Implementing live chat in business websites increased average order value by 14%1 and website pages views per session to 263%. 51%2 customers prefer chatbots in customer support over emails, given they are easy to communicate to. Both these statistics project a very welcoming stance for the respective channels. But which one is preferred over the other? Will live chat benefit your business the most, or will a chatbot do the trick for you?

Humans have always loved the idea of robots having feelings. Hollywood has cashed in on this affinity in multiple films, from making robots fall in love with each other, to an alternative dystopian future where robots are taught to feel, leading them to overpower humans. But even with such narratives, humans like it better when chatbots are taught more about feelings and made to assist them with empathy1.

The digitally conscious customer of today needs immediate responses. A key factor in staying ahead of the competition is the ability to provide proactive customer support to your customers. Live chat support came to the rescue and enabled agents to respond to customers as swiftly as they could. But this was not good enough. It is almost impossible for live agents to be available all the time for the omnipresent customer.

After switching to a different email address, I recently logged in to my client account to change the contact information my mobile company had. On seeing the email field greyed out and uneditable, I visited their Help and Support page for assistance. Live chat support was available. It was 9:31 in the morning. Someone was already waiting for me—Gie. This Facebook Messenger-based bot initiated the conversation with one of the more tedious stages of getting support: account verification.

What a customer takes home from a brand is the experience it provides. Gartner proved that customer experience is a game-changer for brands. In fact, 81% of companies1 expect to compete on the basis of customer experience in 2019. This head-on competition is driving brands to strengthen their customer experience strategies.

Asking for help should be easy. And fast. Faster than typing out emails. Faster than opening chat windows and typing out the problem. And faster than opening an app and searching for the solution. Can your customers ask for help easily? And how fast can you deliver? Till recently, it was difficult to furnish this instant voice support in a scalable, accessible way. Then voice bots came along.

Live-chat is a stellar way to improve customer service and support success for any business. And increasingly, chatbots are becoming a way to automate vital business interactions with potential leads and customers any time of the day, even when workers aren’t present. Typically, to fill live-chat spots, you will need more manual labor. More employees and increasing overhead.

Deciding whether or not to use or deploy a chatbot for your brand requires understanding each of the drawbacks and benefits of this new technology. It can be a tough decision to make. There are always new and shiny trends popping up every year in the customer service industry. You might be getting inundated with sales emails from companies promising to reduce your cost of service, increase your customer loyalty and differentiate your customer’s experience.

Artificial intelligence used to only exist in science fiction films. That’s no longer the case. Today, brands are using it to improve efficiency and productivity in all areas of business. In fact, 55% of established companies have either started making investments in artificial intelligence or are planning to do so by 2020. These investments can come in many forms, but one of the most effective is in using artificial intelligence to power chatbots.

2018 has been the year of artificial intelligence (AI). What was until recently just an emerging trend, has now established itself to the extent that it is already hard to imagine a work life without AI-driven applications. Chatbots—one of the more popular applications of AI —have become ubiquitous, and every SaaS company has jumped on to the AI and machine learning (ML) bandwagon.