In last years, we heard a lot about chatbots in the marketing world. The increasing popularity of instant messaging platforms created opportunities for engagement via conversational experiences. Many brands made investments to interact with their audiences directly to deliver quick information, accelerate sales stages, and run customer service activities.
Chatbots are small software applications that simulate interactive human conversation so that meaningful interactions can happen between a brand and a consumer. 7/24 available, chatbots help users like virtual assistants replying to instant questions. Companies position them as uninterrupted service tools to increase customer satisfaction.
As we get more used to chatbots as consumers, millennials make a difference as far as the adoption concerned. According to a Facebook study, 2.06X more likely to say they’d like a personal shopper chatbot, compared to older age groups. 26% of millennials surveyed would be interested in a hope chatbot. To engage better with shoppers of the new generation, brands should include chatbots in their communication toolbox.
Up to now, how did chatbots perform in the business world? Did they live up to expectations? To answer these questions, let’s check cases summarizing the performances in several industries. Before diving into this, let’s remember that live chat software has a 73% satisfaction rate as a way for customers to interact with businesses (G2’s Facebook Chatbots Guide, 2018).
Finance and Banking
JPMorgan Chase’s bot can analyze complex legitimate contracts quicker and more proficiently than human lawyers. In the first year, the bot has helped JPMorgan spare more than 360,000 hours of labor.
Wells Fargo uses a chatbot to allow customers to check their latest transactions over Facebook Messenger. Using technology to pre-empt questions, the bot reduced the number of customers that needed to get in touch with its contact centre by 33 per cent in three months.
Commonwealth Bank Australia’s chatbot assists customers with more than 200 banking tasks such as activating their card, checking account balance, making payments, or getting cardless cash. Within one year, the bot understood 500,000 ways customers asked for 500 different banking activities.
Royal Bank of Canada’s chatbot created great benefits including; Client engagement with RBC mobile banking app increased by 20 percent, average time-in-app increased 6 percent. More than 100 million insights read by clients in the first five months, and clients save 2x more regularly with the bot than they do with traditional savings products.
HDFC Bank’s chatbot answered more than 5 million queries from around a million customers with more than 85% accuracy. Eva holds more than 20,000 conversations every day with customers from all over the world.
94% of Capital One customers recommend Eno, the chatbot of the company.
Almost every industry had chatbot experiences
Cosmetics
Sephora was one of the first brands to launch chatbots. Sephora Reservation and Sephora Virtual Artist bots helped the brand’s mobile app receive over four million visits, with over 90 million shades tried on. Bots were beneficial for increasing foot traffic too. Thanks to the reservation assistant, the brand has seen an 11% increase in their booking rates. The in-store sales also grew as Sephora saw an average spent of $50 per client who booked their appointment on Facebook.
Aviation
Emirates Vacations test a chat ad model to engage better with customers. The company tested 550,000 impressions for the new chat ad format and compared those to the same number of impressions for its traditional display format. At the end of the 30 days, Emirates Vacations saw an 87 percent lift in engagement compared to its traditional click-through ads.
Renowned aviation brand KLM’s chatbot handles more than 16,000 customer interactions weekly, according to coverage on the MarTech Today blog. Named as BlueBot, the bot sent nearly two million messages to more than 500,000 customers in just the first six months of operation. Allowing clients to use Messenger increased interaction by 40% alone. Customers also used messenger as a way to communicate check-in updates, boarding passes, and flight status updates. This increased boarding passes being sent to messenger by 15% and also lead to customer satisfaction to increase.
Automative
Kia received 3x more conversions through the chatbot than through its main website, Kia.com, although the company maintains more than 800 websites for car buyers. Kian’s conversion rate was 21%, while Kia.com’s are 7%.
Toy Production
Danish toy giant Lego’s chatbot is available in the UK, US, France, Poland, and Germany. Using Facebook’s click-to-Messenger ads, in some of these markets Lego has seen a 6X return on ad spend. The bot also helped LEGO to reduce their cost per conversion by 31% (vs. other conversion-based ads)
E-Commerce
In its first four weeks, The DECEN Muebles Infantiles bot directly sold around 65,000 Mexican pesos (4000 USD) in products, and 80% of the business’s sales are from the bot.
An effective channel so far
Food
HelloFresh’s chatbot Freddy has reduced average customer wait time on social customer care channels by 38%, despite a 44% increase in total conversations. Freddy also managed to bring in five times more daily users than average in a Black Friday promotion.
Bot Burger was a simple bot experiment that helped deliver burgers to people in Paris on Friday and Saturday nights between 9 pm and 5 am. Bot Burger found that 20% of customers would repeat purchase in two weeks (or less). The bot also had other benefits including the fact that they could re-engage with customers at any time.
Hospitality
The Singapore based luxury resort Marina Bay Sands’ chatbot recommended products or services offered by the resort such as inclusive packages and restaurant recommendations. The live chat worked like a concierge in a way to give instant answers to frequently asked questions from customers. Overall this chatbot resulted in an8.3x increase in new message conversations, a 26x increase in daily active users on the bot, and a 38x increase in views for the Shop & Dine website content.
Telecommunications
Vodafone’s chatbot is delivering double the conversion rate of its website. TOBI is delivering conversion rate +100% compared to the website, transaction time -50% compared to the website (with abandonment rates markedly lower). The chatbot’s usability score is >90/100.
Charter Communications chatbot resulted in a 500% ROI in 6 months, a 50% decrease in the time it took to reset a password.
Software Technology
MongoDB Automated qualification and immediate response time increased new leads by 70% and new opportunities by 170% in three months via chatbot.
The fin-tech startup Trim launched their chatbot to scan bills for recurring subscription charges and ask users if they want to cancel a subscription. Because of this bot, Trim has a 94% retention rate.
Targeted messages from LeadPages’ proactive chatbots had an open rate of 30% and a 21% click-through rate to the product comparison page.
RapidMiner’s chatbot resulted in the replacement of all lead capture with a chatbot, 4000 chatbot-generated leads, 25% of pipeline influenced by chatbots accounting for 10% new sales.
Transportation
Using an AI chatbot on its site, Amtrak saved $1 million in customer service expenses in a single year. The bot was able to answer over 5 million questions every year and even increase revenue by 30% through automated bookings. Amtrack’s chatbot resulted in an 800% ROI, a 25% increase in bookings.
HR
Brazen bot engages 40% more career site visitors than just asking candidates to apply, and that candidates who’ve engaged with the bot are 100-200% more likely to be hired.
Sports
Golden State Warriors have created a chatbot that sends the current score to its members during the game and supports a video chat for people to watch the game with friends. Before the start of the game, a huge QR code is set, viewers can scan it, and then immediately start a conversation with the chatbot. Through the bot, it’s also possible to promote and sell tickets. In the first two months, the chatbot scored 40,000 users.
Tourism and Travel
Amadeus, a leading solution provider for the tourism and travel industry, was able to start providing faster, 24/7 customer support service with the help of chatbots. They saw a 70% deflection of traditional channels, with the chatbot solving 3,300 cases a month. Besides, 78% of the answers it provided were effective.
Public Service
North Charleston, S.C. started using Citibot, a chatbot connecting through text, Twitter and Facebook Messenger. North Charleston repaired or replaced 114 percent more trash cans, fixed 195 percent more street and traffic lights filled 76 percent more potholes and repaired 114 percent more street signs based on information shared by town residents. This has made the public works department 112 percent more efficient.
The town of Rajkot, India launched Floatbot as part of the country’s Smart City Mission initiative. Floatbot facilitates tax payment information and processes citizen requests for birth and death certificates, as well as neighborhood complaints. Within its first 46 days, Floatbot processed 1001 queries.
The Australian Taxation Office assists by a bot as well. Business Insider Australia reports that 80 percent of taxpayer inquiries are resolved at “first contact” via chatbot as opposed to the industry standard of 60-65 percent.
With progress in AI and cognitive capabilities, chatbots are expected to increase their impact in the modern business world. Many brands already started to take advantage of this new interactive channel. If you need more information on chatbots for your business, feel free to contact us.
