You have two choices when it comes to providing chat on your website: live chat (where clients interact with a salesman or customer support representative in real-time) or a chatbot (where customers can interact with software that offers answers based on a pre-written script or a flow triggered by keywords or intent.)

Artificial intelligence-powered chatbots use Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning to comprehend and evaluate human conversations. They can then customize their responses by using predefined responses, instructional databases, or prior customer dialogues. Even transactions can be handled by these bots.

This article examines the advantages of both live chat and chatbots and explains why you should look at both to meet the needs of your clients. Let’s go for it!

What is the difference between live chat & chatbots? 

Live chat is a real-time conversation between a customer or lead and an employee of the business. Chatbots, in contrast, denotes automated communication between software and a consumer or potential customer. A variety of predefined inquiries, such as “What are your business hours?” and “Do you deliver to Seattle?” can be addressed by chatbots. Customers can get assistance from more complex AI chatbots with things like ordering food, updating their addresses, or renewing subscriptions.

The advantages of live chat

-Satisfying the desire of clients for human contact:

Live chat allows clients or potential clients to speak with sales representatives or customer service representatives directly. In order to provide a great customer experience, one-on-one help has always been crucial, and 70% of customers indicate they prefer human contact in these talks.

Users credit personalized interactions with brands for their positive brand experiences. A kind, sympathetic, and reassuring interaction with an agent can go a long way toward relieving consumers’ tension and making them feel like your business is concerned about their issue.

-Become more familiar with potential clients and customers

Despite the fact that you may read chat transcripts to learn more about the issues your prospects and customers are facing, live chat gives you the chance to dive deeply into a person’s experience. Agents are better able to understand users when they use live chat since they may ask inquiries that delve deeper into customer problems.

-Take on challenging issues

When it comes to combining quick and effective response times with the capacity to handle complex customer issues, live chat is also a fantastic channel. Users have the option to speak with a knowledgeable customer support agent via live chat to address their complex issues.

The advantages of Chatbots

-Superior response times

90% of customers consider a timely response to a question from customer services to be “important” or “very important.” Chatbots can respond to customer inquiries almost instantly. Additionally, chatbots can respond whenever a customer needs them, offering round-the-clock assistance.

-effective in almost 70% of situations

While live conversations with agents offer an awesome opportunity to tackle more complex customer issues, chatbots continue becoming more and more sophisticated every year. Comm100 reports that chatbots can successfully handle an average of 68.9% of chats from start to finish.

-Cost-efficient 

Particularly in the case of larger companies or those looking to scale, investing in chat software is far more cost-effective than hiring several new employees to engage in online chats. AI-powered chatbots can reduce the costs of customer service by up to 30% — in contrast to the $1 trillion companies spend on customer calls every year. 

What to choose: live chat or chatbot?

Live chats and chatbots both have special advantages. Each tackles distinct consumer problem areas and satisfies different customer needs, from the rapid responses and round-the-clock accessibility you find with chatbots to the unbeatable human interactions live chat offers.

Choose what works best for you based on your business, needs, and the preferences of your clients. Live chat, for instance, can contribute to and boost conversions in e-commerce. Small doubts can be eliminated with a brief personal encounter. A powerful AI chatbot may be the ideal option for utilities because so many questions are repeatedly asked and standardized actions.

When selecting a chat solution, keep your use case in mind.

A powerful combination of live conversations and chatbots

Getting the best of both worlds? By offering a hybrid solution, you can use chatbots to provide immediate, round-the-clock response times. Additionally, you may program chatbots to forward more complicated concerns to customer service agents so that real people can offer emotional support and in-depth advice.

Additionally, by integrating live chat with chatbots, you can guarantee conversational continuity by employing chatbots to gather and relay information to live agents, minimizing the need for customers to repeat themselves. By directing consumers to live agents who can offer in-depth support based on their knowledge, you may also safeguard your customer satisfaction and retention rates.

Live agents and chatbots collaborate to solve complicated client needs and give your customers thorough, quick help. Using Conversational AI Cloud and Mobile Service Cloud, combine live chat and chatbots.