Amazon chatbots and what they’re bringing to customer service

Amazon chatbots for customer service

There are few things more annoying to a customer than the following phrase: Your call is important to us. Please hold, we’re currently experiencing a high call load. Thankfully companies like Amazon are beginning to realize the damaging effects a phrase like this can have on their brand. The retail giant appears to be building its chatbots development team with the hiring of Angel.ai co-founder and CEO Navid Hadzaad.

The pros of chatbots to business

Amazon is implementing bot technology to better automate its online channels. AI-infused chatbots are a vital ingredient in the recipe of ‘conversational commerce’. This trend is beneficial because it can be used to drive sales through customer interaction and because it streamlines customer relationship management (CRM).

This technology will also strengthen Amazon’s search features with the help of natural language programming (NLP) – that is, it’ll allow smoother, more natural search functionality across the board.

Chatbots also have enormous potential to help Amazon significantly cut labor costs, and other companies should take note. Public Tableau suggests that 30% of customer service positions in the US could be automated through chatbots, saving an estimated $23 billion in annual salaries.

Another rapidly growing area that chatbot technology is helping in is inside the actual enterprise. Employees of companies like Amazon now have access to a range of intelligent assistants that can help them schedule meetings, manage tasks, and interact with other employees. All this leads to an improved, more focused customer service employee and therefore an improved customer experience.

Chatbots will also help Amazon drive brand engagement. In the same way, a website, blog, or Facebook page would deliver content, Amazon can use chatbots to push content to their customers. The major difference is that the content can be interactive and personalized.

Stumbling blocks to chatbot adoption

The chatbot experience also has some potential failings that, if left unchecked, could lead to alienating customers. If the technology is rolled out to a substandard level or if it’s only offered in isolation, companies like Amazon only risk adding another cumbersome element to the customer service process, something that’ll only succeed in driving customers away. Chatbots need to be seamlessly integrated into the current processes and need to be picked up on by a human agent. One study found that as many as 88 percents of respondents expect their chatbot interactions to be followed up with a transfer to a live person.

Unleashing chatbots into the customer service world has been a stroke of genius on Amazon’s part, matching technology with necessity. Chatbots will only get better, stronger, more versatile with time as we move towards the perfect CRM solution, and Amazon is already on the way. Be sure to read our blog post on the future of CRM if you’re interested in the future growth of this technology alongside business workflow. Find out more about Clickatell Touch here.