How Are Small Companies Using Chatbots To Boost Growth?

In the current dynamic business ecosystem, small companies constantly seek to adopt innovations that will give them an edge over their competitors and fuel their growth. One such solution that has gained significant traction is the use of chatbots. These intelligent virtual assistants have revolutionized how small businesses engage with customers, drive sales, and enhance overall growth. Chatbots have come a long way from simply answering FAQs to reducing shopping cart abandonments and offering post-sale support. They have become important tools for driving revenue and maximizing ROI for small businesses. If you’re an SMB business owner looking to leverage chatbots to engage with customers at every stage of their journey with your brand, we show you how with examples.

Benefits of Using Chatbots

Chatbots are no longer communication channels whose only purpose is to connect the customer with a support agent. Now, they are more than capable of dispatching customer concerns independently. Let’s look at the benefits of using chatbots for small businesses.

Increased Customer Engagement

Chatbots increase on-site customer engagement. And, the longer the visitor stays on the website, the more likely they will make a purchase. The interactiveness of these AI-powered chatbots addresses queries in real-time to ensure that the customer does not have to jump through hoops to understand the product or service. You can train chatbots to direct the customer to a support rep when the bot cannot answer the query.

24/7 Support

Operating a 24/7 virtual call center to offer customer service can be expensive. Chatbots provide similar functionality at a fraction of the cost. In addition, ChatGPT for your website offers instant solutions to customers, while support agents require a bit of time to understand the problem before answering.

Personalized Experience

Whether it’s new customers, returning customers, or abandoned shopping carts, chatbots can recognize and address individuals by their names, understand the intent, and offer solutions accordingly. Whenever the chatbot addresses visitors by their first name, it instills a sense of familiarity and makes the customer feel important.

Productive Support Teams

Another significant benefit of integrating chatbots is the increased productivity of customer support teams. Automating the handling of common issues allows chatbots to alleviate the workload on support teams. This way, customer support reps can focus on more complex tasks. In addition, with advanced chatbots, you can continuously train ChatGPT with your own data to keep the query responses up-to-date.

Reduced Operational Costs

Once chatbots are integrated into your business, they reduce the operational cost required to maintain a fully functional customer service department. Consequently, small businesses reduce their expenses and can reinvest their profits to grow the business. Additionally, this technological integration fosters a “growth mindset” among business owners, encouraging them to continually evolve their operations and adapt to changing customer needs.

How Are Chatbots Helping SMBs and Small Companies Increase Their Sales?

Chatbots streamline repetitive tasks and save valuable resources for the business. But what are the different use cases of chatbots for small companies?

Resolve FAQs

Resolving FAQs and addressing common customer grievances is one of the primary responsibilities of a chatbot, in addition to guiding them in their purchase journey. Customers get instant responses and swift resolutions to their problems without any wait times. Chatbot saves valuable resources for a company as it requires no formal training. The organization needs a knowledge base and prompts. Advanced chatbots powered by ChatGPT also gain the ability to understand customer queries using their natural language processing algorithm.

Engage Customers to Build Long-term Brand Loyalty

Small companies are also using chatbots to increase engagement rates on their website. Offering personalized recommendations, real-time support, and answering even the simplest of queries, chatbots create an interactive customer experience. These virtual customer support assistants make the customer feel heard and valued. In doing so, they foster and establish a strong foundation that brings repeat business.

In addition, chatbots are comparatively more cost-effective, with an ROI of over 1000%, while most social media platforms offer an ROI of 95%. Creating an intuitive and easily navigable website also increases customer engagement. MotoCMS’s no-code website builder empowers small businesses to create attractive web pages that retain customers’ attention and keep them engaged.

Collect Data to Understand Customer Behavior

Chatbots are one of many valuable data collection methods that help small companies gain insights into customer preferences and behavior. The automated virtual assistants analyze purchase patterns, understand their pain points, and collect their preferences.

As a small business owner, use this information to make more informed decisions and craft personalized marketing strategies. Integrating chatbots with your CRM and email marketing software can provide a more tailored view of your customer base and help to develop segmented CRM software and more accurate sales and marketing strategies. Understanding customer behavior helps optimize product/service offerings and deliver more impactful campaigns.

Custom AI GPT Chatbots for Personalized Responses

Custom ChatGPT chatbots are trained to understand and mimic human conversations. In other words, chatbots have become advanced enough to engage in contextually relevant and natural conversations with customers. Botsonic, a no-code chatbot builder, makes it easy to prepare a chatbot that draws information from your knowledge base.

The AI chatbot builder constantly improves its response based on past customer chats. In other words, AI GPT-powered chatbots tailor answers based on specific customer demands. Personalized recommendations create a sense of exclusivity, making the customer feel appreciated.

However, the GPT-trained chatbots must operate under strict parameters set by the organization. Otherwise, they might generate a reply with solutions that your company does not offer or write irrelevant plagiarized text.

Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates

Shopping cart abandonment is one of the leading reasons for lost sales. According to recent reports, 70% of customers abandon their carts. Cart abandonment emails and social media strategies are mostly reactive, requiring verified email addresses or other contact information.

On the other hand, chatbots proactively engage with customers during the checkout process and address their concerns in real-time. This approach minimizes friction and encourages the customer to complete the purchase. The active intervention of chatbots reduces cart abandonment rates by 35%.

GPT models are helping small companies use powerful business communication tools to combat cart abandonment and recover potentially lost sales. The chatbots can be calibrated to offer the right input whenever the algorithm notices the customer’s hesitation to take high-value actions.

Offer Post-sale Support

Every company understands that exceptional customer service doesn’t end at the point of purchase. Whether it’s providing order status updates, assisting with returns or exchanges, or resolving product-related issues, chatbots offer round-the-clock support. Businesses prefer outsourcing live chat services that are assisted by chatbots to enhance user experience.

You can even train the chatbot to provide tips and best practices for using the product to improve the post-purchase product experience. This constant support increases the customer’s LTV and encourages repeat purchases.

Upsell and Cross-sell

Chatbots are also highly efficient virtual sales assistants. They recommend complementary products and highlight exclusive offers through personalized interactions and the purchasing history. This can ultimately increase the average cart value. Unlike traditional sales agents, chatbots instantly analyze customer data and offer instant tailored suggestions. This approach enhances the customer experience and increases their chances of repeat purchases.

Chatbots can also leverage real-time data, such as current promotions or inventory levels, to offer timely and relevant cross-selling opportunities. For instance, if a customer purchases a smartphone, the chatbot can recommend compatible accessories or highlight a limited-time bundle offer that includes a case and headphones.

Order Tracking and Shipping Updates

Chatbots are reliable sources of live order status updates, tracking numbers, and estimated delivery times. Integrating the chatbot with the organization’s order management system or shipping partners empowers it to retrieve and provide accurate delivery information to customers quickly.

Customers no longer need to navigate multiple websites or contact customer support for updates, which increases the overall purchasing experience. Instead, they can engage with the chatbot, which is available 24/7, to obtain the information they need at their convenience. Real-time information accessibility eliminates uncertainties, increases customer satisfaction, and reduces the need for customer support involvement while streamlining the order fulfillment process.

Examples of Chatbots

• Re: Amaze’s order tracking chatbots

Re: Amaze, a customer service company, offers order tracking chatbots to their customers. Users can check the status of their orders. What also caught our attention was that the bot allows users to talk to humans.

• Kiehl’s interactive chatbot

Kiehl’s chatbot asks a series of questions to the customers to understand their preferences and needs better. Using these parameters, it recommends products that are suitable for the customer. In this example, the customer asks the chatbot to help it find a moisturizer. Instead of directly recommending products, the chatbots ask follow-up questions to understand the customer’s skin concerns before offering personalized product recommendations.

• HubSpot Qualify Leads Chatbot

The HubSpot Qualify Leads Chatbot is a powerful bot that helps qualify leads by asking personalized questions. It identifies hot leads and gathers key information to move them through the sales funnel. Furthermore, HubSpot’s integration with Clearout—an industry-leading email verifier, ensures that businesses only generate valid leads via chatbot. Here’s an example of how HubSpot Chatbots detects and stops invalid emails at the entry point.

Revolutionize Your Small Business with Custom Chatbots

Small businesses leverage chatbots to increase customer engagement, offer 24/7 support, improve their team’s productivity and reduce operations costs. These benefits translate into tangible outcomes: increased sales, improved brand loyalty, reduced shopping cart abandonment rates, upselling opportunities, data-driven insights, and streamlined order tracking.

Embracing AI-driven chatbots allows businesses to unlock new growth possibilities and create meaningful connections with their customers, ultimately paving the way for long-term success and expansion. However, sometimes managers find it boring even to use chatbots. That is why the best solution would be hiring a good VA.