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In Insurance Soup, you're always hearing us boast about one of our partners, Tacobot. Tacobot is a chatbot. And if you're unfamiliar with chatbot technology, it's an autoresponder that can be attached to posts and ads on social media that open up conversations in Facebook Messenger and lead a sequential and conversational dialogue with a prospect that guides them through a sales conversation.
Some agents may feel a little turned off by the idea of letting a chatbot converse with clients and prospects on their own. Maybe they feel like customers will be able to tell that they're speaking to a machine and not to a real customer service representative. These are normal concerns for agents who've yet to see how having a chatbot really bulks up the customer experience, while at the same time, creating valuable time for agents to focus on other, more ROI heavy aspects of their jobs.
Here are 5 ways that using a chatbot can improve the online experience for your customers.
#1 - NO DAYS OFF, MAN.
If you consider what it would cost your business for you to keep someone on the other end of customer inquiries 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, it'd be an obvious mind-blower. No small business outside that doesn't cater to medical emergencies wants to have to carry that financial load. But with a chatbot, your patrons and potential patrons have "someone" to greet them, direct them and cater to all of their insurance-related needs ALL. THE. TIME.
#2 - EFFICIENCY IS KEY
A chatbot can easily help eliminate costs of staffing, onboarding and training for certain roles in your agency. When a bot takes over much of the busy work that gets done on a daily basis in an office, such as jobs requiring employees to answer the same questions over and over again, you can see where having that time freed up for more important aspects of the business, such as dealing with customers face to face, is a huge win.
#3 - BE IN SEVERAL PLACES AT ONE TIME
Where you may have one or two staffers designated to be at a desk to handle customer and prospect inquiries, a chatbot can be in many places at once, answering multiple inquiries at a time. You can hook a chatbot up to your website, your What'sApp app, you can hook it up to respond via text message and you can easily get it up and running on Facebook Messenger. This means all of your bases are covered and your client questions are being answered at the same time.
#4 - OPERATIONS CAN BE TURN KEY
Chatbot technology allows for your business to integrate with your internal systems so that you can bring it into your daily workflow as opposed to having to go outside of your daily work flow to make work. They can be coupled with your internal CRMs and/or databases, as well as other marketplaces where you source quotes.
#5 - THE DATA IS THERE WAITING FOR YOU
A big advantage of using AI in your sales efforts means that the data is there for you to monitor via chatbot analytics. The owner can get a deep look into insights about what in the chat is working and what is not. The owner can see what prospects are responding to and what they are not. Since the owner creates the conversation for the bot to have, it's always there to be changed when the need arises.
At the end of the day, your number one goal should be serving your clients and giving as many prospects access to your product as possible. Chatbots make that a reality for small businesses and large corporations alike. If you think your agency might be ready for a bot, take a look at Tacobot and take it out for a spin!
