing the strengths against the weaknesses can help you make a more informed decision about incorporating live chat.
In only the last year, AI Chatbots have gotten much better.
The proof is in the pudding. ChatGPT has over 1 billion monthly users.
Chatbots used to require an intense amount of monitoring, care, and carefully creating chat flows for every interaction.
With the power of large language models (the underlying technology that ChatGPT uses), this is no longer the case.
With new technologies like ChatSMB, there are a lot of advantages:
Easy setup: one line of code to install, and settings that you write naturally from your website allow for the bot to be set up very quickly.
Instant responses: as we spoke about earlier, responding to prospects quickly is incredibly important
Cost effectiveness: AI chatbots are a lot more cost effective than live chat services. Why? Because your time (or your employees time) is worth a lot of money. There’s a huge opportunity cost when they have to spend time talking with customers.
The biggest weakness for Chatbots is that traditionally, they struggle with handling contexts they haven’t been trained on.
ChatSMB is the only exception here. When it doesn’t know something, it knows to stop the conversation and send it over to the business owner.
It also knows not to talk about outside competitors or other outside resources, always bringing the conversation back to what will benefit your business the most.
If you have someone that you can staff full-time that you hired on your team, live chat can be better.
Otherwise, we recommend using an AI Chatbot service that has a free trial so you can see for yourself:
Faster responses: you’ll get responses in under a minute, which will lead to you eventually winning more business
New and powerful technology: new AI chatbot are much more equipped to handle complex questions, and are often indistinguishable from real agents now
Lower cost: you get much lower costs from not having to train a human, and you can use your time more effectively to focus on your business
Easy setup: AI Chatbots are relatively easy to setup now, as they’re “programmed” with items from your website
Make sure you do your due diligence when selecting your next chat tool. There are strengths and weaknesses for using live chat versus AI chat bots, but overall your best bet in most cases is to use an AI chat bot.
