20 smart chatbot use cases in 2024

As businesses strive to meet the ever-increasing expectations of tech-savvy consumers in 2024, chatbots have become essential tools. They are now integrated into websites, social media platforms, messaging apps, and voice assistants, providing a consistent and efficient interface for customer interaction.

The uses of chatbots are expanding rapidly across business sectors and communication platforms. In this blog, we’ll explore 20 smart chatbot use cases that showcase the versatility and impact of these AI-powered assistants in 2024.

What is a chatbot?

A chatbot is an artificial intelligence (AI) software designed to simulate conversation with human users. It uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand and respond to text or voice inputs in real time.

Chatbots can be integrated into various platforms, such as websites, social media, messaging apps, and voice assistants, to provide instant support and information to users. They can handle a wide range of tasks, from answering simple questions to facilitating complex transactions. Chatbots are valuable tools for businesses looking to streamline and enhance customer engagement.

How are chatbots used?

Chatbots can be used for many purposes across various industries and platforms, from appointment scheduling in healthcare to recruiting in human resources. They operate on simple rule-based systems that follow predefined scripts to more sophisticated AI-powered models capable of understanding context.

Next, we’ll explore different chatbot use cases to give you a well-rounded understanding of the power of chatbots. By the end of this blog, you’ll be able to determine the best chatbot use for your business needs.

Types of chatbot use cases by function

Let’s take a look at chatbot use cases across different business functions.

Customer support

Chatbots can ease the pressure on today’s customer service teams as first-line support by handling most simple requests. Chatbots can verify order details, answer WISMO requests, offer quick solutions, and even collect customer feedback.

Businesses that use conversational AI chatbots as a part of their customer journey have reported a decrease[1] in wait time for their customers. When used correctly, chatbots can help you save time and money by handling simple support requests automatically. They can also improve the customer experience by providing faster resolution times, multilingual support, and 24/7 availability.

Sales

When potential customers visit your website, no matter how clean and responsive the design is, they may be unable to find the pages they want immediately. However, if a chatbot is available on every page, it can prevent potential customers from leaving your website by proactively reaching out and nudging them in the right direction.

For example, Freshchat helped Fantastic Services engage with its website visitors by routing customers to sales or support using its IntelliAssign feature. With this tool, Customers are sent to the right person in the first instance, reducing wait time and frustration. Engaging Freshchat increased Fantastic Services’ chat ROI by 100%.

Marketing

Chatbots can help automate and personalize your marketing campaigns. You can easily nurture customers through the sales funnel using a chatbot with proactive suggestions and recommendations. Chatbots can also segment your audience and send personalized content based on preferences and interests.

Automating your marketing campaigns can free up time for your team to focus on other tasks. In turn, this can increase conversion rates and improve the customer experience by personalizing your messages. You can also use chatbots to inform customers about upcoming events like Q&As or webinars.

Chatbots can be used to qualify leads by asking customers about their needs. The chatbot can then make recommendations about products or services that would be a good fit. Whenever a customer interacts with a chatbot, there’s an opportunity to capture their email address or other important contact information.

Employee assistance

Chatbots can help employees with various tasks, from scheduling meetings to ordering office supplies. And because they’re available 24/7, they can provide assistance when human resources are unavailable.

Chatbots can help employees beyond assigning tasks by acting as virtual assistants. For example, chatbots can send notifications to employees about upcoming deadlines, link to appropriate pages in the knowledge base, and pull customer data quickly.

Freshchat helped software development company CISS with its customer experience operations. CISS uses Freshchat to automate chat assignments to its human customer support team based on the type of customer query received. Since CISS supports a wide range of specialties, task assignments must be accurate so support requests are handled promptly.

Lead generation

Chatbots can be used to qualify leads by analyzing customer data and asking customers about their needs. The chatbot can then make recommendations about products or services that would be a good fit. Any time a customer interacts with a chatbot, there’s an opportunity to capture their email address or other important contact information.

Many chatbots also use proactive tactics to generate leads, which allow them to detect potential customers based on certain website behaviors. Chatbots can then provide information that guides users in the right direction, whether it’s to purchase a product or explore deeper into your website. The great thing about chatbots is that they do all of this automatically, processing customer insights and turning them into leads.

Human resources

A huge undertaking for human resources is recruiting and hiring. Chatbots can help take care of basic hiring tasks, such as:

• Sorting through large candidate pools

• Asking preliminary questions

• Providing key information like experience and recent employment

• Answering basic candidate questions on multiple channels

• Send updates about the job posting

With chatbots, human resources staff can free up their time to focus on more crucial elements of the hiring process, like conducting interviews and making job offers.

Chatbot use cases by channel

Next, let’s examine how chatbots can be used across multiple channels.

Website

Your website is the face of your business. Consumers no longer rely on store visits to see products or order services; they visit websites to take action. People want to make educated purchases, get updates on their orders, and get easy, fast solutions to their issues. In order to meet these customer needs, your business should use chatbot software.

By having chatbots on your website, you can:

• Proactively engage with website users with chat popups

• Reduce repetitive questions by providing self-service via chatbots

• Use data on user behavior to deliver personalized messaging

• Provide support in different languages via multilingual chatbots

Social media

Chatbots aren’t limited to your website; they can be used to interact with your customers on social media. You can provide prompt and personalized responses by monitoring social media messaging platforms for customer questions and comments.

This is especially useful for businesses that operate in multiple time zones, as Chatbots can answer customer queries even when humans are unavailable. Using chatbots means you can be active in more places, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn—the sites where your customers are.

Chatbots are masters in conversational marketing. Through two-way communication, they can help you increase brand awareness and build relationships with potential and existing customers.

In-app bots

Use in-app chatbots to maintain a consistent brand experience. They can send push notifications to customers to purchase items they’ve left in their shopping cart or recommend similar products. Additionally, in-app bots can upsell and cross-sell products and services.

For example, in-app chatbots can message a customer who’s just purchased a pair of jeans and say, “Hey! You might also like this product.” The chatbot may automatically include a link to a shirt that pairs well with the jeans. This is a great way to increase sales and create a more personalized customer experience.

The best thing about in-app bots is that notifications are hard to miss. Unlike email, which may be checked less frequently, people check their phone notifications many times throughout the day.

Messaging channel bots

Chatbots can be used to conduct marketing campaigns on popular messaging channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat. Messaging channel chatbots are one of the most efficient ways to reach a large number of people with little effort.

All you need is a list of people you want to reach and a message to send them. The chatbot will take care of the rest. It will send your message to everyone on the list and then keep track of who responds.

Segment your audience by location, age, gender, and other metrics to personalize the chatbot’s messages. You can also use a chatbot to track engagement by asking customers to rate their experience or answer survey questions.

Email chatbot

Email chatbots can analyze incoming emails and respond based on predefined rules or natural language processing. With email chatbots, you can:

• Automate repetitive responses: Set up automatic replies for common inquiries such as order status, appointment confirmations, and FAQs.

• Personalize email campaigns: Use customer data to send tailored recommendations, offers, and updates.

• Boost customer engagement: Respond to customer emails promptly, ensuring they feel valued and heard.

• Streamline customer service: Reduce the workload on your support team by handling routine queries efficiently.

Chatbots can also revolutionize the way you collect emails. By holding conversations on your website, app, or other channels, chatbots can ask users for their emails to send them further information. This is far more effective than email forms, which many customers decline to fill out.

Voice assistant chatbot

Voice assistant chatbots provide a hands-free way for customers to interact with your brand. These chatbots can perform tasks based on voice commands, making them convenient and accessible. Some popular examples include Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple Siri.

Many customers appreciate having multiple options for communicating with a brand. By offering voice assistant chatbots, you can expand your offerings and cater to more users.

Chatbot use cases by industry

Research has found that chatbots can save the banking, retail, and healthcare sectors 2.5 billion hours[2] in customer service. Let’s take a look at chatbot use cases by industry.

Banking and insurance

Chatbots can help banks and financial institutions reduce wait time in an industry known for long delays in communication. In critical industries like banking and insurance, customers want prompt responses and 24/7 availability. Chatbots can support financial institutions that need to offer these capabilities without expanding internal teams.

For instance, Freshchat helped Klarna achieve a first response time of just 60 seconds by increasing how many users were serviced via chat. This decreased the pressure on phone support.

Chatbots can also be used to upsell and cross-sell banking and insurance products. For example, a chatbot could suggest a credit card with a lower interest rate when a customer is chatting about their current credit card debt.

Additionally, chatbots can help customers keep track of their finances. For example, they can notify customers when a bill is due or a payment is processed. Customers can also use a chatbot to log important fraud reports, helping banks and insurance agencies cut down on the number of fraudulent transactions.

Healthcare

Healthcare organizations are using chatbots to help patients schedule appointments, find the nearest healthcare provider, and offer quick answers to common healthcare-related queries.

Chatbots can help patients manage their health at home by walking them through simple at-home treatments, reminding them to take their medication, or tracking their progress toward a fitness goal. They can also escalate certain issues to humans since chatbots cannot replicate the attention of healthcare providers. Instead, they work to provide well-rounded health support.

Automating simple tasks via chatbots helps free up time for nurses, doctors, and other healthcare staff. By providing 24/7 support, chatbots can help ease the burden on overworked employees.

Telecom

Telecom is another industry known for long customer wait times. Chatbots can ease the burden on telecom service teams by helping tackle the workload on the frontlines.

If a customer is having trouble connecting to the internet, the chatbot can run a diagnostic test and provide a solution. They can handle requests without the need for human intervention, which frees up busy customer service agents to work on more complex issues.

Fraud is a big problem for the telecom industry, costing the industry $39.89 billion in 2021. Chatbots can help spot potential fraudulent activities. Machine learning can detect when there is unusual traffic visiting a website and recognize the warning signs. A chatbot can warn a customer or a company agent before a cyber attack takes place, giving them time to prepare and prevent it.

Government

Government organizations are complex, with many different departments and services. This can make it difficult for citizens to get the help they need. Chatbots can help by providing a single point of contact for all queries.

Chatbots can answer simple questions or direct users to the correct department based on the query. They can also help fill in forms and provide information about government services. The additional help from chatbots can keep customers away from the phone lines and reduce waiting times and burdens on staff.

Government organizations can also use chatbots to help their employees on the backend. This can include locating customer data, pulling relevant knowledge base information, and handling two-way messaging between departments.

Freshchat helps Casey Cardinia Library in Melbourne by offering Information-as-a-Service on live chat. Customers can query information about books and upcoming events, and live agents can relay the info using canned responses. The library has found that using Freshchat is more effective than face-to-face interactions.

Retail and E-commerce

Conversational commerce is the future of retail and e-commerce. It involves using chatbots to provide a personal touch in the sales process. It’s estimated that chatbots will help deliver over $140 billion in retail sales. Chat triggers can be set up to proactively reach your customers and offer them assistance. If a customer abandons their cart, a chatbot can remind them to checkout.

In 2024, retailers are under pressure to provide a better customer experience. Chatbots can help by providing a personalized shopping experience for each customer journey. For example, they can suggest products based on customers’ preferences and past purchases. If a customer is having a problem with an order, the chatbot can raise a ticket to the customer support team.

Chatbots can also assist with internal communication, which helps different departments work in unison. Freshchat helps companies facilitate two-way messaging within their support team and other departments on various platforms, including Microsoft Teams.

Real estate

Selecting a property is a time-consuming process. On average, it takes 10 weeks for a person to settle on a property. Real estate businesses mostly receive queries on property viewing and virtual tours. While real estate agents can help with these queries, they can take a lot of time to get through.

A real estate chatbot can help agents and allow them to focus on their clients instead of repetitive tasks. Real estate chatbots can:

• Answer repetitive questions

• Help with virtual tours

• Help generate leads by initiating conversations with prospective buyers or sellers

• Collect qualifying information

• Answer common questions

• Offer 24/7 real-time support without burdening your agents

Education

In the education sector, chatbots are optimizing the way institutions interact with students and manage administrative tasks. Some specific examples include:

• Providing instant access to information on courses, schedules, and campus events

• Answering common registration queries

• Customized announcement boards on student platforms

• Guiding students through application procedures

• Sending reminders about assignment or registration deadlines

• Attendance marking

• Offering 24/7 support for timely assistance

Chatbots can also serve as virtual tutors, offering personalized learning support and resources. They can help students with homework, break down complex topics, and offer practice quizzes to reinforce learning. By leveraging AI and machine learning, educational chatbots can adapt to individual learning styles and needs, making education more accessible and effective. This helps to reduce the workload of educators and ensures that students can access continuous academic support independently.

Manufacturing

In the manufacturing industry, communication is constant. Various stakeholders need to be informed at any given time, including contractors, suppliers, customers, and business partners.

Chatbots can handle queries from multiple angles by providing real-time updates on stock levels, reordering supplies, appointment scheduling, and many other things. This ensures that everyone is informed, keeping production lines running smoothly. Chatbots can also handle maintenance requests by scheduling repairs and notifying relevant personnel about equipment issues, thereby reducing downtime and increasing efficiency.

Chatbots can also generate leads and build customer profiles, informing manufacturing sales teams about prospects before customers even get in touch with them. Chatbots provide assistance and collect information at the same time, maximizing lead generation and customer support all at once.

In 2024, retailers are under pressure to provide a better customer experience. Chatbots can help by providing a personalized shopping experience for each customer journey. For example, they can suggest products based on customers’ preferences and past purchases. If a customer is having a problem with an order, the chatbot can raise a ticket to the customer support team.

Chatbots can also assist with internal communication, which helps different departments work in unison.Freshchat helps companies facilitate two-way messaging within their support team and other departments on various platforms, including Microsoft Teams.

Real estate

Selecting a property is a time-consuming process. On average, it takes 10 weeks for a person to settle on a property. Real estate businesses mostly receive queries on property viewing and virtual tours. While real estate agents can help with these queries, they can take a lot of time to get through.

A real estate chatbot can help agents and allow them to focus on their clients instead of repetitive tasks. Real estate chatbots can:

• Answer repetitive questions

• Help with virtual tours

• Help generate leads by initiating conversations with prospective buyers or sellers

• Collect qualifying information

• Answer common questions

• Offer 24/7 real-time support without burdening your agents

Education

In the education sector, chatbots are optimizing the way institutions interact with students and manage administrative tasks. Some specific examples include:

• Providing instant access to information on courses, schedules, and campus events

• Answering common registration queries

• Customized announcement boards on student platforms

• Guiding students through application procedures

• Sending reminders about assignment or registration deadlines

• Attendance marking

• Offering 24/7 support for timely assistance

Chatbots can also serve as virtual tutors, offering personalized learning support and resources. They can help students with homework, break down complex topics, and offer practice quizzes to reinforce learning. By leveraging AI and machine learning, educational chatbots can adapt to individual learning styles and needs, making education more accessible and effective. This helps to reduce the workload of educators and ensures that students can access continuous academic support independently.

Manufacturing

In the manufacturing industry, communication is constant. Various stakeholders need to be informed at any given time, including contractors, suppliers, customers, and business partners.

Chatbots can handle queries from multiple angles by providing real-time updates on stock levels, reordering supplies, appointment scheduling, and many other things. This ensures that everyone is informed, keeping production lines running smoothly. Chatbots can also handle maintenance requests by scheduling repairs and notifying relevant personnel about equipment issues, thereby reducing downtime and increasing efficiency.

Chatbots can also generate leads and build customer profiles, informing manufacturing sales teams about prospects before customers even get in touch with them. Chatbots provide assistance and collect information at the same time, maximizing lead generation and customer support all at once.

Begin implementing and optimizing your chatbots with Freshchat!

For a scalable, easy-to-use, cost-effective solution, look no further than Freshchat.

Our chatbots can be customized to your brand

Freshchat allows you to create custom chatbots tailored to your specific needs. Whether you’re looking to enhance customer support, streamline operations, or boost engagement, Freshchat's AI-powered chatbots can help you achieve your goals efficiently. Freshchat also offers seamless integration with various channels, ensuring a consistent and responsive customer experience across all touchpoints that works with your existing business model.

With Freschat’s advanced reporting and analytics, you can monitor chatbot performance, track key metrics, and identify areas for improvement to ensure excellent and consistent service. Freshchat’s intuitive dashboard allows you to tweak and refine your chatbot interactions based on real-time data and feedback, which aligns your chatbots with your business objectives.

Start your chatbot journey with a free 14-day trial of Freshchat today and experience the benefits of automated, intelligent customer engagement.