Customer Conversations Using the Latest Technology

As the world’s largest network of digital marketing agencies, we have seen first-hand how COVID-19 has affected the businesses we work with. To help overcome these challenges, and as a way of giving back to our valued clients, a few months ago we created this webinar series called “Ahead of the Curve”. Here is a recap of our webinar on how to reimagine your customer conversations using the latest technology by Eric Cook from Michigan, USA.

Conversational Marketing – The Landscape Today

Even if you take technology out of the equation, the best way to boost your sales is to have conversations with your prospects and customers to get to know them, to learn more about them, their pain points, and their needs. 

Instead of creating content to be distributed to your base (asynchronous communication), the use of AI and chatbots offers synchronous communication with your audience. Because the likes of Siri and Alexa have become such a part of everyday life, it follows on naturally that 90% of consumers now prefer to use messaging for communicating with businesses. The arrival of COVID-19 has likely increased that figure even more.

Types of Chatbots and How to Get Started

There are three main types of chatbots:

1. Informational. This simple version of chatbot uses the data that you have mined from FAQs and your frontline personnel to answer queries in a conversational way.
2. Transactional. More interactive, transactional chatbots walk customers through the process of buying with authentication for payment, tracking notifications, et cetera. This can even bypass a website and occur directly from a link within your social media marketing.
3. Advisory. The most sophisticated type which learns over time.

Get started, with the help of your WSI consultant, via the search functionality on your website. Together with Google Analytics, you can discover what visitors to your site are looking for. Speak to your call center and sales reps too, then map out a desired conversation flow – including instructions on how to connect to a human being.

Benefits of Chatbots

The top three benefits of using chatbots as part of your digital marketing strategy are:

1. Improve engagement and qualification 
2. Enhanced conversion rates
3. Reduce costs 

What Not To Do

Avoid the “uncanny valley” where you try to pass off a bot as a real person. This does more harm than good. 

Far better to rather make it clear that you are using chatbot technology, but that there is always human support as needed. Never ignore the personable human element!

WSI – here to help in any way we can to keep your business moving forward

For more details on all of the above, watch the recording from our webinar, “Conversational Marketing: How to Reimagine Your Customer Conversations Using the Latest Technology” (posted below).

WSI was founded in 1995 and is an innovative digital marketing agency with offices in over 80 countries. We’ve spent over 20 years helping more than 100,000 companies and large global brands unlock the full potential of their business by leveraging the Internet and its many unrecognized opportunities. We’d be happy to help do the same for you and consult on your digital marketing strategy.  Simply give me a call or email me at rknutsen@wsiebizsolutions.net to learn more.