Believe it or not, chatbots are becoming a central part of business. From new startups to large and established chains, everyone is jumping on the chatbot bandwagon because of their various benefits. This will explain some of the benefits along with how chatbots are being successfully used in right now to generate massive income.

Constant Availability

With most consumers having smartphones and a “I want it now” mentality, businesses can only keep up by being constantly available. While 24-hour phone lines and always active live chat systems are great, they are expensive to man. Unlike people, chatbots never sleep or ask for raises. Having a chatbot with the right prompts is far better than any human, and it gives the consumer what they want here and now.

The other benefit is that there’s no waiting. With live chat, you have to wait for the person to come to you, plus he or she has to look up the answer to your question. With phone, you’ll be placed on hold while the operator deals with other calls and gets the information you need. A chatbot will respond quickly and immediately to your questions, and will guide you towards the right prompts to make everything easier for both of you.

Text-to-Buy Systems

Taco Bell has been a pioneer in this way, but many other businesses also rely on this model. The text-to-buy model is a type of chat system that allows you to text your order and pay for it all at once. For example, you can text taco bell what you would like to eat and it will be available at your nearest restaurant. Other businesses are texting customers relevant products and they just have to reply with “yes” to order it.

There are other, like Domino’s, where you just text a pizza emoji to order your favorite type of pizza. These systems are examples of chatbots that directly interact with people, find out what their order is, and relay the information (and often payment) to the local business.

Influence Decisions

Ideally, every business would have a representative sit with you and find out exactly what you like. They would quiz you about what you’re looking for, what you despise and what you’re really out to get. This would allow them to recommend the absolute best products for you. However, that’s very far from reality. Most employees are rushing through their job because they are overworked, understaffed and just trying to serve as many people as possible.

However, chatbots don’t have any distractions. With the right prompts, such as the chatbot offered by clothing company H&M, they can give you all the attention you need. This bot asks for what style you like, your fashion sense and other relevant questions to pull together a list of great clothes that you’ll enjoy. By doing this, it’s showing customers only products that they would want to buy, which greatly influences the probability of them handing over money.

More Engagement

“Engagement” has been the business buzzword since social media became huge, but we run into the human problem again. While human engagement is still better and won’t be replaced anytime soon, the problem is that it’s limited. People will only be there for a few hours to answer posts, and there’s only so many posts that social media admins can answer.

Facebook Messenger has recently allowed businesses to deploy chatbots on their feed. While these bots won’t be able to answer all of your questions (especially the hard ones, like if a business messed up and did something legally or socially offensive), they will be able to get you basic information and point you in the right direction.

To some, this might seem like a step back in engagement since the system is only responding to prompts, but the result is actually quite effective. It’s a wonder to have your questions and inquiries fulfilled in a matter of seconds, which makes people more interested in buying, subscribing to the business’s feed and visiting their homepage.

Conclusion

Not only are chatbots becoming more advanced, but they are growing to become an even larger part of the business world. By enhancing engagement and giving people constant attention, they can satisfy the needs of many hungry customers. Not only that, but many are made so that you can order then and there during your conversation. Expect to see them popping up more and more until they become a staple of online marketing.