Conversational apps: the next generation of conversational technology

What is a conversational app?

Conversational apps use AI to mimic human conversation by recognizing speech and text, translating different languages, interpreting intent, and responding in a way that imitates human conversation.

Common conversational apps such as Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger deliver a range of user experiences. These range from sending updates in real-time to helping customers get technical support or buy a product within a messaging conversation window. 

In addition to this, each conversational app has its own specific features that enable businesses to boost their conversion and engagement: 

1. Usage of channel-specific features (like buttons), 

2. Integrating with website tools (like user login)

3. Using small, standalone bits of code called components. The UI components and its features create a hassle-free customer experience. 

How are conversational apps shaping the future of customer interactions?

Infographic Source: Hubtype

Did you know?

90% of consumers are more likely to do business with companies that answer inquiries immediately_._ 

Source: Liveperson

In this era of conversational marketing, engaging with your customers wherever, whenever, and in whatever way they want is necessary. 

Payments, multi-factor authentication, and other processes can now happen within a natural dialogue, thus helping brands reimagine entire customer journeys.

What are the benefits of using conversational apps in CX?

Thanks to AI-powered conversational apps, businesses can streamline the massive chunk of their CX operations to robots, delivering better customer experiences and cutting operational costs. Some of the main advantages of conversational apps include:

1. Bridges the communication gap between customers and brands

2. Reduces friction in the customer experience

3. Enables omnichannel experiences 

4. Empowers businesses to scale with automation 

5. Personalizes experiences throughout the customer journey

6. Breaks down silos between marketing, sales, and customer service teams 

1. Conversational apps help brands bridge the communication gap.

According to a report by Facebook, over 61% of people say messaging is the easiest, most convenient way to contact a business. When this target group was asked why they chose to message businesses over calling them, around 64% of people said it’s because they’re “always messaging anyway.”  Customers now expect faster response times, and conversational apps help brands meet these growing expectations. They make it feasible for brands to help customers faster on their preferred channels. 

2. Conversational apps empower businesses to scale with automation. 

Implementing conversational apps is an investment to optimize customer service costs. By investing in these apps, businesses can save additional costs that otherwise go into hiring more customer support agents. Conversational apps help companies combine automation and humans. They automate specific parts of the customer journey and hand the customer over to a human agent when needed. Here are some use cases where conversational apps can be optimized by businesses.

• Scale chat support during busy hours

• Automate routine business processes

• Enable new customer service models

• Manage human resources and a spike in inquiry volume. 

3. Conversational apps enable a personalized experience for customers.

Providing personalized service makes your customers feel like you care about them as an individual. However, it can be taxing for your customer service agents to create a customized experience for every prospect that gets in touch with your business.  Thankfully, conversational apps solve this issue with minimal strain on your team.

They provide a personalized customer experience for every single customer at every turn during their product journey. Conversational apps assist customers in various ways. E.g., when your prospects are surfing through product information, conversational apps can help them with multiple tasks without jumping tabs. 

This includes answering commonly asked questions, making product recommendations, providing technical support if necessary, helping them checkout, and aiding them in payment gateways and other processes — all within a natural dialogue. Using conversational apps guarantees that your customers get the service they deserve.

4. Conversational apps deliver a seamless experience for customers.

Losing prospects halfway through a sales funnel or making a customer repeatedly voice their issue is never ideal, and no business would like that. Conversational apps are effective in helping brands reduce customer churn; They can handle all inbound queries from customers and assist them by either furnishing the knowledge base content or directing them to support agents if human intervention is needed.

By deflecting most of the queries to conversational apps, businesses can build a model where their CX agents can focus on increasing customer satisfaction and improving onboarding, which could help lower your churn rate.

Leading global players are merging their communication channels through conversational apps to provide seamless customer experiences. They have a single view of their customer interaction across their product and support channels. Conversational apps can strategically deliver relevant messages depending on your customer’s preferred channel. This helps businesses create personalized experiences at scale. 

How to build effective conversational apps for your business?

1. Develop well-structured conversations 

The structure is one of the essential parts of building a conversational app. By designing a well-defined structure, you can manage your customer expectations and direct most of their queries to self-help articles or bots. The key is to ensure the structure is aligned with your business goals and moves customers closer to your shared objectives.

2. Choose the right automation. 

It’s important to understand technologies like AI, NLP, and NLU alone are not enough to deliver excellent customer experiences through chat and messaging channels. It’s best to start with the minimum viable automation (MVA) before turning to conversational apps to automate every aspect of your product or service. Businesses should use their MVA to gather information on how customers use their channels. By learning from the limitations of customer experience, they can then scale based on where they see the most opportunity.

3. Anticipate your customers’ needs

Conversational apps should always anticipate customers’ needs. Most companies can automate up to 85% of customer interactions with conversational apps. However, the truth is, when it comes to simple questions, customers want quick answers. The immediacy of conversational apps increases customer satisfaction scores and lifetime value.

Unlock the benefits of conversational apps

The future of commerce is conversational, and today’s customers prefer a quick and effortless customer service experience. Freshchat helps businesses deliver on these expectations through conversational messaging and AI-powered bots.

Get started today with new conversational experiences that your customers will love! Sign-up for free!