August 28, 2018 5 min read

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If you want to grow your business, adding a chatbot to your website is key. Think of all the messaging services people use on a daily basis; it’s the preferred way to communicate for many of us. According to eMarketer, 63 percent of customers surveyed said they were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat.

Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business

And that makes sense: Being able to help customer by answering their burning questions in real time is priceless, and chatbots today can communicate like real humans to build a trusting relationship between you and your customers. But . . . what if your chatbot could do more?

The other day I was on a website and couldn't figure out how to do something there, so I consulted the site's chatbot. I was dutifully told: Go to menu, select my account, select "settings" and toggle the widget to the right.

But what if the bot, instead of telling me how to enable a setting, could instead have done it for me? And this is coming down the pike.

Once that level of service becomes the norm, chatbots will change the future of user experience (UX) in a big way. Here is how chatbots are changing UX for the better.

Improving customer onboarding

Chatbots can drastically improve the customer onboarding experience for companies that offer products or services that come with a learning curve. Whenever a user can’t figure out how to use your service, he or she will be able to communicate with your chatbot anytime to quickly solve the problem. And that outcome will reduce customer churn for your business.

For example, Heek is a chatbot that can build an entire website for you according to your users' preferences.

Image source: https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/03/heek-is-a-chatbot-that-can-build-you-a-website/

Not only will chatbots allow you to fix a problem for users, you’ll also be able to make those users aware of features they might not have known you offered. Many times, websites have so many options that customers end up getting confused and using only some of the features available to them. With a chatbot, you can easily make your customers aware of all the awesome features you offer and how they can use them effectively. That ability will let your customers get the most out of your product.

Related: Want Your Own Chatbot? Don't Move Forward Without Taking These 3 Steps

Automating transactions and recommending products

You want it to be as convenient as possible for consumers to buy from you. A consumer may visit your website with something in mind but not be exactly sure what he or she wants; in that case, you can use chatbots to nudge the consumer into purchasing.

With chatbots, your customers won’t get frustrated browsing your site and not being able to find what they’re looking for, or fill out a long form to make an order. A chatbot can interact with those customers in a casual, friendly way to determine what they want and recommend featured products for them to choose from. And they won’t have to leave the chat to complete their order, either.

1-800-Flowers is an example: It uses a chatbot to take customer orders easily, asking their flower preference and providing bouquet recommendations and the greeting for the recipient.

Image Source: 1-800-Flowers chatbot. https://botsociety.io/blog/2018/03/chatbot-examples/

In fact, 1-800-Flowers reported that 70 percent of its orders through the chatbot were from new customers. When purchasing from your company is a breeze, your sales will sail through the roof.

Increasing the value of your service

When you are able to provide more value to your customers, they’ll return to you again and again. You can use chatbots to solve consumer pain points and increase the value of your product or service in a variety of ways. For example, a chatbot by the name of Roof AI, made for real estate agents, provides users with their very own AI real estate agent who can show them listings based on their preferences and budgets and can even start the selling process without the customer having to pick up the phone.

Another great example involves the language-learning app, Duolingo. Duolingo's users asked the company for a way they could practice the conversational skills they’ve learned from the app, so the company created conversational bots that allow users to test out their new skills.

Source image: Duolingo Chatbot. http://bots.duolingo.com/

Your customers are the most important part of your business. If you want to grow your business, use a chatbot to provide users with added value that will make their lives easier and make you stand out from the competition.

Related: How to Create a Facebook Messenger Chatbot For Free Without Coding

Chatbots are evolving the way we interact with consumers. Don’t be left in your competition’s dust. Get ahead of the curve and start taking advantage of this awesome technology. Using chatbots will help you deliver better customer service, provide faster customer support and, overall, improve the user experience at your website.