Website is a great digital asset for your business. It works 24×7 constantly on the Internet while you are lost in your night dreams. It shows who you are and why are online. But merely having a website isn’t enough you know already.
The first challenge starts to turn a visitor into customer and then keep them satisfied whenever they need any assistance regarding your product or service. If you take their issue lightly customers don’t think twice to switch to other company for the same product, they are buying from you.
So dear business owners, here is the secret to make your website fully successful- provide high-quality chat support and customers will never quit using your products & service.
And when it comes to providing good customer service on the website, two options come: either hire a Live Chat Support Agent or enable an AI Chatbot.
For companies, it is often difficult to decide which one is better for their website. Internet is filled with the debate Live Chat vs ChatBot like a Terminator War- Humans vs Machines.
Modern consumers are very impatient and hate waiting. They want speedy response on their problem resolution. To counter this scenario, companies build AI Chatbot on their website to answer customer queries quickly.
But humans are not machines. They have emotions to express, anger to scold, love to care, feelings to share, and more. And robots can’t entertain these human’s emotional requirements. This is where human comes in. Businesses hire a dedicated Live Chat Support Agent (Person) to solve customer queries.
So if you have a website and have confusion to determine which one is good for your business, today, eSearch Logix will tell you the right answer. We will give a clear comparison between Live Agent vs ChatBot and you will automatically understand who can better help customers on your website.
Let’s start then…
Why Your Websites Need 24×7 Chat Support?
Customer support is an essential part of any business. In fact, the quality of customer service determines the success and reputation of your brand. When a consumer visits your company’s website they show interest to become your customer.
At this moment, you need a dynamic solution that immediately resolves or answers the visitor’s questions, otherwise, they will assume you don’t care for people, and eventually leave your website quickly.
Therefore, your website needs a robust 24×7 chat support solution that not only helps you convert visitors into customers but also keeps them satisfied and happy.
Chat is emerging as the best channel of customer support between the company and its customers. As per Zendesk’s Customer Experience Trends Report, nearly half of customers look for 24×7 support. The report also suggests that the use of 24×7 channels such as Live Chat Agent Support and Chatbots increased dramatically especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Website works like the digital version of your company that is why it needs a robust solution to offer all the required information any visitor may ask. If you provide solutions to customer queries without any delay you can win their heart and make a sale.
Or else, if you don’t think of providing high-standard chat support for customer service, you will have to face the following consequences such as:
- Angry dissatisfied customers
- Increased bounce rate on your website
- Delay in problem resolution
- Loss of customers to competitors providing 24/7 live chat
What is Chatbot?
A chatbot is a software application that simulates human-like conversations or conducts an online chat via text or text-to-speech with users. Its main task is to provide information or answers to the questions asked by website visitors. Chatbot is mainly used to answer basic or most common types of public questions like:
‘What is the price of this product?’
‘When my product will be delivered?’
‘Hire any service’
Advantages of using Chatbot in website:
- Faster Resolution Time
- 24×7 Availability
- Lower Long-Term Costs
- Higher Engagement Rate
- Saves time for both company and customers
Disadvantages of using Chatbot in website:
- No human touch
- Lower customer experience
- Customers Could Become Frustrated
- Not all types of questions can be answered
- Don’t Understand Natural human Language
- Not Personalized or Emotive
- Higher Chances for Misunderstanding
- Limited Functionality
What is a Live Chat Agent?
A live chat agent is a person who stays online to provide quick answers to customer’s queries and problems. The agent (He or She) provides information whenever a visitor taps into the chat option of the website.
Companies hire live agent to answer customer questions which are generally not possible by chatbots. CXL Institute refers to these as ‘Tier 2’ questions, which involve human involvement when it comes to handling complex or critical questions that can potentially affect the reputation of your business. For example-
‘Why there is a delay in my product delivery?’
‘I am getting a problem while using the product’
‘Why your company can’t refund my money?’
‘How can I decide which service is better for me?’
Advantages of using a live agent:
- Customers are humans so they mostly prefer to speak with a real person
- Cost-efficient than telephonic customer support
- High engagement rate
- High capability to create brand loyalty
- Easily able to identify pain points to create a buyer persona for lead generation
- Deeper understanding of prospects and customers
- Agents can use multiple resources while having chat with customers
- Empathize customer’s emotional requirements in the problems
- Solve complex questions
Disadvantages of using a live agent:
- Hiring live agents is costly than creating a chatbot
- Untrained agents can damage the online brand reputation of your company
- Not 24×7 availability
- Agents can’t handle multiple customers at a time (max 2 or 3)
- Lack of speedy response and customers hate waiting
Difference between Live Chat Agent vs Chatbot
Live chat agent is a human person who can converse with customers on any type of question from most common to most complex. On the other hand, chatbot is computer software that is already designed with pre-determined questions.
The major difference between live agent and chatbot is that the former is a human and the latter is software (non-human). A live agent can proactively understand the customer’s core issue or their intent of search query but a chatbot being already programmed can’t exactly predict what customers expect.
Companies use both chatbots and agents to assist customers on their queries. Chatbot is undefeatable in responsiveness whereas live agents can solve complex questions and establish brand reputation.
Every chat support system whether it is live agent or chatbot has some limitations depending on their capability and functionality. Which one better helps customers on your website can be determined on the below key parameters:
Live Agent vs Chatbot: Who Can Better Help Customers on Your Website
1. Human Touch
Live chat is handled by human agents (not robots) who know the psychology and emotional behavior of the customer behind a query. Having a live agent on your website for customer support service is ideal for personalized service and offering real human touch.
A human agent behind a live chat can converse in a more personalized way with customers and empathize with their problems. This helps you upgrade your website’s user experience.
On the other side, Chatbots, (which is not a human but a programme) provide contextual support, and send proactive messages to website visitors.
Chatbots can’t empathize with customer problems and connect with them emotionally which is the biggest factor to establish customer loyalty. So if we compare live agent vs chatbot in terms of human touch requirement, agents certainly win this parameter.
2. Responsiveness
Humans are not faster and accurate than machines. Live agents may take some time to understand customer queries and reply accordingly. Customers don’t like to wait at all especially when they meet some problems.
To find the resolution, they quickly visit your website, and when they see the agent behind the chat support is not replying quickly makes their mind frustrated.
Whereas, chatbots are known for high-speed response. They can answer customer queries faster than human agents. This is the best advantage of chatbot development. In fact, consumers consider fast responsiveness as the main reason for choosing chatbots for live chat.
Thus, when it comes to fast response, chatbot wins this parameter.
3. 24×7 Availability
Human agents can’t work 24×7, not even a whole day. If you want them to work all day night, you need to give them additional resources like food, electricity, data, etc., which enhances the costs.
A website that works online 24×7 needs a consistent live chat support service to assist customers from around the globe. It is because each country has a different time zone and they can visit your website and ask for some queries anytime while there is night in your home country.
Customers want everything on time no matter where you are. Today, where smartphones are taking over the world into a small screen, people may browse websites anytime through mobile phones.
And it matters a lot when you have international business.
Chatbot is a software application that works 24x7x365days unstoppable without any additional resources. Chatbots can reply to customers in the middle of the night as well as on national holidays. Chatbots are not humans who take leaves from their job.
Here again, chatbots beat agents.
4. Cost Efficiency
Let us assume your company daily receives over 1,000 visitors on the website, so keeping one live chat agent to handle this amount of queries not possible. You would need a dedicated team of customer service agents and spend great time and resources on their training to handle all these queries.
For big brands like Apple, Google, BMW, it is affordable, but for small businesses and startups absolutely not. Live chat support agent pricing is greater than developing a chatbot application.
But chatbots are highly affordable and cost-efficient than human agents. With one chatbot, your website can serve 10,000 even 100,000 visitors daily. This cost-efficient advantage makes chatbot the favorite choice for small business and startup websites that initially lack resources to provide online support.
Hence, in terms of cost-efficiency, chatbots win the game.
5. Personalization
Chat becomes boring when there is repetition in response or answers. It becomes annoying when customers are treated in an impersonal way. They expect their problem resolution done in a personalized way.
A market report says that most visitors even don’t open chatbox if they don’t find any human person behind. Why? Because they know humans can help them personally, not chatbots. Live agents can ensure customers in an intuitive way to bring reliability to the brand.
Chatbots, however, are programmed with pre-determined questions. They have some answering limitation. But as we told already, chatbots works better mainly for the Tier 1 category which includes most common questions (don’t require human involvement).
Visitors know they are chatting with a software program not a human person, and that is why they don\’t feel any human connection with the brand and website. This leads to losing the chances of sales prospects and lead generation.
Live agents win.
6. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty
Live chat agents can quickly understand the mood and the tone of customer. They can drive interactive and meaningful conversation and improve customer experience.
Website is generally full of fancy and high promising information. So when a visitor reads website content and asks a query through chatbox they expect the same quality of service which has been mentioned in the words.
Sometimes customers may even get angry and complain harshly; in this case, only human agents can handle such irate customers and provide immediate and effective solutions to their issues. In this way, live agents can save your brand reputation and give customer satisfaction and build loyalty.
Chatbots here lacks capability to entertain and engage customers. Today’s chatbots are capable to provide basic and pre-determined questions only. However, as AI & ML is emerging, chatbot is getting more powerful day by day.
Best Website Development Company in India suggests that in the upcoming future, AI-powered Chatbotswill have more conversational capability to give website visitors human-like chat experience.
But it will take time. For now, agent is the winner in this case.
7. Types of Questions Answered
Humans are the most intelligent and complex species on this planet earth. Customers or any first-time website visitor may ask some questions which usually can be answered by humans only.
Some of these queries might be turned into sales and leads as well. And you build a website for generating lead generation and sales prospecting right? Here, live agents can work in the best way to negotiate, convince, and convert them into customers. Chat bots can’t negotiate for a sale.
Chatbots are good for Tier 1 type of questions which contain most common questions that may be asked by anyone. These questions are part of the initial phase of a conversion funnel. Chatbots can’t inspire visitors to take the next step. They can simply provide information, not make a sale.
Here, as clear, live agents win because they are more capable than chatbots to make a sale.
Heading to conclusion
Live Agent vs Chatbot: Side by Side Comparison
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Time for Final Verdict
So comparing all the advantages and disadvantages based on each key parameter it is clear that live agent stands out as the winner in the battle of who can help better help customers on the website.
And it is obvious. Top brands like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon know customers are humans. They need a personalized approach every time and everywhere.
Visitors never say, ‘Hey RoBot! I want to give you my money’, not customers can’t scold the chatbot,‘Hey, RoBot, is this quality of product your company boasts of?’
So if you want to win customer’s heart, keep a live agent and let him or her make customers happy. However, it doesn’t mean chatbots are not useful. They are virtual heroes.
Use chatbots for first welcoming visitors to your website and provide a quick response for their most common questions. Then depending on their interest, you can offer them live chat support with an agent.
We hope this blog would help you choose between live agent and chatbot.
If you want more help and dedicated leadership, eSearch Logix can help you upgrade your business by improving your customer support system and website. We are expert in both; you can hire our professional agents for live chat support or build a conversational AI Chat bot.
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