For centuries people have looked for better ways to communicate and reduce friction. We have went from sending messages via a runner, to snail mail, telegrams to landline phones, mobile phones to texting, email to instant messaging. I could go on but the bottom line is we want to communicate with people as easily and and as quickly as possible.
Live chat has been around for a while and we at Cube Creative have experimented with it for a few clients and even on our own site a few years back. They are great for customer service, marketing and sales alike. The problem ensues when you don't have the staff to man it during business hours. Nothing is worse than getting the pop up of "Hi, Chatty Patty wants to help." You type out your issue then realize they are gone and you are directed to a contact from to "leave a message."
Enter the Chatbots
HubSpot recently released Conversations which can help you build your own Chatbot. Here are a few pros and cons of having them.
If you have a running list or even a running mental list of the most asked questions you answer on a seemingly daily basis then a chatbot could help. You can build it in such a way that it would answer those questions. Better yet you have the opportunity to answer that question 24 hours a days, weekends and on holidays.
The other side of this is that you have only a limited amount of questions you can answer. This could frustrate your potential client or customer.
Can you imagine a day where the phone didn't ring so much and you were able to get more done. By implementing a chatbot you can free up an employee or even yourself to do other tasks.
Admittedly, there is a cost associated with this, but you may be able to easily justify the cost. Imagine if you could eliminate 30 minutes from your day by not having to answer the same questions over and over, would it be worth the investment?
